e not even adequate for the task--so difficult in the
Mediterranean--of repressing piracy. This task necessarily devolved
on Rome as the leading power in the Mediterranean. While a century
previously the Romans had come forward in this matter with especial
and salutary decision, and had in particular introduced their supremacy
in the east by a maritime police energetically handled for the general
good,(40) the complete nullity of this police at the very beginning
of this period as distinctly betokens the fearfully rapid decline of
the aristocratic government. Rome no longer possessed a fleet of
her own; she was content to make requisitions for ships, when it
seemed necessary, from the maritime towns of Italy, Asia Minor,
and elsewhere. The consequence naturally was, that buccaneering
became organized and consolidated. Something, perhaps, though
not enough, was done towards its suppression, so far as the direct
power of the Romans extended, in the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas.
The expeditions directed against the Dalmatian and Ligurian coasts
at this epoch aimed especially at the suppression of piracy in the
two Italian seas; for the same reason the Balearic islands were
occupied in 631.(41) But in the Mauretanian and Greek waters the
inhabitants along the coast and the mariners were left to settle
matters with the corsairs in one way or another, as they best
could; for Roman policy adhered to the principle of troubling
itself as little as possible about these more remote regions.
The disorganized and bankrupt commonwealths in the states along
the coast thus left to themselves naturally became places of refuge
for the corsairs; and there was no want of such, especially in Asia.

Crete

A bad pre-eminence in this respect belonged to Crete, which, from its
favourable situation and the weakness or laxity of the great states
of the west and east, was the only one of all the Greek settlements
that had preserved its independence. Roman commissions doubtless came
and went to this island, but accomplished still less there than they
did even in Syria and Egypt. It seemed almost as if fate had left
liberty to the Cretans only in order to show what was the result of
Hellenic independence. It was a dreadful picture. The old Doric
rigour of the Cretan institutions had become, just as in Tarentum,
changed into a licentious democracy, and the chivalrous spirit
of the inhabitants into a wild love of quarrelling and plunder;