Cæsar laughed, for he valued himself at more than that modest sum, and offered them fifty talents.
He then sent his followers away to raise the money, while he stayed alone with the pirates, save for one friend and two attendants. And this he did, although he knew that they often put their prisoners to death.
For thirty-eight days he lived with them, sometimes amusing himself by joining in their sports, sometimes reading to them poems he had written, or rehearsing speeches he had prepared.
To these they would listen, indeed, but without giving any applause. Then Cæsar would grow angry with them, calling them names, saying that when he was free he would crucify them.
At other times, if he wished to sleep and the pirates were making a noise, he would send to bid them be quiet.
The pirates laughed at the strange ways and words of their captive, and paid no heed to his threats. But Cæsar was in earnest when he was angry, and no sooner was his ransom paid and he set free, than the first thing he did was to hire ships to go in search of these very same pirates.
He soon found and captured them, and in the end he crucified them, as he had more than once threatened to do when he was their prisoner.
Cæsar then went to Rhodes to study rhetoric. And he profited by his studies, for on his return to Rome his eloquence won him fame.
As for the citizens they still loved him, for he was kind to them and feasted and spent money as before. But that he would prove a great soldier, one who would astonish not only Rome, but the whole world, there was nothing yet to tell.
Cicero, indeed, as Sulla had done before, saw that Cæsar was ambitious. Beneath his pleasant smiles and ways, Cicero sometimes thought that the young patrician had a hidden purpose, which he would not easily lay aside. At other times the orator thought that, after all, Cæsar was a trifler and nothing more. ‘When I see his hair so carefully arranged,’ says this wise man, ‘and observe him adjusting it with one finger, I cannot imagine it should enter into such a man’s thoughts to subvert the Roman State.’