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Dreams of Empire - The Fall of Rome
by Addison Hart
Early in the first century BC, a Roman teenager
from a minor patrician family visited Nicomedes, King of Bithynia. On his return
trip to the city of Rome, the historian Plutarch tells us that “he was captured
by pirates near the island of Pharmacusa. At that time there were large fleets
of pirates, with ships large and small, infesting the seas everywhere.” When the
boy was first captured, the pirates demanded that the family pay twenty gold
talents for his safe return, but it was soon upped to a good fifty talents when
the boy told them that they did not understand the importance of their new
prisoner. The boy sent most of his companions away to earn the money, and he was
left alone with the pirates. The boy was not at all intimidated by the
villainous pirates, and for thirty-eight days he lived with them, and they grew
to respect the boy, and they even began to grow a sort of bond with him. The boy
once, in a jovial manner, said to them that he would one day have them
crucified.
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