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According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates
- Khelavaster 3y agoas retold in Suetonius's history of the Caesars. Pretty accurate especially when it agrees with commentary.
- jdwyah 3y agoThis is wild. I don't know about "great man" theory in general, but that does sound extraordinary.
- bogtog 3y agoThe Roman Republic was steadily dying up to Caesar's reign. He really was just the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of its death, which was surely inevitable in the coming decades. However, without Caeser, the conquest of Gual may have been pushed back drastically?
- michaelt 3y agoDidn't Caesar die in 44 BC, while the Roman empire peaked in size in around 98 AD? i.e. it continued growing for 140 years after his death?
- usrusr 3y agoGP was talking specifically about the republic, not about the empire that came after.
- Tao3300 3y agoThe Republic ≠ The Empire
- achenet 3y ago<insert Star Wars joke here>
- throw_pm23 3y agoI think they meant that the "Republic" as a form of organization was dying, end being replaced by the "Empire", a different form of organization which flourished afterwards.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vivekd 3y agoI think he means the Republic (Roman democracy). The non democratic Roman Empire would continue to on for some time after that
- qwytw 3y ago> democratic Calling it a 'democracy' is a somewhat of a stretch though (both according to modern and ancient definitions). It was a weird (from a modern perspective) form of a flawed direct democracy (the people's assembly had absolute power in theory but passing any laws was very difficult due to a dozen or so public officials being able to effectively/directly veto any legislation). Mixed with an unambiguously oligarchical executive branch (all the top public official who controlled the army and the treasury were elected by a tiny proportion of the population). It certainly wasn't democratic in the same sense as Athens and some other Greek cities were (and afterall Greek authors considered it to be a mixed system).
- iav 3y agoOP was referring to the Roman Republic, the system of government. The Roman Empire didn't begin until 27 BC, shortly after Caesar.
- lettergram 3y agoThat conquest was brutal btw, estimates are that Rome killed 1.5m combatants and 1m+ civilians enslaved / executed. There’s also that part where they just cut off the hands of any fighting age males they came across for a while. Really was closer to a genocide.
- bogtog 3y agoI recently discovered that Dan Carlin has a series on this topic, "Hardcore History 60 - The Celtic Holocaust". I just listened through, and it's pretty solid. Based on the number of deaths and attitude, I think "genocide" is pretty fine, but he makes it clear that the Gauls actually had a fighting chance in their fights. In some timelines, the Romans get sent home with a bloody nose and no intention to return for a while.
- gentleman11 3y agoA recent term for it is the Celtic genocide
- decentomyous 3y agoAs we've seen, genocide has become a recent term for almost any kind of warfare. It used to have a much more narrowly defined usage that was accordingly more meaningful. Caesar's goal in Gaul was certainly not the extermination of its people or its culture. He wanted to pacify Gaul and Germany, for his own glory, but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons. And the Romans, as a rule, were famously tolerant of other people's national pride, customs, and religions. And of course, the Gaul and German tribes were at least as brutal to each other as Caesar was to them. The entire region was filled with constantly warring tribes that would often commit something much closer to actual genocide. Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this internecine warfare. The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow.
- qwytw 3y ago> He wanted to pacify I'm not sure pacify is the right word. > but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons Not really. By that point the Celts weren't as much of a threat as they were 50-100+ years ago. If his goals were primarily 'pacification' and 'self-defense' a much more limited and cheaper campaign would've been more than sufficient. In any case the Roman senate didn't really consider the war to be necessary in that sense. > Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this internecine warfare. > commit something much closer to actual genocide That's a massive a stretch. Even the Romans themselves understood that e.g. the "They Make a Desert and Call it Peace" quote Tacitus put into into the mouth leaders of one of the tribes subjugated by the Romans. The Roman empire was almost entirely built on slave labor and exhortation of the territories they subjugated. It might have turned into something else in the later periods (by the 1st and 1nd centuries AD). But the Romans certainly did not really improve the lives of the people the conquered during the Republican period. > The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow. Well however you put it it was still an extremely violate imperialist war of conquest. Of course yes, technically it wasn't a genocide in the direct sense subjugating, enslaving and stealing their stuff rather than extermination were their primary goals.
