ted higher things--not only attacking
ships, but islands and maritime towns. Many persons
distinguished for their wealth, birth and capacity
embarked with them, and assisted in their depredations,
as if their employment had been worthy the ambition of
men of honor. They had in various places arsenals,
ports, and watch-towers, all strongly fortified. Their
fleets were not only extremely well manned, supplied
with skilful pilots, and fitted for their business by
their lightness and celerity, but there was a parade of
vanity about them, more mortifying than their strength,
in gilded sterns, purple canopies, and plated oars, as
if they took a pride and triumphed in their villany.
Music resounded, and drunken revels were exhibited on
every coast. Here generals were made prisoners; and
there the cities which the pirates had seized upon were
paying their ransom, to the great disgrace of the Roman
power. The number of their galleys amounted to a
thousand, and the cities taken to four hundred." The
passage is taken from the life of Pompey.

[142] Florus, lib. iii., 6: "An felicitatem, quod ne una
cuidam navis amissa est; an vero perpetuitatem, quod
amplius piratae non fuerunt."

[143] Of the singular trust placed in Pompey there are
very many proofs in the history of Rome at this period,
but none, perhaps, clearer than the exception made in
this favor in the wording of laws. In the agrarian law
proposed by the Tribune Rullus, and opposed by Cicero
when he was Consul, there is a clause commanding all
Generals under the Republic to account for the spoils
taken by them in war. But there is a special exemption
in favor of Pompey. "Pompeius exceptus esto." It is as
though no Tribune dared to propose a law affecting
Pompey.

[144] See Appendix D.

[145] Asconius Pedianus was a grammarian who lived in
the reign of Tiberius, and whose commentaries on
Cicero's speeches, as far as they go, are very useful in
explaining to us the meaning of the orator. We have his
notes on these two Cornelian orations and some others,
especially on that of Pro Milone. There are also
commentaries on some of the Verrine orations--not by
Asconius, but from the pen of some writer now called
Pseudo-Asconius, having been long supposed to have come
from Asconius. They, too, go fa