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But the Negroland of that period was western Asia, where the Cretan and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave- dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where, emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among their slaves.
We still recognize the vigorous hand of Sulla in the energetic measures which, in the last period of his regency, the senate adopted almost simultaneously against the Sertorians, the Dalmatians and Thracians, and the Cilician pirates. As usual, the attack took place simultaneously from Dalmatia and from Macedonia, in which province an army of five legions was assembled for the purpose.
During the twenty years' war of succession between the two half-brothers Antiochus Grypus and Antiochus of Cyzicus , which after their death was inherited by their sons, the kingdom which was the object of contention became almost an empty name, inasmuch as the Cilician sea-kings, the Arab sheiks of the Syrian desert, the princes of the Jews, and the magistrates of the larger towns had ordinarily more to say than the wearers of the diadem.
Within an hour and a half after leaving Constantinople he came in sight of its huge bleak masses stretching away to right and left, but still a hundred miles or more distant, although, on the right, spurs of the Cilician part of the range jutted out much nearer to him. On the right, too, he descried from his great height a broad and glittering expanse of water, which the map named Lake Beishehr.
The age of the kings of Nineveh, ofthe Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon; again great states of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number half a million combatants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts.
In Egypt there was still indeed a considerable Roman army, formed of the troops left behind there by Gabinius and thereafter recruited from Italian vagrants and Syrian or Cilician banditti; but it was self-evident and was soon officially confirmed by the recall of the Egyptian vessels, that the court of Alexandria by no means had the intention of holding firmly by the defeated party or of even placing its force of troops at their disposal.
Tarsus commanded the rich Cilician plain up to the very roots of Taurus, was watered by the copious stream of the Cydnus, and had at its mouth a commodious harbour. Excellent timber for shipbuilding grew on the slopes of the hills bounding the plain, and the river afforded a ready means of floating such timber down to the sea.
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.
His mind was distracted between two anxieties the danger of civil war, which he perceived to be daily growing more imminent, and an anxious desire to have his military successes over the Cilician mountaineers rewarded by the distinction of a triumph. The honor of a public thanksgiving had already been voted to him; Cato, who opposed it on principle, having given him offense by so doing.
In another district of Sicily Cleon, a Cilician slave, formerly in his native land a daring bandit, followed the example which had been set and occupied Agrigentum; and, when the leaders came to a mutual understanding, after gaining various minor advantages they succeeded in at last totally defeating the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus in person and his army, consisting mostly of Sicilian militia, and in capturing his camp.
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