Caesar I: Fifty Talents

Caesar I: Fifty Talents (Kidnapped by pirates, hunted by a dictator, drowning in debt: how young Caesar started out with an empty purse and a great name.) — lesson 1 of the course: 4 parts, about 12 min of reading.

The Aegean Sea, around 75 BC. Pirates seize a young Roman and put his price at twenty talents. He laughs and tells them to raise the ransom to fifty, then promises to have them crucified, and keeps his word. Who was this boy from the Subura, who survived the war between Marius and Sulla, refused a dictator’s order to divorce and hid in the mountains before Rome ever heard his name?

Films

• Kidnapped: A Night on the Aegean Sea — A night on the Aegean Sea: pirates seize a ship, and one of the captives starts to laugh.
• Two Camps: Sulla, Marius and the Boy from the Subura — Rome, 88–⁠83 BC: Sulla, Marius, Cinna and a boy who lands in the very middle of the web.
• Revenge on the Pirates: From Miletus to Pergamon — On a map of the eastern Mediterranean: how a freed captive went back for his kidnappers.

Articles

• Fifty Talents — Caesar I: Fifty Talents — For an ordinary legionary, that is more than two thousand years of pay. The pirates stare at their young captive as if he were mad, because no one has ever haggled with them for a higher price.
• The Boy from the Subura — Caesar I: Fifty Talents — Rome, July 100 BC. A boy is born.
• Many Mariuses — Caesar I: Fifty Talents — Rome, late 82 BC. A whitewashed board hangs in the Forum, and more names are added to it every day.
• Thirty-Eight Days — Caesar I: Fifty Talents — Remember the fifty talents. The price is set, and someone has to raise it.