give him a colleague. At this it is said
that the people being irritated sent forth such a shout, that a
crow[240] which was flying over the Forum was stunned and fell down
into the crowd. Whence it appears, that birds which fall, do not
tumble into a great vacuum in the air caused by its rending and
separation, but that they are struck by the blow of the voice, which,
when it is carried along with great mass and strength, causes an
agitation and a wave in the air.

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