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Episode 4: Caesar and the Pirates Who Underpriced Him · Most Fascinating Stories

• 0:02
  [Rebecca] Welcome to Most Fascinating Stories, where we uncover the real, well-sourced, and lesser-known tales behind history's most prominent figures.
• 0:11
  [Rebecca] I'm your host, Rebecca.
• 0:13
  [Rebecca] Today we journey back to the twilight years of the Roman Republic, long before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon or declared himself dictator for life.
• 0:22
  [Rebecca] In the winter of 75 BC, Caesar was merely an ambitious 25-year-old patrician sailing across the Aegean Sea toward Rhodes to study rhetoric under the famous master Apollonius Malon.
• 0:34
  [Rebecca] He was intercepted by the most feared terror of the ancient Mediterranean, the Cilician pirates.
• 0:40
  [Rebecca] In antiquity, captured Roman aristocrats wept, groveled, and promised fortunes to escape torture.
• 0:47
  [Rebecca] Young Julius Caesar had a very different reaction.
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  [Rebecca] He was deeply insulted by how cheaply the pirates valued his life.
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  [Rebecca] What unfolded over the next six weeks was a master class in psychological domination, audacity, and unyielding vengeance.
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  [Rebecca] Here is George with the story.
• 1:06
  [George] In the first century before Christ, the Mediterranean Sea was not a Roman lake.
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  [George] It was a hunting ground for pirates.
• 1:13
  [George] Operating from deep mountain coves and fortified strongholds along the jagged coast of Cilicia in southern Asia Minor, thousands of heavily armed corsairs preyed upon shipping routes with total impunity.
• 1:26
  [George] They commanded fast, multi-ordered galleys known as Mayaparons, light, maneuverable raiders with reinforced bronze rams that could outrun any heavy merchant cargo ship.
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  [George] The pirates were ruthless mercenaries.
• 1:39
  [George] They raided coastal Roman towns, sacked ancient temples, plundered grain convoys, and specialized in the most lucrative business in the ancient world, kidnapping Roman magistrates and wealthy senators for ransom.
• 1:52
  [George] In the winter of 75 BC, 25-year-old Gaius Julius Caesar was sailing across the Aegean Sea.
• 2:00
  [George] Accompanied by a physician and a small retinue of personal servants, Caesar was traveling to Rhodes to refine his public speaking skills.
• 2:08
  [George] Near the desolate, windswept island of Pharmacusa off the coast of Miletus, lookout sails spotted the telltale crimson sails of Cilician raiders.
• 2:17
  [George] Before Caesar's captain could turn the ship into the wind, three pirate galleys converged, boarding the vessel with drawn scimiters and boarding hooks.
• 2:26
  [George] The Roman crew surrendered without a fight.
• 2:29
  [George] Caesar and his servants were hauled aboard the pirate flagship as prisoners.
• 2:33
  [George] When the pirate chieftain learned that his young, foppishly dressed prisoner belonged to the ancient patrician Julian clan, his eyes gleamed with greed.
• 2:42
  [George] The captain announced the price for Caesar's life, twenty talents of silver.
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  [George] In the ancient world, twenty talents was an astronomical sum, roughly twelve hundred pounds of solid silver coin, equivalent to the lifetime earnings of hundreds of Roman legionaries.
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  [George] The pirates expected the young aristocrat to break down in tears and plead for mercy.
• 3:03
  [George] Instead, Julius Caesar burst into arrogant, dismissive laughter.
• 3:08
  [George] Caesar looked the pirate chieftain up and down with supreme disdain and told him that he was an ignorant peasant who clearly had no idea what kind of man he held in his hands.
• 3:17
  [George] Caesar declared that demanding twenty talents for a man of his illustrious lineage and future greatness was a personal insult.
• 3:25
  [George] He ordered the pirates to tear up their demand and told them that he would not permit himself to be ransomed for a penny less than fifty talents.
• 3:32
  [George] The pirates stared in utter bewilderment.
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  [George] Fifty talents amounted to three thousand pounds of pure silver, a king's fortune.
• 3:40
  [George] Believing their captive was either a madman or the wealthiest prince in Rome, the pirates agreed.
• 3:46
  [George] Caesar immediately dispatched his trusted freedmen and companions to the cities of Asia Minor to assemble the cash, leaving himself stranded on the pirate island with only his personal physician and two domestic servants.
• 3:59
  [George] For thirty-eight days, Julius Caesar lived in the pirate camp on the desolate beaches of Pharmacusa.
• 4:05
  [George] Yet, from the moment his companions sailed away, Caesar reversed the roles of master and prisoner.
• 4:11
  [George] He treated the hardened cutthroats and murderers not as his captors, but as his private household servants.
• 4:18
  [George] Whenever Caesar felt like taking a nap, he sent one of his servants to command the pirate captains to lower their voices, forbidding them from singing, shouting, or drinking near his tent while he rested.
• 4:30
  [George] The pirates, amused by his bizarre arrogance and eager to protect their fifty talent prize, quietly obeyed.
• 4:37
  [George] Caesar spent his days in rigorous literary pursuits.
• 4:41
  [George] He exercised on the sandy beach, challenged the pirate champions to running races, and composed elaborate Latin poems, dramatic speeches and rhetorical essays.
• 4:52
  [George] In the evenings, he would assemble the pirate crew around the campfire and read his compositions aloud in a ringing, theatrical voice.
