So skillfully did Caesar work up his case and deliver his indictment that Antonius was forced to appeal to the people’s tribunes over the head of the judging praetors who had considered the complaint well-founded. He was acquitted, but the acquittal in itself caused a scandal. Again, Caesar had not won, but his reputation was now made and he became recognized as one of the greatest orators of his time and second only to Cicero. He had won many friends in Greece, many friends in Rome (as well as enemies), and he had established his position, by his attacks on two notorious Sullans, as a follower of his uncle Marius and an up-and-coming man in the popular party. By these two actions Caesar had laid the foundations of his political career. 

 

 

 

3

 

A Greek Adventure

 

AFTER two years in Rome Caesar suddenly traveled to the East again. It has often been said by historians that this was because he feared reprisals from Dolabella and the other Sullans, but this is somewhat doubtful. In the days of the dictator he had merely gone into hiding—and there was no equal to Sulla now. According to Suetonius—”he decided to visit Rhodes until the ill-feeling against him [in Rome] had died down and take a course in rhetoric from Apollonius Molon, the greatest exponent of the art.” Plutarch, although somewhat weak about this period of his life, gives an important clue: “In his pleadings at Rome, his eloquence soon obtained him great credit and favor, and he won no less upon the affections of the people by the affability of his manners and address, in which he showed a tact and consideration beyond what could have been considered at his age; and the open house he kept, the entertainments he gave, and the general splendor of his manner of life contributed little by little to create and increase his political influence. His enemies slighted the growth of it at first, presuming it would soon fail when his money was gone…” The probability is that Caesar’s money had indeed gone. The Julii, as has been said, were not rich, while Sulla had confiscated his wife’s dowry and other personal moneys and there is no evidence that the) had been returned. Historians basing their conclusions on Suetonius, that he sailed for Rhodes to take lessons from Apollonius Molon, have ignored a very salient point in the story of Caesar’s voyage through the Aegean. This is that “winter had already set in when he sailed for Rhodes and was captured by pirates off the island of Pharmacussa.” But there were regular sailings between Italian ports and the important Aegean island of Rhodes, while the small island of Pharmacussa was off the Asian coast hard by the city of Miletus—a long way to the north of Rhodes. It is inconceivable, even in the wintry Aegean, that any vessel could have strayed so far off its course, and suggests that Caesar had not adopted the normal course of taking a Rhodes-bound ship from Italy, but had embarked from Greece on a Miletus-bound vessel. He could almost certainly have gone from Brundisium to Dyrrachium (Brindisi-Durazzo), the usual route for visitors to Greece. After the prosecutions, unsuccessful though they were, of Dolabella over his embezzlement in Macedonia and Antonius for his shameless plundering of Greek cities, Caesar had many indebted clients in Greece who may have owed him money; certainly they owed him hospitality, for his two actions had brought to light the conduct of important Romans in Greece and had almost certainly had a restraining effect upon the activities of other Roman soldiers and governors. Caesar was a Graecophile, in any case, and it would have been natural for him to visit a country where he was certain of hospitality even if not financial reward. Wherever he embarked on the Aegean coast for his second sea journey, possibly Athens, he could again have sailed direct for Rhodes through the Cyclades; instead his ship was clearly destined for Miletus, which, as Gerard Walter has pointed out in his Caesar, was “on the way which leads via Pergamos straight to the kingdom of Nicomedes IV.”

There was a very good reason for Caesar to go to Bithynia: the King had recently died and being childless, and mindful of the protection that Rome had afforded him as well as of his country’s fate at the hands of Mithridates if the succession was disputed, he had bequeathed Bithynia to the Romans. Marcus Juncus, the governor of Asia Minor, was about to take over Bithynia’s affairs and make an inventory of the whole estate. It is more than likely, 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.