by Tucker Koch, Contributing Writer

Pirates have been around for basically as long as boats have been. There were pirates in the 1700’s, like Blackbeard, in the 1300’s, like John Hawley, and even in today’s day and age with stuff like the Somali pirates. Today, however, I want to focus on a particular group of pirates during the Roman era. Let’s talk about the Cilician pirates.

Now, as the name would imply, these pirates come from the region called Cilicia. For those who didn’t study maps for a hobby, it’s a piece of southern Anatolia, or the southern part of Turkey. They emerged as a major threat around the 2nd century. You see, Rome had been doing quite a lot of wartime affairs; Collapsing Carthage, the Seleucid Empire, and left Egypt on its knees. This made quite the opening for militias, such as the Cilician pirates, to emerge and assert naval dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. The isle of Crete, being in a constant state of civil war and poverty, was a bastion for piracy. Between the poor population who could easily slip into the pirating profession and its ideal spot in the Mediterranean, it was the perfect hub for their plans.

Funny thing, the pirates weren’t against the Romans either. You see, Rome was an archaic civilization, so most of the populace was too lazy to do the hard work and relied on slaves to do the jobs for them. Now, we can all agree that slavery is one of the most idiotic concepts mankind has ever conceived, but Rome was definitely not the bastion of good intentions either if you’ve looked at their history for 12 seconds. So Rome needed slaves, and they would get these slaves from war a lot of the time; subjugation and all that jazz. However, as a nation, Rome couldn’t afford to be at war all the time. So, when they weren’t at war, Rome regularly traded with the pirates to get more slaves. The long and short of it is, the higher-ups in Rome didn’t mind the pirates existing.

So at this point, you may be wondering why I’m talking about a random group of ancient pirates. Well, dear reader, this was all exposition for the real story I wanted to talk about. Let’s talk about Julius Caesar, probably the most famous leader of Rome.

Around 78 BC, Julius Caesar was on a boat headed for Rhodes. He apparently wanted to study ‘Oratory’ there, which is a fancy way of saying he went to a religious building. Not quite sure which religion, because the Roman Catholics adopted that word and it is commonly associated with them, but they didn’t exist yet, so they couldn’t be them. Anyways, he was sailing along until he got stopped by one of these pirate vessels. The Cilician pirates kidnapped Caesar and were planning on holding him for ransom.

The original price they wanted for his return was 480,000 sestertii. Now, I realize that saying an amount of ancient Roman currency means nothing to you, so I went and calculated the values myself. They wanted approximately 5,220,000 modern United States dollars. Quite the sum of money. How do you think Caesar responded to being ransomed off? By saying the number was too low. Caesar was a very egotistical man, and, as such, he felt that such a puny amount was too little for the likes of him and urged the pirates to raise the ransom to 1,200,000 sesterii. Keep in mind that he is talking about the price that Rome has to pay to get him back. Oh, also, if you’re wondering, that is $13,050,000 in modern United States currency.

Rome eventually paid the pirates, and Caesar was rightfully sent back to Rome. Immediately after getting back to Rome, Caser sent out a small fleet to capture these pirates. Once Caesar captured the pirates, he slit all of their throats before mounting them on a cross. A bit extreme, if I say so myself.

I get this is a rather small story in the grand scheme of things, but I just found it kind of humorous. Like, seriously though, who looks their captors in the face and says the equivalent of “You could get way more money for me”? Either way, this has been Tucker Koch, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this.