In a bizarre encounter with murderous pirates, a young Caesar showcased the cunning and ambition that would make him the most powerful man in Rome.

By Alex Zakrzewski

DURING the 1st century BCE, the still-growing Roman Republic couldn’t yet call the Mediterranean Sea mare nostrum or “our sea.” Still some years away from Pax Romana, Rome could do little as years of foreign wars and civil unrest had left the seas unguarded and rife with lawlessness.

Bands of pirates, many working for Rome’s enemies, prowled the waters unchecked, raiding shipping lanes, pillaging coastal settlements and even venturing inland to plunder villas and take wealthy Romans hostage. The ancient historian Appian of Alexandria writes that these pirates numbered in the tens of thousands and even operated as a well-organized navy.

While they came from across the Mediterranean, the pirates were collectively known as “Cilicians” because they were based along the rugged, cliff-lined Cilician coast of what is now southern Turkey. In fact, Appian notes that they roved the Mediterranean all the way to the Pillars of Hercules. 

Nobody who dared sail during this time was safe from their wrath, not even Romans. And among the pirates’ most notable victims was none other than a young Julius Caesar. 

In the winter of 75 BCE, Caesar was in his mid-20s and still an up-and-coming politician. Eager to hone his skills as an orator, he left his wife and newborn daughter and set sail for the island of Rhodes, one of the ancient world’s great centres of learning, to study the persuasive arts. 

While at sea, his ship was attacked and seized by the dreaded Cilician pirates. The brigands rejoiced upon realizing who they had captured. As a political figure, Caesar was still a relative nobody, but as a member of one of Rome’s most prominent noble families, his ransom was sure to be enormous. 

Surprisingly, Caesar reportedly showed no fear of his captors or concern for his own wellbeing. Far from being cowed, he treated the pirates with open disdain. Insulted by the proposed ransom they asked for his safe return, Caesar demanded that it be more than doubled and even sent one of his companions to raise the funds.  

For the next 38 days, Caesar lived among the pirates, treating them more like his servants than his kidnappers. He ordered them around and demanded quiet while he studied and slept. He ate their food, drank their wine and even wrote poems about them, calling them illiterate barbarians when they failed to appreciate his work.

The pirates, amused and perhaps impressed by his boldness, grew fond of their young hostage and even came to enjoy his strange company. They laughed heartily when he joked about someday returning after he was freed to crucify them all.

Eventually the ransom money arrived and Caesar was set free. He immediately made his way to the city of Miletus where he enlisted some ships and militia and set sail for the pirates’ hideout. They were not expecting to see him again so soon. Indeed, he’d caught them completely by surprise, placing them all in chains. 

With the tables suddenly turned, Caesar showed his former captors none of the hospitality they had shown him. He brought them back to Roman territory and, true to his word, had them all crucified as a warning to other pirates. He kept their trove of stolen treasure, including his own hefty ransom, for himself.

In perhaps a grudging show of mutual fondness, Caesar granted the pirates one final mercy: He ordered that their throats be slit before being mounted on their crosses to spare them an agonizingly slow death.  

Caesar’s encounter with pirates is more than just an entertaining story: it is a great historical “what if?” What if the pirates had not been so indulging of the young Caesar and simply murdered him? The historian Plutarch notes that the Cilician pirates took a particular pleasure in humiliating and drowning Roman prisoners for their arrogance. How might Roman history – and the history of the ancient world – have been changed if Caesar had met such an inglorious end?

It was Caesar who would go on to conquer Gaul and bring a large swathe of what is now Western Europe under Roman control and influence. His crossing of the Rubicon and victory in the Roman civil war marked the end of the Roman Republic and laid the groundwork for Imperial Rome.

Would these pivotal events still have occurred? If so, when and under whose leadership?

Ironically, it was Caesar’s greatest rival, Pompey the Great, who finally solved the piracy problem. With an enormous army and navy at his disposal, Pompey divided the Mediterranean into more than a dozen sections, assigning each to a different captain for pacification. Within a few months, only the strongholds in Cilicia remained and they too quickly fell to the Romans. 

The pirates’ mastery of the Mediterranean was over, though Pompey soon had his hands full with Caesar. The Roman consul had his ally-turned-rival murdered in Egypt in 48 BCE. 

Alexander Zakrzewski is a Toronto-based freelance writer with a passion for military history. Follow him @AlexZed85 or reach out to him on LinkedIn. He loves sharing ideas with fellow military history enthusiasts.