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Pirate

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Pirate simply means 'pirates', a warning set down in the Indian part of the map rather than the name of any town. Piracy off the south-western coast of India was notorious in the early empire, as Roman trade with India grew from the first century AD. The Roman writer Pliny warns merchants of pirates as far as the waters beyond the port of Muziris, the geographer Ptolemy records them too, and the later writer Solinus calls Muziris itself infamous for its pirate robbers. The label probably dates from that early imperial age of the India trade.

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