General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

The rebellion was punished with Roman severity. The slaves that had taken part in the revolt were hunted through the mountains and forests, and exterminated like dangerous beasts. The Appian Way was lined with six thousand crosses, bearing aloft as many bodies—a terrible warning of the fate awaiting slaves that should dare to strike for freedom.

THE ABUSES OF VERRES.—Terrible as was the state of society in Italy, still worse was the condition of affairs outside the peninsula. At first the rule of the Roman governors in the provinces, though severe, was honest and prudent. But during the period of profligacy and corruption upon which we have now entered, the administration of these foreign possessions was shamefully dishonest and incredibly cruel and rapacious. The prosecution of Verres, the proprætor of Sicily, exposed the scandalous rule of the oligarchy, into whose hands the government had fallen. For three years Verres plundered and ravaged that island with impunity. He sold all the offices, and all his decisions as judge. He demanded of the farmers the greater part of their crops, which he sold, to swell his already enormous fortune. Agriculture was thus ruined, and the farms were abandoned. Verres had a taste for art, and when on his tours through the island confiscated gems, vases, statues, paintings, and other things that struck his fancy, whether in temples or private dwellings. He even caused a Roman trader, for a slight offence, to be crucified, "the cross being set on the beach within sight of Italy, that he might address to his native shores the ineffectual cry 'I am a Roman citizen.'"

Verres could not be called to account while in office; and it was doubtful whether, after the end of his term, he could be convicted, so corrupt and venal had become the members of the Senate, before whom all such offenders must be tried. Indeed, Verres himself openly boasted that he intended two thirds of his gains for his judges and lawyers, while the remaining one third would satisfy himself.

At length, after Sicily had come to look as though it had been ravaged by barbarian conquerors, the infamous robber was impeached. The prosecutor was Marcus Tullius Cicero, the brilliant orator, who was at this time just rising into prominence at Rome. The storm of indignation raised by the developments of the trial caused Verres to flee into exile to Massilia, whither he took with him much of his ill-gotten wealth.

WAR WITH THE MEDITERRANEAN PIRATES (66 B.C.).—The Roman republic was now threatened by a new danger from the sea. The Mediterranean was swarming with pirates. Roman conquests in Africa, Spain, and especially in Greece and Asia Minor, had caused thousands of adventurous spirits from those maritime countries to flee to their ships, and seek a livelihood by preying upon the commerce of the seas. The cruelty and extortions of the Roman governors had also driven large numbers to the same course of life. These corsairs had banded themselves into a sort of government, and held possession of numerous strongholds—four hundred, it is said—in Cilicia, Crete, and other countries. With a full thousand swift ships they scoured the waters of the Mediterranean, so that no merchantman could spread her sails in safety. They formed a floating empire, which Michelet calls "a wandering Carthage, which no one knew where to seize, and which floated from Spain to Asia."

These buccaneers, the Vikings of the South, made descents upon the coast everywhere, plundered villas and temples, attacked and captured cities, and sold the inhabitants as slaves in the various slave-markets of the Roman world. They carried off merchants and magistrates from the Appian Way itself, and held them for ransom. At last the grain-ships of Sicily and Africa were intercepted, and Rome was threatened with the alternative of starvation or the paying of an enormous ransom.

The Romans now bestirred themselves. Pompey was invested with dictatorial power for three years over the Mediterranean and all its coasts for fifty miles inland. An armament of five hundred ships and one hundred thousand men was intrusted to his command. The great general acted with his characteristic energy. Within forty days he had swept the pirates from the Western Mediterranean, and in forty-nine more hunted them from all the waters east of Italy, captured their strongholds in Cilicia, and settled the twenty thousand prisoners that fell into his hands in various colonies in Asia Minor and Greece. Pompey's vigorous and successful conduct of this campaign against the pirates gained him great honor and reputation.

POMPEY AND THE MITHRIDATIC WAR.—In the very year that Pompey suppressed the pirates (66 B.C.), he was called to undertake a more difficult task. Mithridates the Great, led on by his ambition and encouraged by the discontent created throughout the Eastern provinces by Roman rapacity and misrule, was again in arms against Rome. He had stirred almost all Asia Minor to revolt. The management of the war was eventually intrusted to Pompey, whose success in the war of the pirates had aroused unbounded enthusiasm for him.

In a great battle in Lesser Armenia, Pompey almost annihilated the army of Mithridates. The king fled from the field, and, after seeking in vain for a refuge in Asia Minor, sought an asylum beyond the Caucasus Mountains, whose bleak barriers interposed their friendly shield between him and his pursuers. Desisting from the pursuit, Pompey turned south and conquered Syria, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, which countries he erected into a Roman province. Still pushing southward, the conqueror entered Palestine, and after a short siege captured Jerusalem (63 B.C.).

[Illustration: MITHRIDATES VI. (The Great) ]