Julius Caesar and the Cilician Pirates.

Julius Caesar is one of the towering figures of history and who hasn't heard of him and read of his exploits. He irrevocably changed Rome and was instrumental in establishing a new Imperial era and quite possibly he'd have been Rome's first emperor if he hadn't been assassinated on the floor of the Roman Senate.

Was his assassination necessary is a question I have asked myself a number of times. I am opposed to violence and to capital punishment and in the modern context I would have to say no. 

However, in Caesar's day, the Romans would have seen things from a different perspective to mine. Certainly, Caesar was ambitious and ruthlessly cruel and his treatment of the defeated Gaul tribes and their mass enslavement speaks of his greed and cruelty. To curry favour with the masses, Caesar also sponsored games where many thousands of slaves were killed as entertainment for the populace. His personal ambition new no limits and eventually, his enemies within the Senate were fearful of his dictatorship and decided he must die.

A earlier incident in Caesar's life perhaps gives us an insight into the true nature of the man. 

In the first century BC, the eastern Mediterranean was a lawless area dominated by pirates operating from an area of Anatolia known as Cilicia Trachea (Rough Cilicia). Expediently, the Romans never challenged these pirates who supplied Rome's senators and wealthier citizens with many slaves needed to work their latifundia.

According to Plutarch, in 75BC, twenty-five year old Julius Caesar was travelling to the island of Rhodes to study oratory when he was captured by pirates in the Aegean Sea and held to ransom. The pirates set his ransom at twenty talents. Contemptuously, he laughed at the pirates and told them he was worth fifty talents.

While Caesar waited for the fifty talents to be paid he spent thirty-eight days with the pirates joining in their games and activities, forcing them to listen to his oratory and the poems he wrote and arrogantly assuming the role of their leader. Despite, his seeming good humour, Caesar told the pirates that once the ransom was paid, he would crucify them no doubt much to their amusement. 

When the ransom was paid and he was set free, Caesar held true to his promise. He put together a naval force returned to the pirate stronghold and took the pirates captive. He delivered them to the governor of Asia demanding they be put to death. However, the governor hesitated and growing impatient, Caesar went to the prison were the pirates were being held, seized them and then had them crucified.

To me, this tells much about Julius Caesar; of his overbearing arrogance, his self-belief in his own destiny, his bravery in the face of personal danger, and his need for merciless revenge against his enemies. Perhaps these traits weighed on the minds of his assassins. If so, Julius Caesar was in a way, the author of his own downfall.

The artwork for this post is a taken from a larger work called "Last Rest" by Baron of Prague. However, the text is mine.