AVAST (uh-VAST)
Used
as a command to stop or desist
Common clues: Nautical
command; “Halt, salt!”; “Stop, sailor!”;
“Stop!” at sea; Captain's command; “Stop!”,
to Ahab; Cry from the crow's-nest
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
2 times a year
Video: Talk
Like a Pirate Day – The Five A's
Pirates have been around as long as people have used the oceans as trade routes. The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the Aegean and Mediterranean in the 13th century BC. In Classical Antiquity, the Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates, as well as Greeks and Romans. The island of Lemnos long resisted Greek influence and remained a haven for Thracian pirates. During their voyages the Phoenicians seem to have sometimes resorted to piracy, and specialized in kidnapping boys and girls to be sold as slaves. By the 1st century BC, there were pirate states along the Anatolian coast, threatening the commerce of the Roman Empire.
On
one voyage across the Aegean Sea in 75 BC, Julius Caesar was
kidnapped by Cilician pirates and held prisoner in the Dodecanese
islet of Pharmacusa. He maintained an attitude of superiority and
good cheer throughout his captivity. When the pirates decided to
demand a ransom of twenty talents of gold, Caesar is said to have
insisted that he was worth at least fifty, and the pirates indeed
raised the ransom to fifty talents. After the ransom was paid,
Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and had
them put to death.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Piracy".
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