He came, he saw... he crucified pirates

Ancient accounts of Julius Caesar's early life depict an all-action hero who outwitted tyrants and terrorised bandits. But can they be trusted? David S Potter investigates

- David S Potter

The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he'd made his big splash in the vast ocean of history.

In 75 BC, Julius Caesar - then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himself as the most powerful man in Rome - sailed to Rhodes to study with a famous Greek rhetorician. But on his journey east, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates from southern Anatolia.

There was nothing so unusual about this stroke of misfortune — the waters of the eastern Mediterranean were plagued by bandits all too willing to prey on Roman travellers. But there was certainly something unusual about what happened next.

Seemingly oblivious to the danger in which he now found himself, Caesar decisively took control of the situation. According to his biographer, Plutarch, “when the pirates demanded 20 talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them 50”. While his agents set out to raise the ransom money, Caesar made the pirates listen to his speeches and poetry, assuring them that he would come after them as soon as he was freed.

He was as good as his word. Having paid the ransom, Caesar raised a fleet from the cities of the Roman province of Asia (western Anatolia) and captured the pirates. Then, when he discovered that the corrupt governor of Asia was looking to make a profit from the captives, he “took the robbers out of prison and crucified them all, just as he had often warned them on the island that he would do, when they thought he was joking”. It was a brutal act of revenge — softened only slightly by the fact that he slit the pirates’ throats to spare them the agony that would have been their fate on the crosses.

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