- 1980phipsi 3y agoCaesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking. That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold of Trump. You don't know who will follow him.
- roenxi 3y agoThe US has been gently crumbling under its own weight since approximately 1970. You'd get more out of rebuking the politicians who took the wealth of a pre-eminent superpower then flubbed it. You might not like Trump. But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. It is easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars and with limited results to show for it. It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. My read is almost anyone with a record in office is unelectable. How norms will survive that sort of failure is anyone's guess (as is whether they should survive).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). Conquest is the history of civilisation. It took the Industrial Revolution to make the “war a lot more destructive (thus lowering returns to successful warfare) while at the same time massively raising returns to capital investment in things like infrastructure, factories and tractors. It suddenly made more sense, if you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more factories and buy those resources than to try to seize them by force” [1]. Instead, “states no longer ask if they can profit through a war of conquest, but rather if they’d spend less managing the disaster that a local failed state is by invading versus trying to manage the problem via aid or controlling refugee flows.” To the extent we engage in foreign wars, it’s in that failed-state management mode. (Iraq, what would have been the geopolitical blunder of the century were it not for Ukraine and Brexit, is the notable exception.) > lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia In relative terms, yes. In aggregate terms, it’s surprisingly balanced—the U.S. growing at 3% and China at 10% in 1990 roughly maintained their relative economies. And since Xi, China’s relative economic growth has stalled (assuming official data are true) [2]. [1] https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ [2] https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c51a2 https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c5...
- rand1239 3y agoSo you are saying, Roman empire declining didn't require any particular man but reviving it did require one??
- jychang 3y agoThat’s not what he said. He said the Roman Republic declining, not the Roman Empire. You’re off by 500 years or so.
- User23 3y agoI find the denialism around the great man theory somewhat baffling. Does anyone really believe, just for one example, that Apple computer would be what it is today without Steve Jobs?
- cykros 3y agoNo, only someone so narcissistic and divorced from reality could have come up with the Fisher-Price computers they make.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoNo, but I bet we would still have personal computers and smart phones without Steve Jobs. That's the argument against the "great man" idea. Sure, specific events would not have happened without that person, but the overall state of the world would not be drastically different.
- mongol 3y agoI think it can depend a lot. Political figures can have long lasting impact. Consider Jesus. Or Napoleon, without him Europe may have looked entirely different today. But for general scientific progress I agree. Scientific breakthroughs are bound to happen if enough people work on them.
- mFixman 3y agoThe introduction of the potato and the invention of the steam engine changed Europe several orders of magnitude more than Napoleon or any other great man.
- mongol 3y agoYes sure, but that is not a counter argument. If James Watt et al did not invent the steam engine, someone else would
- 3y ago
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoGreat man theory describes a real phenomena, it just gets the causality backwards. With lots of people doing lots of things, some are bound to do exceptional things. People who believe they need strong leaders gravitate towards the noteworthy ones, making it more likely that someone who has done exceptional things end up with more power. The more power someone has the more noteworthy acts they are likely to engage in. Then let history forget all but the most noteworthy details, and you have a history defined by great men.
- artursapek 3y agoHis entire biography is well worth a read.
- wryun 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Rome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Rome is an enjoyable fictionalised account.
- atticora 3y agoIt's fascinating to see him through the eyes of Cicero's slave Marcus Tullius Tiro in Robert Harris's Cicero Trilogy.
- Eumenes 3y agoLove that series. Enjoy any easy historical fiction.
- VagabundoP 3y ago+1 for anyone who hasn't read it. Get that fix asap. Roberts wife completed the last novel based on his drafts and notes, as he died before finishing it.
- bloak 3y agoSorry, I'm confused here! Who died before finishing what?
