Way back in 75 BCE, Julius Caesar was still a junior politician on the way up in Rome. Sailing across the Aegean Sea, a band of Sicilian pirates captured Caesar. When the pirates told him that they had set his ransom at 20 talents (approx 620 kg of silver, worth about $600,000 today), he mocked them for not knowing whom they had captured and suggested that 50 talents (around 1,550 kg of silver, worth about $1.5 million) would be a more appropriate amount to ask for.
Caesar, crafty and intelligent as he was, knew that he couldn’t possibly allow himself
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