Julius Caesar Read Online Free PDF Page A

though no correspondence exists between Caesar and Nicomedes, that the attractive young Roman aristocrat expected to be mentioned in the King’s will. There was every reason then for Caesar, after his visit to Greece, to make his way to the court of this prosperous and important kingdom; far more than to visit the renowned Greek rhetorician in Rhodes, who in any case could be included later during his visit to the Aegean.
    While on its way toward Miletus, however, Caesar’s vessel was captured by some of the pirates who infested the sea coast of Asia Minor, and who would continue to prove a curse on the imperial shipping routes until removed by the great Pompey. The crew probably went overboard but the obviously important young Roman—traveling with a staff of a physician and two personal servants—was taken as a hostage. Although it has been constantly quoted in nearly all biographies, the account by Plutarch is so revealing of Caesar’s character that some of it must be given here: “When these men at first demanded of him twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not understanding the value of their prisoner, and voluntarily engaged to give them fifty.”
    Caesar was quite happy to do this, for he did not have to produce the money himself. Since they appeared not to be able to keep order in their territories, and since the pirates were obviously drawn from their own people and their cities flourished from this very piracy, the inhabitants of coastal Asia Minor were under a strict obligation to Rome to secure the release of any Roman citizen captured in their vicinity and, where necessary, to provide the ransom money.
    Having sent off messengers to inform the local governors of the capture of so important a Roman citizen, Caesar, his doctor and their two servants settled down to wait. The accounts that we have of this period are usually believed to derive from a report written by his physician, which was later used by both Plutarch and Suetonius and by the earlier historian Velleius Paterculus. According to Plutarch “he was left among some of the most bloodthirsty people in the world…yet he made so little of them that, when he had a mind to sleep, he would send for them, and order them to make no noise.” Paterculus, our earliest authority, has it that he induced among them “as much fear as respect,” but also mentions how careful Caesar was not to do anything that might make his jailers suspect him of plotting to escape. It was unlikely in any case that he could have done so: it was winter and any small boats would have been hauled up ashore under the pirates’ watchful eyes. “For thirty-eight days,” writes Plutarch, “with time on his hands, he played and exercised with them, wrote verses and speeches which he read to them, and if they did not admire them sufficiently would call them ignorant barbarians. Apparently in jest, he would threaten to hang them.”
    When the ransom finally arrived Caesar and his fellow-prisoners embarked and returned to Miletus. The pirates thought no doubt that that was the last they would hear of this seemingly rich young Roman: people who had escaped from such a dangerous situation hardly, if ever, ventured into that area again. But they had reckoned without Caesar. What they had taken for a jest was more than earnest. On arrival at Miletus—only a short sail or “pull” away—Caesar at once raised several ships, their crews (possibly pirates themselves), no doubt on the basis of “no cure, no pay.” Despite his pretense of relaxed geniality, he had clearly been infuriated by his detention. It was winter; the island (probably the larger of two in this area, and one which has a good harbor) would have been barren and bone-chilling. Also, and he was to remain so all his life, he was an authoritarian, a strict believer that civilization could only be maintained by the exercise of discipline over all the anarchic forces which would destroy it.
    While the