in gold and purple. To a comrade in peril,
though he might be totally unknown, no pirate captain refused
the requested aid; an agreement concluded with any one of them
was absolutely recognized by the whole society, and any injury inflicted
on one was avenged by all. Their true home was the sea from the pillars
of Hercules to the Syrian and Egyptian waters; the refuges
which they needed for themselves and their floating houses
on the mainland were readily furnished to them by the Mauretanian
and Dalmatian coasts, by the island of Crete, and, above all,
by the southern coast of Asia Minor, which abounded in headlands
and lurking-places, commanded the chief thoroughfare of the maritime
commerce of that age, and was virtually without a master.
The league of Lycian cities there, and the Pamphylian communities,
were of little importance; the Roman station, which had existed
in Cilicia since 652, was far from adequate to command the extensive
coast; the Syrian dominion over Cilicia had always been
but nominal, and had recently been superseded by the Armenian,
the holder of which, as a true great-king, gave himself no concern
at all about the sea and readily abandoned it to the pillage
of the Cilicians. It was nothing wonderful, therefore,
that the corsairs flourished there as they had never done anywhere else.
Not only did they possess everywhere along the coast signal-places
and stations, but further inland--in the most remote recesses
of the impassable and mountainous interior of Lycia, Pamphylia,
and Cilicia--they had built their rock-castles, in which they concealed
their wives, children, and treasures during their own absence
at sea, and, doubtless, in times of danger found an asylum themselves.
Great numbers of such corsair-castles existed especially
in the Rough Cilicia, the forests of which at the same time furnished
the pirates with the most excellent timber for shipbuilding; and there,
accordingly, their principal dockyards and arsenals were situated.
It was not to be wondered at that this organized military state
gained a firm body of clients among the Greek maritime cities,
which were more or less left to themselves and managed their own
affairs: these cities entered into traffic with the pirates
as with a friendly power on the basis of definite treaties,
and did not comply with the summons of the Roman governors to furnish
vessels against them. The not inconsiderable town of Side
in Pamphylia, for instance,