- VagabundoP 3y agolol, brain fart: I was talking about Troy series with David Gemmell: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43788-troy https://www.goodreads.com/series/43788-troy
- high_derivative 3y agoAre you thinking of Robert Jordan / The Wheel of Time? Robert Harris is alive and writing
- hiq 3y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar: > While travelling, he was intercepted and ransomed by pirates in a story that was later much embellished. According to Plutarch and Suetonius, he was freed after paying a ransom of fifty talents and responded by returning with a fleet to capture and execute the pirates. The recorded sum for the ransom is literary embellishment and it is more likely that the pirates were sold into slavery per Velleius Paterculus.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gwern 3y agoSomething seems wrong there. The Paterculus reference seems to specifically say that they weren't sold into slavery: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Velleius_Paterculus/2B*.html#p141 https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Velleius_... > Well satisfied with the success of his [Julius Caesar] night expedition he returned [p143] to his friends and, after handing his prisoners into custody, went straight to Bithynia to Juncus, the proconsul — for the same man was governor of Bithynia as well as of Asia — and demanded his sanction for the execution of his captives. When Juncus, whose former inactivity had now given way to jealousy, refused, and said that he would sell the captives as slaves, Caesar returned to the coast with incredible speed and crucified all his prisoners before anyone had had time to receive a dispatch from the consul in regard to the matter.
- rightbyte 3y agoAre there any ... non Ceasar sources for this event?
- digitcatphd 3y agoThis is the product of writing your own history ... The irony is this is still going on today.
- DayDollar 3y agoAnd then replaced by someone who rewrites the history of his predecessor.. result a mad reign of madmen..
- Luc 3y agoThis account was originally written by Plutarch, who was more interested in telling a good moralistic story than sticking to the facts (of ~150 years before).
- gadders 3y agoPlutarch's Parallel Lives is a great read though.
- nabla9 3y agoPlutarch is generally as reliable as his source material in the sense that things he wrote happened, but not necessarily in the way he tells them. Plutarch selected the stories he told and modified them into moralistic narratives, but he didn't completely make them up. He is not reliable historian in modern sense, of course.
- xg15 3y agoSounds like today's "based on a true story"...
- RajT88 3y agoI have seen fiction outright stating, "This is a true story" - i.e. Fargo, or the rather-less-good "The Sleep Experiment". The former at least has great production values and is actually taking inspiration from real events. The latter is 110% made up.
- User23 3y agoJust for reference a talent was worth about 20 years wages. So while comparing currency values across vast stretches of time is inaccurate, it wouldn’t be totally wrong to consider a talent about $1 million in today’s US dollars.
- genman 3y agoTalent is told to be about 33 kg (or something between 20-40 kg). So indeed a talent of gold will be over $1 million today.
- qwytw 3y agoIt's silver though, so only about $26k (of course that's the least accurate way to compare modern and ancient prices). Gold wasn't that commonly used in the west back then.
- genman 3y agoThank you for pointing out that it was silver. But the gold and silver had more equal value at the time so direct comparison is not fair. In Roman times the silver was valued around 10 times less than gold but today it is around 100 times less valued. From this perspective the better approach might be indeed through labor as GP proposed but again how labor has been valued over time has not been uniform and might not compare to today.
- qwytw 3y agoOn the other hand you could buy about 1200 gallons of olive oil which is less than $50,000 or 750 sheep which is might be about $300,000. Comparing modern/ancient prices get tricky.. To be fair though a worker earning 2 drachma per day would be closer to a modern person minimum wage worker (anyone back then who didn't own land, wasn't a merchant or at least a skilled craftsmen was dirt poor anyway). So if 1 drachma = $30 to $60 a talent would be closer to around $180-360k
- lelag 3y ago
- gumballindie 3y ago> In the 1st century BCE the Mediterranean Sea had a crime problem. Specifically, it had a pirate problem. The only thing that changed is that instead of capturing hostages the pirates are smuggling people.
- murat124 3y ago> In 75 BCE a band of Cilician pirates in the Aegean Sea captured a 25-year-old Roman nobleman named Julius Caesar, who had been on his way to study oratory in Rhodes. I'm pretty sure that nobleman was named Gaius Julius and that's how he introduced himself.
- throwaway13547 3y ago"Roman men were usually known by their praenomina to members of their family and household, clientes and close friends; but outside of this circle, they might be called by their nomen, cognomen, or any combination of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen that was sufficient to distinguish them from other men with similar names." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> or any combination of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen that was sufficient to distinguish them from other men with similar names. Even Julius Caesar's full name including all three parts would not be helpful in distinguishing him from many of the other men in his family.
