Summary: now off the front page is this TIL about Julius Caesar. It's about him being capture by pirates and then demonstrating his alpha nature by showing virtue, frame and mastery.

link: http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar_t01.htm

Sexy Body: I recommend you read it, but I'm going to try and analyze it with a RP point of view. Feel free to correct me or add to the discussion since it is my first analyzing post.

First, when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents, Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty

these pirates do not know who they are dealing with, and Caesar's first move is to let them know he is calm, demonstrating control of the situation, and showing himself to be above them by offering more.

he treated them so highhandedly that, whenever he wanted to sleep, he would send to them and tell them to stop talking.

kidnapped? guess what, you're still Julius fucking Caesar, if you want to sleep, you tell the pirates to shut the fuck up. I assume his position had already been stablished and he could calmly play his social authority.

with the greatest unconcern, he joined in all their games and exercises, just as if he was their leader instead of their prisoner. He also wrote poems and speeches which he read aloud to them, and if they failed to admire his work, he would call them to their faces illiterate savages, and would often laughingly threaten to have them all hanged.

more demonstration of authority and social acuity. calmly joins them in their activities and sees no reason to act scared. the pirates are there for only for money, so if he leads with civilized behavior, they reciprocate. no reason for it to be unpleasant.

They were much taken with this and attributed his freedom of speech to a kind of simplicity in his character or boyish playfulness.

amused mastery. nuff' said

once free, he thinks, "payback time" and prepares a fleet to capture the pirates, which he finds in the same spot, the lazy fucks. They really had no idea who they where dealing with. So he captures them and takes their properties. He is looking into publicly executing them and, out of respect asks the governor of the province he is in to do it. but...

[Marcus] Junius, the governor of Asia, thinking it proper that he, as praetor in charge of the province, should see to the punishment of the prisoners. Junius, however, cast longing eyes at the money, which came to a considerable sum, and kept saying that he needed time to look into the case. Caesar paid no further attention to him.

Caesar has no time to deal with your shit, Marcus. You lost your chance to prove your virtue and gain some favor with him.

He went to Pergamon, took the pirates out of prison and crucified the lot of them, just as he had often told them he would do when he was on the island and they imagined that he was joking.

There you go, the pirates made the mistake of underestimating their enemy. Caesar knows the value of terror and reputation, he sets a precedent that if you fuck with him, you better be ready.