The pirates had been often reduced, but had never been rooted out; and the tribune, A. Gabinius, proposed, therefore, that Pompey should be called upon to do extraordinary things with extraordinary powers. He was to have supreme command for three years, during which period he was to have whatever was asked, and to order everybody or everything that he required. He took his own measures extremely well, and took the measure of the pirates also with such effect, that he soon drove them from all their fastnesses, with a speed quite marvellous.
Though his extraordinary powers had been conferred upon him for three years, he had such still more extraordinary power over himself, that he made a voluntary surrender of the former, when the object for which they had been entrusted to him was accomplished. Everything was achieved in three months, during which period he had taken several towns, none of which he had kept to himself, though one of them, in Cilicia, called Soli, he made a solitary exception of, by giving it the name of Pompeiopolis. The people of Soli talked a mixed dialect of Asiatic and Greek, which caused such a confusion of speech, that a great deal of confounded nonsense was the result; and it is said that the word solecism, as applied to an inaccuracy of speech, is derived from the name of the place alluded to.
That the Romans should have been hostile to piracy is somewhat inconsistent with the principle, or rather the want of principle, on which they acted themselves, for they pirated almost everything. Their literature was mere piracy from the Greeks; and according to some authorities, the Romans pirated even from the pirates themselves; for the former are said to have pirated from the latter the idea of the system of the Zodiac.
The pirates carried on their lawless trade with such success, that they had a fleet of more than 1000 galleys, many of them being handsomely gilded—a fact that glossed over in the eyes of many the iniquity of the means by which such wealth had been acquired. A dash of gaiety is said to have pervaded the enormities of these lawless depredators; and when among their prisoners they captured a Roman of high rank, they would politely request him to walk into the sea; for "to enslave one of the lords of the earth was an act they could not think of being guilty of." Young Julius Cæsar, who fell into their hands when a mere boy, on his voyage to Rhodes, appears to have met them more than half way in their sallies of humour. They asked twenty talents for his ransom, when he offered them fifty; and even then was so little anxious to leave them, that he remained thirty-eight days after having paid his money and become entitled to his quittance. During his stay among them he wrote satirical verses on their barbarous mode of life, and parried off their swords by the still keener weapons of ridicule. The pirates were amused by the sallies of their prisoner, who conveyed to them all the bluntness of truth in all the sharpness of epigram. They were sorry enough to part with him, when the money for his ransom arrived; but they had reason to be still more sorry when they met him again; for when he did so, it was only to capture them and carry them to Pergamus.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.
THE THIRD MITHRIDATIC WAR. DEPOSITION AND DEATH OF
MITHRIDATES.
While Pompey had been busy in punishing the pirates, Rome had something to fear from another quarter; for Mithridates had been everywhere beating up for recruits to beat down the Commonwealth. He was extremely rich, and had an army of 150,000 men; for the trade of war is unhappily one of those in which there is never any lack of hands ready to wage war, when their wages can be relied upon.
Bithynia was one of the first objects of the attack of Mithridates, who was opposed by the Consul, M. Cotta; but the place was burned to the ground, and the ashes of poor Cotta were found in the condition of terra cotta among the ruins. Lucullus, the colleague of Cotta, was sent into Asia with a great army, which attacked Mithridates with such effect, that the king only saved his own life by emptying his pockets of all the money he had about him, and making a scramble of it among the hostile soldiers. The mercenaries, in fighting with each other for the loose silver, forgot to make sure of the sovereign. Mithridates fled to his son-in-law Tigranes, who, having named the metropolis Tigranocerta, after himself, had established himself as King of Armenia. Lucullus proceeded across the Tigris, and required that Mithridates should be given up; but Tigranes, looking at his venerable though determined father-in-law, referred the legate for an answer to the old gentleman. The King of Pontus answered by requesting that the enemy would come and take him, which the Romans were actually about to do, when Mithridates and Tigranes thought it safer to run for their lives; Tigranes ingloriously taking his crown from his head, and putting it in his pocket, to avoid being recognised.