When Sulla died in 78 BC, Julius Caesar returned to Rome as a lawyer, prosecuted Sulla's supporters, and headed to the Greek city of Rhodes to study oratory. Pirates seized his vessel in 75 BC, kidnapped Caesar, and held him for ransom. Caesar felt insulted at the twenty talents (480,000 sesterces) ransom and insisted that the pirates raised the demand to fifty talents (1,200,000 sesterces) more suitable for his status; his retinue quickly raised the money in the local cities, before returning to the pirate stronghold. Caesar decided that he would crucify the pirates after he was free. After the money was paid and he was released he assembled a small army and a fleet, after which he captured the pirates and crucified them as he had promised while in captivity—a promise that the pirates had taken as a joke. As a sign of leniency, he first had their throats cut. During the slave rebellion known as the Third Servile War, Spartacus was said to have brokered a deal with the Cilician pirates, hoping to smuggle a force of rebels across to Sicily. Sometime in 71 BC, the pirates deserted Spartacus and he had to give up his plans to cross over to Sicily. In 67 BC, the Roman governor of Cilicia, Quintus Marcius Rex, sent his brother-in-law, Publius Clodius Pulcher, with a war fleet to patrol the coastline of his province. While on this patrol Clodius was seized by the pirates he had been sent to hunt down. Hoping to win his release, Clodius promised his captors a substantial reward, and they solicited a ransom from Ptolemy of Cyprus, an ally of the Romans. The amount offered was so paltry (two talents) that it was clear that Clodius had greatly overestimated his worth, the amused pirates released him anyway. Plutarch recounts a particular custom of the Cilician pirates. When a prisoner of theirs called out he was Roman, the pirates would pretend to be scared and beg for mercy. If the prisoner took the pirate's mockery in earnest, they would dress him in Greek athletic shoes and a toga, that they might not repeat the mistake. After they were satisfied mocking him, they would lower a ladder into the sea, and, wishing him a fortuitous journey, invite him to step off. If the man would not go of his own accord, they would push him overboard.