• 5:00
  [George] When the illiterate pirates listened with glazed, uncomprehending eyes and failed to applaud with sufficient enthusiasm, Caesar berated them furiously to their faces, calling them uncultured barbarians and illiterate simpletons.
• 5:14
  [George] Whenever the pirates laughed at his haughtiness, Caesar would look the pirate captain dead in the eye, smile casually, and promise him that once his ransom arrived, he would return with a war fleet, hunt down every single man on the island, and nail them all to wooden crosses.
• 5:30
  [George] The pirates roared with laughter at the joke, finding their charming captives' theatrical threats to be the finest entertainment in the Aegean.
• 5:38
  [George] Behind the bravado, Caesar's loyal freedmen were working frantically across the province of Asia.
• 5:45
  [George] Because of Caesar's prominent political connections and family prestige, the Greek cities of Miletus, Smyrna, and Ephesus loaned vast sums from their municipal treasuries to secure his release.
• 5:57
  [George] After nearly six weeks of arduous negotiations, transport ships appeared off the coast of Pharmacusa laden with heavy ironbound chests containing fifty talents of silver coinage.
• 6:08
  [George] The pirate chieftains weighed the coins meticulously on brass scales, testing the silver with whetstones.
• 6:14
  [George] Finding every coin accounted for, the pirates were ecstatic over their unprecedented windfall.
• 6:20
  [George] Honoring their maritime code, they rode Caesar and his servants out to a neutral sandbar and set them ashore on the mainland near Miletus.
• 6:29
  [George] The pirates cheered, waved goodbye, and returned to their camp on Pharmacusa to stage a wild, drunken victory feast, convinced they had outsmarted the richest fool in Rome.
• 6:40
  [George] The moment Caesar's boots touched the dry land of Miletus, his theatrical persona vanished, replaced by cold, ruthless calculation.
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  [George] Caesar held no public office in Rome.
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  [George] He had no military command, no imperium, and no legal authority to assemble Roman troops.
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  [George] Yet, relying purely on his aristocratic prestige and personal credit, Caesar marched directly to the harbor masters of Miletus.
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  [George] Within hours, he requisitioned four heavy Roman war quadriarms, manned them with veteran Greek marines, and equipped the ships with boarding bridges and catapults.
• 7:17
  [George] Before the sun had set on the very day of his release, Caesar's naval squadron was knifing through the Aegean swells, heading straight back toward Pharmacusa under cover of darkness.
• 7:27
  [George] The pirates, having spent the evening gorging on roasted mutton and celebrating their easy riches with amphorae of unwatered wine, had not even bothered to post lookouts on the bluffs.
• 7:38
  [George] At roughly midnight, Caesar's war galleys crashed through the surf into the pirate cove.
• 7:44
  [George] Roman marines poured over the gunnels with drawn gladii.
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  [George] The surprise was absolute.
• 7:49
  [George] Half the pirates were slaughtered where they slept beside the campfires.
• 7:53
  [George] Caesar captured nearly the entire surviving crew alive, seized all their ships, and recovered every single talent of the fifty-talent ransom, along with decades of plundered pirate treasure.
• 8:05
  [George] Caesar put his former captors in heavy iron chains and sailed directly north to the provincial capital of Pergamum, locking the pirates in the deep stone vaults of the city prison.
• 8:16
  [George] He rode to the headquarters of Marcus Junius, the Roman proconsul of Asia, who held sole legal authority to execute capital punishment.
• 8:25
  [George] Junius, however, saw an opportunity for immense personal enrichment.
• 8:29
  [George] Looking greedily at the seized horde of silver and the dozens of able-bodied pirate prisoners, the proconsul announced that he would not execute the men.
• 8:38
  [George] Instead, he would take custody of the treasure and sell the pirates into the slave markets of Delos.
• 8:44
  [George] Pocketing the profit for himself, Caesar did not argue with the corrupt governor.
• 8:49
  [George] He nodded politely, walked out of the praetorium, and rode straight back to the prison at Pergamum.
• 8:55
  [George] Exercising his own personal authority, Caesar ordered the prison guards to drag the pirates out to the execution grounds outside the city walls.
• 9:04
  [George] Remembering that the pirates had treated him reasonably well during his captivity.
• 9:09
  [George] Caesar demonstrated what Roman stoicism considered genuine mercy.
• 9:13
  [George] Before having his soldiers nail the men to the wooden crosses, he ordered the executioners to slit their throats with a razor, sparing them days of agonizing exposure under the blazing Mediterranean sun.
• 9:25
  [George] Julius Caesar had kept his word to the exact letter.
• 9:29
  [George] In the dusty hills of Pergamum, thirty crosses stood against the sky, a brutal, unforgettable demonstration that when Caesar made a promise, the world would bleed to see it fulfilled.
• 9:41
  [Rebecca] Caesar's capture at Pharmacusa reveals the unshakable audacity that would define his entire career.
• 9:47
  [Rebecca] Whether confronting Cilician pirates in the Aegean or standing on the banks of the Rubicon, Caesar refused to recognize any authority above his own will.
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  [Rebecca] Thank you for listening to most fascinating stories.
• 9:59
  [Rebecca] I'm Rebecca.
• 10:00
  [Rebecca] Join us next time for another forgotten chapter of history.
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  [Rebecca] Until then, stay curious.