Returning to Italy he was followed by his usual good fortune.  That country had been suffering cruelly from a revolt of the slaves, which the Roman generals had been strangely slow in suppressing.  Roused to activity by the tidings of Pompey’s approach, Crassus, who was in supreme command, attacked and defeated the insurgent army.  A considerable body, however, contrived to escape, and it was this with which Pompey happened to fall in, and which he completely destroyed.  “Crassus defeated the enemy,” he was thus enabled to boast, “but I pulled up the war by the roots.”  No honors were too great for a man at once so skillful and so fortunate (for the Romans had always a great belief in a general’s good fortune).  On the 31st of December, B.C. 71, being still a simple gentleman—­that is, having held no civil office in the State—­he triumphed for the second time, and on the following day, being then some years below the legal age, and having held none of the offices by which it was usual to mount to the highest dignity in the commonwealth, he entered on his first consul ship, Crassus being his colleague.

Still he had not yet reached the height of his glory.  During the years that followed his consulship, the pirates who infested the Mediterranean had become intolerable.  Issuing, not as was the case in after times, from the harbors of Northern Africa, but from fastnesses in the southern coast of Asia Minor, they plundered the more civilized regions of the West, and made it highly dangerous to traverse the seas either for pleasure or for gain.  It was impossible to transport the armies of Rome to the provinces except in the winter, when the pirates had retired to their strongholds.  Even Italy itself was not safe.  The harbor of Caieta with its shipping, was burned under the very eye of the praetor.  From Misenum the pirates carried off the children of the admiral who had the year before led an expedition against them.  They even ventured not only to blockade Ostia, the harbor of Rome, and almost within sight of the city, but to capture the fleet that was stationed there.  They were especially insulting to Roman citizens.  If a prisoner claimed to be such—­and the claim generally insured protection—­they would pretend the greatest penitence and alarm, falling on their knees before him, and entreating his pardon.  Then they would put shoes on his feet, and robe him in a citizen’s garb.  Such a mistake, they would say, must not happen again.  The end of their jest was to make him “walk the plank,” and with the sarcastic permission to depart unharmed, they let down a ladder into the sea, and compelled him to descend, under penalty of being still more summarily thrown overboard.  Men’s eyes began to be turned on Pompey, as the leader who had been prosperous in all his undertakings.  In 67 B.C. a law was proposed appointing a commander (who, however, was not named), who should have absolute power for three years over the sea as far as the Pillars of