Caesar and the Pirates

As a young man Gaius Julius Caesar was captured by pirates near the island of Pharmacusa, off the coast of Asia Minor. In his day Cilician pirates ruled much of the eastern Mediterranean, with great fleets and hideouts along the rocky coasts. Plutarch places the capture early in Caesar's career, while Sulla was still in power; Suetonius puts it a little later, on Caesar's voyage to study at Rhodes, around 75 BC.

The pirates asked twenty talents for his ransom. Plutarch says Caesar laughed at them for not knowing whom they had caught and promised fifty. He sent his companions off to raise the money and stayed thirty-eight days among the pirates with one friend and two attendants. He treated them, Plutarch writes, as if they were his bodyguard rather than his captors: he ordered them to be quiet when he wanted to sleep, joined in their games and exercises, wrote poems and speeches and read them aloud, and called those who did not admire them illiterate barbarians. Often, laughing, he threatened to crucify them all. They were charmed and took it as a joke. When the ransom came, Caesar went straight to Miletus, manned some ships, caught the pirates still at anchor off the island and took them prisoner, and later had them crucified, as he had promised. Suetonius adds that he had their throats cut first, as an act of mercy.