generals Pompeius and Glabrio
depart for their places of destination. The price of grain
had fallen immediately after the passing of the Gabinian laws
to the ordinary rates--an evidence of the hopes attached to the grand
expedition and its glorious leader. These hopes were, as we shall
have afterwards to relate, not merely fulfilled, but surpassed:
in three months the clearing of the seas was completed.
Since the Hannibalic war the Roman government had displayed
no such energy in external action; as compared with the lax
and incapable administration of the oligarchy, the democratic--
military opposition had most brilliantly made good its title
to grasp and wield the reins of the state. The equally unpatriotic
and unskilful attempts of the consul Piso to put paltry obstacles
in the way of the arrangements of Pompeius for the suppression of piracy
in Narbonese Gaul only increased the exasperation of the burgesses
against the oligarchy and their enthusiasm for Pompeius; it was nothing
but the personal intervention of the latter, that prevented the assembly
of the people from summarily removing the consul from his office.

Meanwhile the confusion on the Asiatic continent had become still
worse. Glabrio, who was to take up in the stead of Lucullus
the chief command against Mithradates and Tigranes, had remained
stationary in the west of Asia Minor and, while instigating
the soldiers by various proclamations against Lucullus, had not entered
on the supreme command, so that Lucullus was forced to retain it.
Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done; the Pontic
cavalry plundered fearlessly and with impunity in Bithynia
and Cappadocia. Pompeius had been led by the piratical war to proceed
with his army to Asia Minor; nothing seemed more natural than
to invest him with the supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war,
to which he himself had long aspired. But the democratic party did
not, as may be readily conceived, share the wishes of its general,
and carefully avoided taking the initiative in the matter.
It is very probable that it had induced Gabinius not to entrust
both the war with Mithradates and that with the pirates from the outset
to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account
could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional
position of the already too-powerful general. Pompeius himself
retained according to his custom a passive attitude; and perhaps
he would in reality ha