Was Julius Caesar Really Abducted by Pirates?

It’s one of ancient history’s most swashbuckling tales.

Decades before ruling Ancient Rome, a young Julius Caesar is captured by pirates as he sails the Aegean Sea. Even in captivity, the prisoner remains in charge. The future dictator barks orders at his captors, insists they more than double the ransom placed on his life and vows to kill every last one of them. After his release, Caesar fulfills his pledge and brutally crucifies the pirates.

Pulsating with the action of a Hollywood blockbuster, it’s an origin story worthy of a superhero. But is there any historical truth to the legend? Or is it pure fiction?

Accounts of Caesar’s kidnapping appear in several surviving ancient histories written approximately 150 years after his assassination. When Greek biographer Plutarch recounted the episode in Parallel Lives, he dated Caesar’s abduction to 80 B.C. on a return voyage from visiting King Nicomedes IV in Bithynia. Most scholars, however, favor the chronology presented by the Roman historian Suetonius in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, which placed Caesar’s capture around 75 B.C. during his journey to the island of Rhodes to study oratory with the renowned Greek rhetorician Apollonius, whose students included Cicero.

Based on that timeline, Caesar was around the age of 25 when he set sail for Rhodes. Not yet a general or politician, he had already been honored for his courage at the Siege of Mytilene and his oratorical skills had gained notice while successfully prosecuting corrupt officials.

As he cruised the Aegean Sea, the young nobleman couldn’t see the greatness that laid beyond the horizon nor the Cilician pirates who infested the craggy coastal coves of southwest Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Sea raiders operated with impunity in the region, seizing cargo and kidnapping crews into slavery. Piracy flourished after the Roman destruction of the kingdom of Macedonia and the decline of Egypt, regional powers that once boasted powerful navies.

“Piracy was always an issue in the eastern Mediterranean with so much commercial traffic,” says Josiah Osgood, a classics professor at Georgetown University and author of Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato's Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic. “It had become unusually bad after the Romans dislodged some of the great kings of the East who had managed the problem, and pirates exploited the situation.”

Caesar became the sea bandits’ latest captive when they commandeered his ship near the island of Pharmacussa—but the pirates could not have foreseen what happened next.

Throughout his 38-day captivity on an island prison, Caesar was the one making demands, according to Plutarch. He ordered the pirates to stay silent when he slept and berated those who didn’t delight in the recitations of his poems and speeches as “illiterate barbarians.” He treated his captors “as if the men were not his watchers, but his royal bodyguard.”

Caesar joined his abductors in athletic games and, with a smile, threatened to hang them all. “The pirates were delighted at this,” Plutarch recounted, “and attributed his boldness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth.”

The Roman nobleman scoffed when his captors set his ransom at 20 talents—a heavy weight unit for precious metals. In Caesar’s mind, such a meager amount was an insult to someone of his distinguished stature. He demanded the pirates raise their asking price to 50 talents. Caesar dispatched members of his entourage to raise the money in nearby Miletus, where older residents remembered his father’s tenure as governor of the Roman province of Asia 25 years earlier.

Once the collected ransom earned his freedom, Caesar didn’t immediately continue to his oratorical training in Rhodes. Actions would come before words.

“After his release Caesar acted swiftly, his force of character making others do his bidding even though he had no power to command them,” writes Adrian Goldsworthy in Caesar: Life of a Colossus. He raised a makeshift fleet in Miletus and apprehended the kidnappers, who remained anchored at Pharmacussa. He reclaimed his 50-talent ransom and transported the pirates to a prison in Pergamum.

Caesar appealed to the Roman governor in Asia, Marcus Junius Juncus, to execute the prisoners. Juncus, though, was more interested in profits than justice and planned to sell Caesar’s captives into slavery. When Caesar learned of the governor’s intentions, he rushed to the prison and crucified all the pirates—despite lacking the legal authority.

More than 2,000 years later the dramatic adventure story still resonates because it foreshadows Caesar’s military and political ascent and encapsulates his character as a bold leader who remained cool under pressure. He appears fearless, wily, decisive and ruthless—traits he later wielded to conquer Gaul and seize political power in Rome.

The story may also have highlighted another of Caesar’s talents: self-promotion. According to Osgood, the tale’s hero was likely its original source. “There was no other creditable witness—at least for what happened initially,” he writes.

The legend likely grew in embellishment with each telling until it was recorded by historians such as Plutarch and Suetonius. “After Caesar is proven to be the world conqueror, the greatest man in Roman history, you could imagine biographers a little bit later might want to play up this story,” Osgood says. But that’s not to say the saga was fictitious. “One of the things that suggests that it’s not totally made up is the details do seem right about the governor in Asia at the time,” he adds.

“How much was true and how much romantic invention is obviously impossible to say,” Goldsworthy writes. The narrative’s main takeaway, however, is unmistakable. “Don’t mess with Caesar,” Osgood says. “That’s the point of the story.”