terwards in the time of the Normans, piratical squadrons
ran up to the maritime towns, and either compelled them to buy
themselves off with large sums, or besieged and took them by storm.
When Samothrace, Clazomenae, Samos, Iassus were pillaged
by the pirates (670) under the eyes of Sulla after peace was concluded
with Mithradates, we may conceive how matters went where neither
a Roman army nor a Roman fleet was at hand. All the old rich temples
along the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor were plundered
one after another; from Samothrace alone a treasure of 1000 talents
(240,000 pounds) is said to have been carried off. Apollo, according
to a Roman poet of this period, was so impoverished by the pirates that,
when the swallow paid him a visit, he could no longer produce
to it out of all his treasures even a drachm of gold. More than four
hundred townships were enumerated as having been taken or laid
under contribution by the pirates, including cities like Cnidus,
Samos, Colophon; from not a few places on islands or the coast,
which were previously flourishing, the whole population migrated,
that they might not be carried off by the pirates. Even inland
districts were no longer safe from their attacks; there were instances
of their assailing townships distant one or two days' march
from the coast. The fearful debt, under which subsequently
all the communities of the Greek east succumbed, proceeded
in great part from these fatal times.

Organization of Piracy

Piracy had totally changed its character. The pirates
were no longer bold freebooters, who levied their tribute
from the large Italo-Oriental traffic in slaves and luxuries,
as it passed through the Cretan waters between Cyrene
and the Peloponnesus--in the language of the pirates the "golden sea";
no longer even armed slave-catchers, who prosecuted "war, trade,
and piracy" equally side by side; they formed now a piratical state,
with a peculiar esprit de corps, with a solid and very respectable
organization, with a home of their own and the germs of a symmachy,
and doubtless also with definite political designs. The pirates
called themselves Cilicians; in fact their vessels were the rendezvous
of desperadoes and adventurers from all countries--discharged
mercenaries from the recruiting-grounds of Crete, burgesses
from the destroyed townships of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers
and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, in a word
the ruined men o