st, "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 Hercules (the S