- qwytw 3y agoCeasar is basically a family name though. I don't think there were that many Julii left at this point? So it might not have been that confusing. However if you were Publius/Lucius Cornelius on the other hand there were probably a dozen other Roman aristocrats with the same name at any given time.
- orangepanda 3y agoHe wasnt even the only Julius Caesar elected as Consul in that decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Julius_Caesar_(consul_64_BC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Julius_Caesar_(consul_6...
- lupusreal 3y ago
- gentleman11 3y ago[flagged]
- dj_mc_merlin 3y agoBoth things are true: Caesar was a narcissistic genocidal man who destroyed what was left of the Roman republic (characterizing the Roman state as "one of the oldest democracies" is correct in a sense, but it was really so corrupt and oligarchic that it rings hollow). Also, his actions and the words written about those actions would shape history in a grand way for millennia to come.
- qwytw 3y ago> who destroyed what was left of the Roman republic Somebody else would've done it instead. It was a semi-permanent state of civil strife or even war for the past 100 years or. From the perspective of Roman (or even ordinary Romans) aristocrats Ceasar was much preferably to other tyrants they had like Sulla, Cinna, Gaius Marius or even Augustus because he wasn't really into mass murdering his political enemies or sacking Roman/Italian cities. Not that this did him any good in the end, he failed because he was to 'merciful' and not genocidal enough towards other Romans. Not that he had similar concerns about Celts and other 'barbarians'? But I don't think the was particularly inherently more cruel or geocidal than most other conquering generals at the time (Cesar was just massively more successful so had the opportunity to murder/enslave a much larger number of people than anyone else). However what the Romans did to Carthage or some Greek cities etc. was no different.
- pjmlp 3y agoSeeing how right wing is growing around Europe, when we are a couple of years away to "celebrate" 100 years from the start of WW II, it isn't that surprising. Expect similar reverence of other dictators with enough centuries in between.
- paxys 3y agoCaesar was a great man because he won. We'd be saying the exact same thing about Hitler today instead of, say, Churchill had WW2 turned out differently.
- davidw 3y agoI can't help but think of these guys: https://americaexplained.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/asterix.jpg https://americaexplained.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/asterix...
- grammers 3y agoThis reads like a true adventure story. I'd be curious to know how much is true and how much was added to the facts.
- 11235813213455 3y agoExpected that's he'd mercy pirates as he had a good time with them
- gregw134 3y agoThe Historia Civilis series on Youtube has some excellent videos on Roman history: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoriaCivilis https://www.youtube.com/@HistoriaCivilis
- woudsma 3y agoI wish this was an episode in the ‘Rome’ (HBO - 2005) series. It’s a great watch nonetheless.
- beebeepka 3y agoThe intro theme was pretty good as well. One of HBO's greatest for sure.
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoThere's something otherworldy to me about the psychology of a violent criminal. To do violent crime is to make a lot of people very angry, and yet the majority of violent criminals seem not to run very far away as soon as they've committed a violent crime.
- aalimov_ 3y agoIn some cases there has been recorded evidence of physiological differences (like a growth in the brain or a lack of development in some brain regions, reduced grey matter - as compared to non violent criminals) that have been found in some violent criminals.
- rabbits_2002 3y agoAccording to Wikipedia its more likely they were enslaved than crucified
- mareko 3y agoThat's a lot of silver. 50 talents could be up to 1800kg in silver.
- Balgair 3y agoThat would be ~0.17 m3 of volume, ~ 6 ft3, or about a 45 gallon drum. A picture of such a drum: http://joslebel.com/en/catalog/plastic-drums/plastic-drums-tighthead-new/0650-new-plastic-45-gallons-tight-head-drum-with-openings-blue/ http://joslebel.com/en/catalog/plastic-drums/plastic-drums-t... That's ... actually a lot of silver.
- sebastiennight 3y agoI find it fascinating that even when one manages to spend a whole day without thinking of the Roman Empire, somehow "HiroProtagonist on HN" finds a way to slip you a quick reference onto the homepage. Just to make sure.
- rat87 3y agoHe has time to post about the Roman empire on him but not time to deliver my pizza apparently
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jdthedisciple 3y agoSounds like fantasy