Julius Caesar and the Cilician Pirates Incident

Episode 2: Julius Caesar and the Cilician Pirates

Now we are going to take a look at the introduction section of the book where the author recounts the incident between Julius Caesar and the Cilician Pirates, before listening to my summary I would encourage you to listen to the last episode where I read the parts of the Introduction that we are covering now in this book.

At the time of the book’s publication, pirates were already causing a lot of disruption and disorder in the seas disrupting trade. For this reason, the author thought that people around the world would be interested in the origins and progression of the pirates.

The next part of the introduction provides a few examples of piracy in history. One instance comes from the end of the Roman Republican period during the times of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. During this period there was a great civil war between these two men and it divided Rome and caused a lot of distress among the citizens. These tumultuous times provided the perfect opportunity for piracy especially in the country Cilicia, which is now a geographical region in the modern day country of Turkey. So, these Cilician pirates started out with around two or three ships and began their pirating campaign around the Greek Isles conquering ships and eventually grew in great wealth and power. Their first great disturbance to the Roman Empire was when they took the nobleman Julius Caesar himself when he was 25 years old in circa 75 bce.

For a little background into how Caesar got captured, there are two different accounts. One of them involves the victory of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the other much less exciting.

The more exciting account goes back to the Sulla and Cinna-Marius civil war mentioned earlier. After the war ended, Sulla ended up winning and became the dictator/ruler of Rome. Now, Julius Caesar was the nephew of Gaius Marius, the man Sulla fought against during the civil war. Additionally Caesar was married to Lucius Cornelius Cinna’s daughter Cornelia Cinna Minor while he was appointed to become High Priest of Jupiter. Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a close ally of Gaius Marius during the civil war. So, due to Julius Caesar’s connections to Sulla’s opponents, Sulla saw Julius Caesar as a threat and political opponent, therefore he demanded that Caesar divorce his Cornelia Cinna Minor and marry someone from his family instead to unite their families together. However, Julius Caesar declines and is advised to find asylum in Bithynia, a Roman province in modern day Turkey. So, after Caesar spends some time in Bithynia, spending a lot of time with King Nicomedes. After some time, Julius Caesar decides to return to Rome, but he is interrupted on the way and is captured by Cilician Pirates around the Greek island of Pharmacusa circa 75 BCE.

The other less exciting account records that after Julius Caesar flees to Bithynia for a period, he returns to Rome in 78 BCE after Lucius Cornelius Sulla dies and starts his political career as a lawyer. Shortly afterwards, Julius Caesar plans on traveling to the Greek Island Rhodes to study oratory under Molon of Rhodes, a famous professor that also taught Marcus Tulius Cicero. However, during his travels in the Aegean Sea, Julius Caesar was captured by the Cilician pirates circa 75 BCE.

Either way, the account of Julius Caesar and the Cilician pirates is consistent. Basically, the Cilician pirates took Julius Caesar and his many attendants, and decided to put Julius Caesar up for ransom after assuming he was a valuable person. They offered his freedom for twenty Talents.

Twenty talents is about 50kg of gold or silver. In the United States today, the value of gold in kg is $59,514.15. So, the value of twenty talents in gold today would be around $1,190,285. The value of silver in the United States today is $705.07. So the value of twenty talents in silver today is $14,101.40. Other calculations range the worth of Roman talents to be around $13,000,000. Either way, it was a very extravagant sum for a ransom.

To the pirates’ surprise, Julius Caesar offered fifty talents instead, over double the original asking price. The account recorded in the introduction said that Julius Caesar laughed about the ransom being so low.

After raising the ransom, Julius Caesar sent some of his attendees out of the ship to gather the fifty talents, leaving one friend and two servants with him on the boat for around thirty eight days. During this period of captivity, Julius Caesar treated the whole situation like a minor setback and annoyance, he was joking around, threatening them, and was an overall unpleasant captive. He would join the Cilician Pirates in their games and exercises; such as playing dice. He wrote poems, speeches, verses, and dialogues and performed them to the pirates, sometimes asking them to recite them as well. If they didn’t praise him he would insult them, calling them Beasts, Barbarians, and illiterate savages. He would often threaten to kill them by hanging and crucifixion as well. In fact, he was so bold as to tell them not to speak or be obnoxious when he went to sleep, or else he would have them killed. Throughout his captivity, though he was very obnoxious and bold, the pirates thought he was just a simple, immature man and didn’t think much of his threats. Also, keep in mind that they couldn’t kill him because he was a captive and they wanted his ransom money.

After thirty eight days had passed Julius Caesar’s attendants came back from Miletus, an ancient city in Turkey, and paid the fifty talents. Julius Caesar was set free and immediately plotted his revenge against the Cilician Pirates.

Julius Caesar immediately set sail for the Port of Miletus and used his wealth and power to arm and man a squadron of ships to search for the Cicilian Pirates. Having joined the Roman Army at around 81 BCE, Julius Caesar sought them out and had general knowledge of war.

Julius Caesar found the Cilician Pirates laying at anchor among the Islands outside Miletus and successfully captured the pirates that took him, along with some other pirates. Other accounts say he caught most of the pirates that caught him. Either way, he caught the men that captured him and put him up for ransom. In addition, Julius Caesar, being the rich, ruthless, powerful man that he is, takes all the money stolen by the pirates, along with the other riches that they stole during their careers. He used this money to reimburse his ransom, and probably the costs of outfitting the squadron of ships.

After this, Julius Caesar takes the Cilician Pirates to either Pergamon, an ancient city located in modern day Turkey, or Troy. However, there is more evidence from Plutarch of Chaeronea’s Life of Julius Caesar that they were taken to Pergamon. While there, Julius Caesar imprisoned them and spoke to Marcus Junius Silanus, the Governor of Asia, to deliberate the punishments of the Cilician Pirates, wanting them to be executed for their crimes. However, Marcus Junius didn’t think much of the crimes of the Cilician Pirates and needed more time to consider the punishment for their crime. Therefore, Caesar left Marcus Junius and took the prisoners out of jail and brought them back to Pergamon to be crucified. After their crucifixions, Julius Caesar returned to Rome and pursued his political career.

-Gabriel Monton