watch-towers all along the coasts of the Mediterranean.  They had also extensive warehouses, built in secure and secluded places, where they stored their plunder.  Their fleets were well manned, and provided with skillful pilots, and with ample supplies of every kind; and they were so well constructed, both for speed and safety, that no other ships could be made to surpass them.  Many of them, too, were adorned and decorated in the most sumptuous manner, with gilded sterns, purple awnings, and silver-mounted oars.  The number of their galleys was said to be a thousand.  With this force they made themselves almost complete masters of the sea.  They attacked not only separate ships, but whole fleets of merchantmen sailing under convoy; and they increased the difficulty and expense of bringing grain to Rome so much, by intercepting the supplies, as very materially to enhance the price and to threaten a scarcity.  They made themselves masters of many islands and of various maritime towns along the coast, until they had four hundred ports and cities in their possession.  In fact, they had gone so far toward forming themselves into a regular maritime power, under a systematic and legitimate government, that very respectable young men from other countries began to enter their service, as one opening honorable avenues to wealth and fame.

[Sidenote:  Plan for destroying the pirates.] [Sidenote:  Its magnitude.]

Under these circumstances, it was obvious that something decisive must be done.  A friend of Pompey’s brought forward a plan for commissioning some one, he did not say whom, but every one understood that Pompey was intended, to be sent forth against the pirates, with extraordinary powers, such as should be amply sufficient to enable him to bring their dominion to an end.  He was to have supreme command upon the sea, and also upon the land for fifty miles from the shore.  He was, moreover, to be empowered to raise as large a force, both of ships and men, as he should think required, and to draw from the treasury whatever funds were necessary to defray the enormous expenses which so vast an undertaking would involve.  If the law should pass creating this office, and a person be designated to fill it, it is plain that such a commander would be clothed with enormous powers; but then he would incur, on the other hand, a vast and commensurate responsibility, as the Roman people would hold him rigidly accountable for the full and perfect accomplishment of the work he under took, after they had thus surrendered every possible power necessary to accomplish it so unconditionally into his hands.

[Sidenote:  Pompey appointed to the command.] [Sidenote:  Fall in the price of grain.]