ut more annoying than their formidable
appearance was their arrogant and pompous equipment, with their golden
streamers[233] and purple sails and silvered oars, as if they rioted
in their evil practices and prided themselves on them. And flutes and
playing on stringed instruments and drinking along the whole coast,
and capture of persons high in office, and ransomings of captured
cities, were a disgrace to the Roman supremacy. Now the piratical
ships had increased to above a thousand, and the cities captured by
them were four hundred. They attacked and plundered the asyla and
sacred places which had hitherto been unapproached, such as those of
Claros,[234] Didyma, Samothrace, the temple of Chthonia in Hermione,
the temple of AEsculapius in Epidaurus, and those of Neptune at the
Isthmus and Taenaros and Kalauria, and those of Apollo at Actium and
Leucas, and that of Juno in Samos, and in Argos, and Lacinium. They
also performed strange rites on Olympus[235] and celebrated certain
mysterious ceremonies, among which were those of Mithras[236] and they
are continued to the present time, having been first introduced by
them. But they did most insult to the Romans, and going up from the
sea they robbed on their roads and plundered the neighbouring villas.
They once seized two praetors Sextilius and Bellinus in their purple
dress, and they carried off with them their attendants and lictors.
They also took the daughter of Antonius, a man who had enjoyed a
triumph, as she was going into the country, and she was ransomed at
great cost. But their most insulting behaviour was in the following
fashion. Whenever a man who was taken called out that he was a Roman
and mentioned his name, they would pretend to be terror-struck and to
be alarmed, and would strike their thighs and fall down at his knees
praying him to pardon them; and their captive would believe all this
to be real, seeing that they were humble and suppliant. Then some
would put Roman shoes on his feet, and others would throw over him a
toga, pretending it was done that there might be no mistake about him
again. When they had for some time mocked the man in this way and had
their fill of amusement, at last they would put a ladder down into the
sea, and bid him step out and go away with their best wishes for a
good journey; and if a man would not go, then they shoved him into the
water.

XXV. The power of the pirates extended over the whole of our sea[237]
at once in a me