Being especially excited, as they gave out by this
indignity, that some of their allies, having been taken prisoners, were
in an unprecedented manner exposed to wild beasts, and in the games of
the amphitheatre, at Iconium, a town of Pisidia.

2. And as Cicero[4] says, that "even wild beasts, when reminded by
hunger, generally return to that place where they have been fed before."
So they all, descending like a whirlwind from their high and pathless
mountains, came into the districts bordering on the sea: in which hiding
themselves in roads full of lurking-places, and in defiles, when the
long nights were approaching, the moon being at that time new, and so
not yet giving her full light, they lay wait for the sailors; and when
they perceived that they were wrapped in sleep, they, crawling on their
hands and feet along the cables which held the anchors, and raising
themselves up by them, swung themselves into the boats, and so came
upon the crews unexpectedly, and, their natural ferocity being inflamed
by covetousness, they spared not even those who offered no resistance,
but slew them all, and carried off a splendid booty with no more trouble
than if it had been valueless.

3. This conduct did not last long, for when the deaths of the crews thus
plundered and slaughtered became known, no one afterwards brought a
vessel to the stations on that coast; but, avoiding them as they would
have avoided the deadly precipices of Sciron,[5] they sailed on, without
halting, to the shores of Cyprus, which lie opposite to the rocks of
Isauria.

4. Therefore as time went on, and no foreign vessels went there any
more, they quitted the sea-coast, and betook themselves to Lycaonia, a
country which lies on the borders of Isauria. And there, occupying the
roads with thick barricades, they sought a living by plundering the
inhabitants of the district, as well as travellers. These outrages
aroused the soldiers who were dispersed among the many municipal towns
and forts which lie on the borders. And they, endeavouring to the utmost
of their strength to repel these banditti, who were spreading every day
more widely, sometimes in solid bodies, at others in small straggling
parties, were overcome by their vast numbers.

5. Since the Isaurians, having been born and brought up amid the
entangled defiles of lofty mountains, could bound over them as over
plain and easy paths, and attacked all who came in their way with
missiles from a distance