Caesar and the Pirates | Hacker News Reader

Caesar and the Pirates

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59 pointsnaftaliharris23 comments

I think people are missing the incredible achievement this story is.

At this point, Caesar was pretty much an unknown, and had to leave Rome to escape Sulla.

However, the ransom arrived from Miletus and, as soon as he had paid it and been set free, he immediately manned some ships and set sail from the harbor of Miletus against the pirates

Think about this. Somehow, this unknown person, on the wrong side of the Mediterranean Sea, known to be in debt, and known to have lost to pirates once before managed to persuade those in Miletus to let him command their ships to go up against the pirates (who presumably they knew well, and probably had some kind of informal agreement with).

Once he had the ships, he defeated the pirates (which is a huge feat in itself). Then he delivered them to the governor, and once he had decided the supreme ruler in the region wasn't going to do what he wanted he executed them himself.

That's not really that different to someone hijacked by Somali pirates raising a ransom, going to Kenya, raising a navy and going back to wipe them out. Even Rambo wasn't as impressive.

The scary thing is that Caesar was just getting started. Genghis Khan and Alexander may have been more impressive commanders, but I think perhaps only Napoleon rivals Caesar in terms of sheer self-drive.

Pretty much unknown?

Sulla and Marius had a civil war and Marius's nephew was Caesar

Post-civil war US - replace Sulla and Marius with Lincoln and Jefferson...

Yes, but Jefferson's nephew in South America, let's say, post-Civil war hardly can be called well known or powerful. It is no given that every Roman noble had nothing to fear from pirates. Caesar's contemporary Claudius fared much worse when he fell into pirates' hand, even though he actually came from a great patrician clan and was related to a man no less than the prominent Sullan general Lucullus. This episode, if true, delineated a subtle, bold, and decisive nobleman who did not shirk from the responsibility of his rank. It is no accident he was called the last patrician.

Yeah, but he hadn't really had any impact on public life. From memory he'd just taken a senate seat but hadn't really done anything.

He was from one of the oldest Patrician families in Rome. I think you're under-estimating his family name and connections.

"...deputies ought to be sent to Pompey, to propose a reconciliation; as he [Caesar] did not regard what Pompey had lately asserted in the senate, that authority was acknowledged to be vested in those persons to whom ambassadors were sent, and fear implied in those that sent them. That these were the sentiments of low, weak minds: that for his part, as he had made it his study to surpass others in glory, so he was desirous of excelling them in justice and equity." http://sacred-texts.com/cla/jcsr/civ1.htm

Supreme self confidence and magnanimity were some of his good traits.

Yes, indeed:

Caesar paid no further attention to him. He went to Pergamon, took the pirates out of prison and crucified the lot of them, just as he had often told them he would do when he was on the island and they imagined that he was joking.

And that's nothing compared to the way he behaved in Gaul. What you call magnanimity is pragmatism: he had learned from Sulla, and wanted to avoid massive purges, so he treated his Roman opponents much better than they would have if the situation had been reverted.

His successor, in turn, learned the lessons of Caesar's assassination and went back to the time-proven method of slaughtering the political opposition on a large scale.

That's a bad interpretation IMHO. He wanted to be loved and respected by his fellow Romans. He knew what people thought of Sulla for what he did. He knew personally what it was like to live in fear of a purging regime. It was not merely pragmatism, it was his personal nature based on his life experience.

He may have very well have preferred to die like he did rather than to kill his enemies like Augustus did. He knew the people he spared were the most likely to kill him. He just arrogantly believed no one would dare or succeed.

Clearly, we have a different view of the man. I see him as a ruthlessly ambitious politician, who managed through a combination of intelligence, skill and luck to ascend to the position of most powerful man in the Republic. In my opinion, his reluctance to kill fellow Romans has more to do with long-term political aims in terms of political stability, cultivation of his public image and sheer arrogance than any sort of reluctance to shed blood.

The story of Ceasar and the pirates is one of my favorites' stories in Ceasar's life. It represents well the his character: he was somewhat nuts.

I'm not sure you get all the nuances of the story. Caesar is just as nuts as Vladimir Putin, who goes bear hunting bare chested.

It's just a piece of political propaganda that has survived through the ages, all the way until today. There are more examples in this day and age, for example the myths surrounding Alexander the Great.

Who cares about going bear-hunting bare-chested? It's not like he's strangling the bears or engaging in close-combat.

There's not much you could wear that would protect you from a bear, which is why hunters (including Putin) shoot them from a distance with a rifle.

I think the point is, it's made up. A photo shoot.

But none the less the bare chested bit is he's out in the wilderness (Perhaps even cold being Russia) not even needing a shirt for many hours at a time tracking a bear. I see that as being a pretty tough image for a 61 year old.

You make a very interesting point that never occur to me. How many of the stories of great men are just that? Makes me look to "history" in a different way.

History is written by the victors - there for those Brits who took up arms and went to fight in Spain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War ) are remembered as freedom fighters, fighting the good fight, but those today that want to go to Syria or other modern battlegrounds are (currently) viewed as terrorists. Only the future will know how we will refer to them in 50 or 100 years time...

I really liked a quote from Julian Barnes' The Sense Of An Ending. One of the characters answers the teacher's question "what is history?" with "History is the lies of the victors,” to which the history teacher responds, “Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.”

And here I thought that Franco won the Spanish Civil War.

And yet the regimes that opposed Franco's outlasted Franco's. Who the "victors" are depends on the geographical context of the analysis and the time window.

Here's a fun one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot

Reminds me of the Bounty

Lesson: do what you say you are going to do.

And this is my favorite part about being a cofounder.

When the RIAA tries to crucify pirates it rebounds off the Streisand Effect.

I'm not sure what Caesar would do today. Maybe start a band?

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