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pirates were still engaged upon their “Treasure Island,” Caesar returned. The lean, apparently soft and somewhat effeminate young man was transformed into an eagle of vengeance. In what appears to have been a miniature sea-battle—the pirates attempting to escape as soon as the other vessels were sighted—several of their boats were sunk and the crews of the others all surrendered. Both ashore, and in the vessels that remained afloat, Caesar had recaptured not only the money that had been advanced by the neighboring cities for his ransom but everything else that the pirates had stored away on Pharmacussa. His visit to Bithynia had—temporarily—been postponed, but he had acquired a small fortune which, even after the expenses of the expedition had been met and the ransom money returned to the cities from which it had come, should still yield a handsome profit to the man who had initiated the destruction of the pirates’ nest and the capture of their loot and their leaders.
    The captured pirates were taken to Pergamos, where the governor of Asia Minor, Marcus Juncus, normally resided. Finding that he was away settling the affairs of Bithynia, Caesar followed him there. To his disgust he found that the governor, “having an eye to their wealth, which was considerable,” was unwilling to give an immediate decision on the fate of the prisoners. Indeed, he said that he would rather sell them than execute them as this would be of benefit to the treasury. Velleius Paterculus refers to the governor as “no less envious than cowardly.” He was envious perhaps because of the wealth which would accrue to Caesar, but “cowardly” is difficult to explain. It seems unlikely that the governor feared that friends of the captured men might take revenge upon him if they were executed, unless, of course, he had been working hand in glove with the pirates operating off his coastline. Such a thing is not impossible, for the behavior of many Roman governors and generals at this stage in the empire was often far more reprehensible than simple collusion.
    Caesar took matters into his own hands and returned at once to Pergamos. Before the governor’s instructions to proceed with the sale of the pirates had arrived, he, acting on his own initiative, had fulfilled his promise to the pirates and had them crucified.
    Having settled his affairs in Bithynia, and enriched by his share of the pirates’ plunder, Caesar now proceeded to pay that visit to Rhodes which is usually given as his reason for being in the East at all. But he can have had little time to benefit from his stay with the eloquent Apollonius Molon, for almost immediately the third war initiated by King Mithridates broke out, this time brought about by the fact that Mithridates refused to accept the will of Nicomedes bequeathing Bithynia to Rome. Hearing that some of the King’s forces had broken into the province of Asia, Caesar immediately—acting on his own account and without any orders—crossed over from Rhodes to the mainland and either raised his own forces or took charge of the local militia. With these troops under his command he drove the enemy out of the province: a remarkable action for so young a man and one which once again showed his dash and initiative.
    Caesar’s time in Greece and the Aegean and Asia Minor, as a young man in his middle twenties, showed all the hallmarks of his later career. He was first and foremost a politician, had a natural bent for the military life, was financially unscrupulous, and would tolerate no man standing in his way or threatening his path to power.
     
     

 
    4
     
    Politics and Money
     
    IN the year 73, while Caesar was a staff officer in Asia Minor with the congenial duty of helping to remove the pirate menace from the eastern Mediterranean, he learned that his uncle, Gaius Cotta, had died. This left a vacancy in the College of Pontiffs, and Caesar, aged only twenty-six, had been nominated to fill it. It was an