That Time Julius Caesar was Kidnapped by Pirates; and How the Nazis (Sort of) Gave Us Fanta
Sometime between 80 and 75 BC, a very young Julius Caesar, then in his mid-twenties and at least 10 years out from his first election to public office, set sail for the Island of Rhodes either to procure ships for a commander friend of his, or to escape the current tyrannical leader of Rome, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix. The accounts vary from storyteller to storyteller, of whom there are at least five, most notably the legendary historian Plutarch.
Whatever the case may have been, the journey from his native Rome wasn’t a long one, but to get there, he’d need to cross the length of Aegean Sea, which was then the stomping ground of the infamous Cilician pirates, who took their name from the Cilicia Trachea region of Asia Minor, or modern Turkey.