Did pirates really kidnap Julius Caesar, and how did Rome finally stop them?

Yes, pirates did kidnap Julius Caesar, according to ancient writers such as Plutarch and Suetonius, though the famous details were later embellished. In 75 BC, when he was 25, pirates seized his ship and held him for ransom. Caesar is said to have been insulted by their demand of twenty talents and insisted they ask for fifty, a sum he thought suited his status. His retinue raised the money, he was freed, and, the story goes, he came back with a fleet and crucified his captors, exactly as he had promised, which they had taken for a joke.

But modern historians say the recorded ransom sum is literary embellishment, and it is more likely that the pirates were sold into slavery. The kidnapping itself is a good clue to how bold the pirates had become. Cilician pirates, named after a rugged stretch of what is now southern Turkey, dominated the Mediterranean from the 2nd century BC. Rome was the only great power left, but it was land-based, had a small navy and hired ships when it needed them.

Things got worse. In 68 BC pirates sailed into Ostia, barely fifteen miles from Rome, and burned the consular war fleet. Famine tightened and starving citizens crowded into the Forum demanding action. So in 67 BC a law, the lex Gabinia, gave Pompey huge powers over the whole sea. He divided the Mediterranean into thirteen districts, each with a fleet and a commander, so the pirates had nowhere to hide. His campaign removed them in a mere 89 days.

Then came a surprise. Pompey spared many captured pirates, realising that desperation had driven many of them to the sea, and settled those who surrendered in sparsely populated parts of the coast of Asia Minor.