herefore had concealed themselves.

Still, however, there remained a great number, and indeed the most
powerful part of these corsairs, who sent their families, treasures, and
all useless hands, into castles and fortified towns upon Mount Taurus.
Then they manned their ships, and waited for Pompey at Coracesium, in
Cilicia. A battle ensued, and the pirates were defeated; after which
they retired into the fort. But they had not been long besieged before
they capitulated, and surrendered themselves, together with the cities
and islands which they had conquered and fortified, and which by their
works as well as situation were almost impregnable. Thus the war was
finished, and whole force of the pirates destroyed, within three months
at the farthest.

Besides the other vessels, Pompey took ninety ships with beaks of brass;
and the prisoners amounted to 20,000. He did not choose to put them
to death, and at the same time he thought it wrong to suffer them
to disperse, because they were not only numerous, but warlike and
necessitous, and therefore would probably knit again and give future
trouble. He reflected, that man by nature is neither a savage nor an
unsocial creature; and when he becomes so, it is by vices contrary
to nature; yet even then he may be humanized by changing his place of
abode, and accustoming him to a new manner of life; as beasts that are
naturally wild put off their fierceness when they are kept in a domestic
way. For this reason he determined to remove the pirates to a great
distance from the sea, and bring them to taste the sweets of civil life,
by living in cities, and by the culture of the ground. He placed some
of them in the little towns of Cilicia, which were almost desolate, and
which received them with pleasure, because at the same time he gave them
an additional proportion of lands. He repaired the city of Soli, which
had lately been dismantled and deprived of its inhabitants by Tigranes,
king of Armenia, and peopled it with a number of these corsairs. The
remainder, which was a considerable body, he planted in Dyma, a city of
Achaia, which, though it had a large and fruitful territory, was in want
of inhabitants.

Pompey, having secured the sea from Phoenicia to the Bosphorus, marched
in quest of Mithridates, who had an army of 30,000 foot and 2,000 horse,
but durst not stand an engagement. That prince was in possession of a
strong and secure post upon a mountain, which he quitted upon Pomp