My favourite story about pirates is what happened when they captured Julius Caesar:
"Not everyone, though, should take the Julius Caesar approach to kidnapping. As a young man, reports Plutarch in his biography of the great man, he was kidnapped off the Dodecanese islands en route to learn rhetoric under the famous teacher, Molon of Rhodes. The Cicilian pirates (from the area of modern Anatolia north and north-east of Cyprus) he treated high-handedly. They asked for a ransom of 20 talents – he laughed at them for undervaluing him and offered them 50. While he was kept captive he treated them like bodyguards rather than prison guards, and frequently told them he would crucify them after his ransom was paid. (Better than that, "He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians.") In due course the ransom was paid, Caesar was set free – and, as promised, he crucified them to a man."
"Not everyone, though, should take the Julius Caesar approach to kidnapping. As a young man, reports Plutarch in his biography of the great man, he was kidnapped off the Dodecanese islands en route to learn rhetoric under the famous teacher, Molon of Rhodes. The Cicilian pirates (from the area of modern Anatolia north and north-east of Cyprus) he treated high-handedly. They asked for a ransom of 20 talents – he laughed at them for undervaluing him and offered them 50. While he was kept captive he treated them like bodyguards rather than prison guards, and frequently told them he would crucify them after his ransom was paid. (Better than that, "He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians.") In due course the ransom was paid, Caesar was set free – and, as promised, he crucified them to a man."
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/200...