enemies than as friends, and which therefore roused no
spirit of resistance in Greece, through Rome had already withdrawn all
the contingent proper from Greece. Had these powers concerted with Egypt
and with Greece a powerful league, Rome would have been thrown back
upon her Western chambers.

The reason why the Piratic power arose, we suppose to have been this,
and also the reason why such a power was not viewed as extra-national.
The nautical profession as such flowed in a channel altogether distinct
from the martial profession. It was altogether and exclusively
commercial in its general process. Only, upon peculiar occasions arose a
necessity for a nautical power as amongst the resources of empire.
Carthage reared upon the basis of her navy, as had done Athens, Rhodes,
Tyre, some part of her power: and Rome put forth so much of this power
as sufficed to meet Carthage. But that done, we find no separate
ambition growing up in Rome and directing itself to naval war.
Accidentally, when the war arose between Caesar and Pompey, it became
evident that for rapidly transferring armies and for feeding these
armies, a navy would be necessary. And Cicero, but for _this crisis_,
and not as a _general_ remark, said--that 'necesse est qui mare tenuit
rerum potiri.'

Hence it happened--that as no permanent establishment could arise where
no permanent antagonist could be supposed to exist--oftentimes, and
indeed always, unless when some new crisis arose, the Roman navy went
down. In one of these intervals arose the Cilician piracy. Mr. Finlay
suggests that in part it arose out of the fragments from Alexander's
kingdoms, recombining: partly out of the Isaurian land pirates already
established, and furnished with such astonishing natural fortresses as
existed nowhere else if we except those aerial caves--a sort of mountain
nests on the side of declivities, which Josephus describes as harbouring
Idumean enemies of Herod the Great, against whom he was obliged to
fight by taking down warriors in complete panoply ensconced in baskets
suspended by chains; and partly arising on the temptation of rich
booties in the commerce of the Levant, or of rich temples on shore
amidst unwarlike populations. These elements of a warlike form were
required as the means of piracy, these fortresses and Isaurian caves as
the resources of piracy, these notorious cargoes or temples stored with
wealth as temptations to piracy, before a public nuisance could ar