Chaos in Rome during Sulla’s attempts to become
dictator-for-life spread chaos throughout the Mediterranean world. Many Romans
were driven abroad to wait out the power struggle while armies of defeated veterans
sought mercenary work in a depressed economy. The lack of central authority in
the wide sea caused pirates to prey on the sea lanes in hopes of seizing
valuable cargo to resell or even a Roman citizen for ransom.
Such was the case of young Gaius Julius Caesar. Following
his father’s death in 85 BC, sixteen-year-old Julius became the head of the
family. Caesar soon gained a lofty position as the high priest of Jupiter under
the administration of Marius, but when Sulla gained power, he fled Rome to join
the army fighting rebel nations to the east. Upon Sulla’s death, Caesar
returned to Rome and worked to restore his family’s fortunes through law. He
was headed toward Rhodes to study oratory when Cilician pirates captured his
ship.
Caesar proved to be a snobby prisoner. When they suggested
they could get 20 talents (roughly $1 million in 2019) for the head of such an
old family, Caesar laughed at them and demanded they ask for 50 talents. He
virtually took command of the bandits, giving suggestions on how to conduct
themselves and reassigning rations with better food. Finally he began telling
the pirates that, as soon as they let him go, he would return with an army to
kill them and take back the gold. One pirate had grown weary of the young
Roman’s boasts and, in a misguided spurt of anger that cost the crew piles of
gold, hit him across the skull with a wooden baton. Caesar died during the
resulting seizure.
Rome was horrified when they heard the news. The Caesars
fell on especially hard times and would never gain much prominence in the
republic, though their friends kept the family afloat. The murdered ambitious young
heir became a common trope in Roman satyr plays and Mediterranean literature in
the centuries to come. At the time, the death of Caesar caused public outcry
for safety at sea. Following his triumphant return to Rome from the Mithridatic
wars, Pompey the Great launched a campaign that destroyed over 800 ships and
eliminated pirate strongholds along the Asian coast.
With the sea safe again, the Roman economy surged. Pompey
served as an effective leader after the troubled times, working to moderate
political enemies and reform government corruption. He dealt effectively with
rivals, such as Marcus Licinius Crassus, the famous richest man in all of Rome.
Crassus, too, had an impressive list of successes with victories in the Servile
Wars against Spartacus, although it was nothing compared to Pompey’s. He had
spent most of his lifetime accumulating wealth with shrewd schemes such as
buying up buildings ruined by fire, repairing them with his army of slaves, and
reselling them at tremendous profit. He even sped up the rate of success by
founding his own fire brigade and running with them to buildings on fire; there,
he would offer to buy the building while still on fire and then send his men to
put it out before any more damage was done. If owners did not sell, Crassus and
his firemen would watch cheering as the building burnt to the ground.
Not wanting to deal with Crassus’s scheming in Rome, Pompey
orchestrated him being dispatched as governor of Syria. Crassus used Roman
military might in new money-making schemes, such as looting the Hebrew Temple
in Jerusalem. The seemingly boundless wealth of the Parthians lay to the east,
but Crassus doubted that he had the forces to take such an empire since it had
taken three wars to settle Mithridates in Asia Minor. Instead, he focused on
trade. During his interviews with merchants and ambassadors, he learned that
much of Parthia’s wealth was actually derived as middle-men in the trade with
India and, even farther east, China with its mysterious shining fabric silk.
Working with Roman-ally king Artavazdes II of Armenia,
Crassus became determined to cut the Parthians out of their trade on the “Silk
Road.” Starting from Damascus, Crassus built a literal road through Armenia
with ports on the Caspian Sea to lead to a new route north of the Parthian
border. Crassus invested much of his own fortune in the quasi-military action,
which was easily recouped once merchants eagerly began taking his route,
cheaper despite the tolls and much faster thanks to Roman engineering. In
Bactria, Crassus’s agents met with agents of the court of the Han, who were
already working to establish trade relations westward after the efforts of
Emperor Wu decades before. The Chinese were eager to trade for horses of the
stronger western stock, and Crassus was happy to supply them for a profit.
Crassus became incalculably wealthy and in fact never
returned to Rome, living as a virtual god in the east. Silk poured into Roman
culture along with other Chinese items like noodles, which proved to store better
than bread for traveling legions. Romans exported valuable metals and bondservants,
bolstering the Chinese noble class. Crassus left behind a tradition of Roman
expansion by trade, such as the trade fleet that journeyed south around Parthia
by sea following the conquest of Egypt by Mark Antony and the clearing of silt
from the Ptolemaic canals.
Along with the economic trade came the exchange of ideas.
Chinese gods joined the Roman pantheon while arches and aqueducts fashioned
with concrete were built across China. Confucianism became very popular among
Roman intellectuals, who found its practice matched Stoic ideals well. Many
Daoists adopted a form of the Socratic method, furthering their experiments in
alchemy and medicine. Perhaps the most widely known adaptation is the magnetic
compass, a Chinese divining mechanism that sailors in the cloudy north found to
be a useful tool for navigation.
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In reality, Caesar was well liked by his pirate captors, who
thought he told great jokes. They were apparently surprised when he followed
through on his promise to catch and execute them. Caesar rose to power with the
conquest of Gaul, forming a triumvirate with Pompey and Crassus. Seeking
military honors to match those of Caesar and Pompey, Crassus died in a
misguided campaign against Parthia that would begin two and a half centuries of
conflict and interrupt the flow of goods from the east.
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