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When at the end of forty days the navigation had been everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean, Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy, the Lycian and Cilician waters.
A prince of Alashia, who never mentions either his own name or that of the Egyptian king, wrote short letters, for the most part of a business character. Alashia probably lay on the Cilician coast. Gold did not tempt him; he asked modestly for silver in return for copper, for oil, textiles and manufactured articles in return for wood for building.
If life and death were at stake, so much the better! He had informed his friend of Iras's fears. The fleet must be in a critical situation, and if the little Cilician had had nothing to conceal she would not have shunned the Epicurus. It was worth while to learn what had induced her to turn back just before reaching the harbour.
In the year B.C. 67, which was about the time that Caesar commenced his successful career in rising to public office in Rome, as is described in the third chapter of this volume, the Cilician pirates, of whose desperate character and bold exploits something has already been said, had become so powerful, and were increasing so rapidly in the extent of their depredations, that the Roman people felt compelled to adopt some very vigorous measures for suppressing them.
The Cilician legion in conjunction with the Spanish cohorts, which we said were brought over by Afranius, were disposed on the right wing. These Pompey considered his steadiest troops. The rest he had interspersed between the centre and the wing, and he had a hundred and ten complete cohorts; these amounted to forty-five thousand men.
The Romans acknowledged the benefits they derived from the valour of the Rhodians on this occasion; and they again experienced it, in the war which Pompey carried on against the Cilician pirates, though that commander took all the merit to himself.
When after the battle of Pharsalus he met with Marcus Cicero at Corcyra, he had offered to hand over the command in Corcyra to the latter who was still from the time of his Cilician administration invested with the rank of general as the officer of higher standing according to the letter of the law, and by this readiness had driven the unfortunate advocate, who now cursed a thousand times his laurels from the Arnanus, almost to despair; but he had at the same time astonished all men of any tolerable discernment.
The number of towns newly established by Pompeius in these provinces is, including the Cilician settlements, stated at thirty- nine, several of which attained great prosperity.
There Kimôn fell sick and died, but his fleet, immediately after, won a grand victory over the Phœnician and Cilician fleets, in the Persian service. However, some hot-headed young Athenians were beaten at Coronea by the Bœotians, who were Spartan allies, and a good many small losses befel them by land, till they made another peace for thirty years in 445.
Lastly, a general arming of the coasts and particularly of the Thracian coast more immediately threatened by the Pontic fleet, was enjoined; and the task of clearing all the seas and coasts from the pirates and their Pontic allies was, by extraordinary decree, entrusted to a single magistrate, the choice falling on the praetor Marcus Antonius, the son of the man who thirty years before had first chastised the Cilician corsairs.
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