XXVI.  Now for the time the assembly was dissolved.  But on the day on which they were going to put the law to the vote, Pompeius privately retired to the country, but on hearing that the law had passed, he entered the city by night, considering that he should make himself an object of jealousy if the people met him and crowded about him.  At daybreak he came into public and sacrificed; and an assembly being summoned he contrived to get many other things in addition to what had been voted, and nearly doubled his armament.  For he manned five hundred ships, and one hundred and twenty thousand heavy-armed soldiers and five thousand horse were raised.  He chose out of the senate twenty-four men who had held command and served the office of praetor; and there were two quaestors.  As the prices of provisions immediately fell, it gave the people, who were well pleased to have it, opportunity to say that the very name of Pompeius had put an end to the war.  However, by dividing the waters and the whole space of the internal sea into thirteen parts and appointing a certain number of ships and a commander for each, with his force, which was thus dispersed in all directions, he surrounded the piratical vessels that fell in his way in a body, and forthwith hunted them down and brought them into port; but those who separated from one another before they were taken and effected their escape, crowded from all parts and made their way to Cilicia as to a hive; and against them Pompeius himself went with sixty of the best ships.  But he did not sail against them till he had completely cleared of the piratical vessels the Tyrrhenian sea, the Libyan, and the seas around Sardinia, and Corsica, and Sicily, in forty days in all, by his own unwearied exertions and the active co-operation of his commanders.

XXVII.  In Rome the consul Piso, through passion and envy, was damaging the preparations for the war, and disbanding the seamen who were to man the ships, but Pompeius sent round his navy to Brundisium and himself advanced through Tyrrhenia to Rome.  On hearing this all the people poured forth out of the city upon the road, just as if they had not only a few days before conducted him out of the city.  And the rejoicing was caused by the speediness of the change, which was contrary to expectation, for the Forum had a superabundance of provisions.  The consequence was that Piso ran the risk of being deprived of the consulship, for Gabinius had already a law drawn up.  But Pompeius prevented this, and having managed everything else with moderation and got what he wanted, he went down to Brundisium and set sail.  But though he was pressed by the urgency of the business and sailed past the cities in his haste, still he did not pass by Athens but he went up to it.  After sacrifices to the gods and addressing the people, just as he was quitting the place he read two inscriptions, each of a single verse, addressed to him, the one within the gate,

     “As thou own’st thyself a mortal, so thou art in truth a God.”