Thanks for this. The question occurred to me after recently reading The Odyssey. Odysseus himself engages in acts of piracy, at one point he relates the following story to King Alcinous.

"The wind drove me out of Ilium to Ismarus, the Cicones stronghold. There I sacked the city, killed the men, but as fro the wives and plunder, that rich haul we dragged away from the place - we shared it round so no one, not on my account, would go deprived of his fair share of spoils" (pg 212).

Odysseus is of course the "hero" of The Odyssey and he seems rather proud of, or at least indifferent, about his actions which I think most would find rather detestable. This seems to me to be a sort of glorification/romanticization.

Also in the story there is twice used a greeting that goes as follows "Where did you sail from, over the running sea lanes? Out on a trading spree or roving the waves like pirates, sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives to plunder other men"(pg 109).

Again calling them sea-wolves and talking about the great risk that they undertake seems to glorify their actions.

Later in the book while disguised he relates a fabricated story of pirating and raiding to the swine-herd Eumaeus. Again it is related as a glorious tale of daring exploits.

It is interesting to me that Homer would glorify (at least that's how I have interpreted it) these types acts of piracy/raiding from the seas considering the fact that piracy was a very real problem in the ancient Mediterranean.

In The Ancient Mariners, the author Casson says about the effects of piracy in the Mediterranean "People moved away from the coasts in terror and took up a new way of life inland" (pg 54).

and also

"The shores of Greece, which sent forth the merchantmen that carried among other things the distinctive pottery archaeologists constantly come upon in excavation after excavation on the Aegean islands and the littoral of western Asia also launched the plunderers who made life miserable for the costal villages the length and breadth of the Mediterranean" (pg 53-54).

So I guess at least in this specific case Homer may have glorified/romanticized pirating in The Odyssey because he was a member of a society which was heavily engaged in those acts. It may have been seen as honorable or glorious in their specific culture.