[30]
What? did not we decree, by the advice of Pompeius himself, in the consulship of Silanus and
Murena, that a fleet should put to sea to sail round Italy? Did not we, at the very same time
that Lucius Flaccus was levying sailors in Asia, exact four millions three hundred thousand
sesterces for fleets to defend the Mediterranean and Adriatic? What did we do the year after?
was not money exacted for the use of the fleet when Marcus Curius and Publius Sextilius were
quaestors? What? were there not all this time cavalry on the sea-coast? for that is the
surpassing glory of Pompeius,—first of all, that those pirates who, when the conduct
of the maritime war was first entrusted to him, wandered about straggling over the whole sea,
were soon reduced under our power; in the next place, that Syria is ours, that Cilicia is
occupied by us, that Cyprus, through the instrumentality of king Ptolemaeus, is reduced to a
state in which it can venture to do nothing; moreover, that Crete, owing to the valour of
Metellus, is ours; that the pirates have now no ports from which they can set out none to
which they can return; that all the bays, and promontories, and shores, and islands, and
maritime cities, are now contained within the barriers of our empire.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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