island, which henceforth was held as a Roman province, either separately or in conjunction with Greece. In B.C. 67 Pompey received a wide commission, giving him absolute power for three years over the Mediterranean and 50 miles inland, with 24 legates, 500 ships, and the right of raising 120,000 men as soldiers or sailors, with 500 horsemen, for the express purpose of destroying piracy. He performed his mission with marvellous rapidity. It may be, as has been said, that he was too lenient, and that the evil was only in abeyance after his six months' campaign. He certainly treated the pirates not as mere ruffians beyond the pale of law, but rather as a population driven to this way of life by want, and, accordingly, found settlements and lands for them at Dyme in Achaia and in Cilicia. But for the time, at any rate, the success was so complete and the relief so clearly marked by the fall in the price of provisions that he was not only regarded by the Roman people as their greatest and most indispensable general, but was looked up to in Greece as the greatest of the Romans, and honoured as a benefactor, and in some cases as a second founder.[1] This was the case in an increased degree at the end of the Mithradatic war, to which he was appointed in B.C. 66, with the absolute power of settling affairs in Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Colchis, and Armenia. These districts, though including some Hellenic or
- ↑ For instance, an inscription on a base of a statue at Mitylene describes him as σωτῆρι καὶ κτίστᾳ, for in honour of his friend Theophanes he restored Mitylene to the status of a libera civitas after the Mithradatic war.
