A Child's History of the World

by V. M. Hillyer

The Noblest Roman of Them All

Here’s a puzzle for you:

A man once found a very old piece of money that had on it the date “100 B. C.”

That couldn’t be so. Why not? See if you can tell without looking at the answer at the bottom of the page.[1]

[1] People living 100 years before Christ was born could not have known when he was to be born and so could not put such a date on the coins they made.

In the year 100 B. C. was born in Rome a boy who was named Julius Cæsar.

If you had asked him when he was born, he would have said in the Year 653.

Why do you suppose?

Because Roman boys counted time from the founding of Rome in 753 B. C., and Cæsar was born 653 years after the city was founded. That makes it 100 years before Christ, doesn’t it?

Pirates seemed to be everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea at that time—Pirates. Now that Rome was ruler of the world, there were many ships carrying gold from different parts of the empire to Rome. So the pirates sailed up and down, lying in wait to capture and rob these ships laden with gold.