The spread of piracy in the Mediterranean became during these years so alarming, and the incapacity of the government to deal with it so obvious, that public opinion called for a drastic remedy.
"Am I to tell you," says Cicero, "that during these years the sea was closed to our subjects, when our own armies could never set forth from Brundisium except in the depth of winter? Am I to complain to you that envoys coming from foreign nations have been captured, when legates of the Roman People have been held to ransom? Am I to say that the sea was not safe for merchants, when twelve fasces with their axes have fallen into the hands of the pirates? Will you listen to the story how the famous cities of Cnidus and Colophon and Samos and many others have been captured, when you know that your own barbours, and those harbours which are the very channels of your life and breath, have been in the pirates' power?"[1] And again—"What State was there ever before, I will not speak of great maritime powers such as Athens or Carthage or Rhodes, but what State was there ever so feeble, what island so petty, which could not by its own efforts defend its harbours and fields and some part of its shores and coasts? 'Yet for many years together before the Gabinian Law that same Roman People, which within our own memory had preserved a record clean from defeat at sea, made a huge surrender not only of its interests but of its power and dignity. We, whose
- ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 12, 32.
