I’ve sometimes seen the idiom said as “Rapine and pillaging”–which from a strictly grammarian standpoint is just atrocious parallelism (or lack thereof), an adjective (?) paired with a gerund. Shouldn’t it be “raping and pillaging” instead, which is usually how I’ve seen it 95% of the time? Is “rapine” even a word? Yeah, the online dictionaries have it, and it does seem to mean to loot, but the part of speech is a noun, not an adjective (such as other words which end with -ine, like riverine). “Raping” in this context may also mean to loot, may also/instead mean literal rapes (of the native female population).
So, which is it? Can both work depending on the intended meaning?
“Rapine” is a word, although rather archaic. It can be a noun or a verb. If it’s used as a noun, “rapine and pillaging” is fine grammatically since the gerund “pillaging” is also a noun. However, that said, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard or seen “rapine and pillaging”. I only know “raping and pillaging”.
Note that the specific phrase “theft and rapine” isn’t something I came up with it. It was a recurring statutory formula in England pertaining to the activities of Border Reivers.