ough vigorously opposed at first, eventually was carried.
The person to whom this new office was to be entrusted, was to have
maritime power, without control or restriction, over all the seas, from the
Pillars of Hercules to the Thracian Bosphorus, and the countries lying on
these seas, for fifty miles inland: he was to be empowered to raise as many
seamen and troops as he deemed necessary, and to take, out of the public
treasury, money sufficient to pay the expence of paying them, equipping the
ships, and executing the objects of the law. The proconsulate of the
seas was to be vested in the same person for three years.

As Gabinius was the known friend of Pompey, all Pompey's enemies
strenuously opposed this law, as evidently intended to confer authority on
him; but the people not only passed it, but granted Pompey, who was chosen
to fill the office, even more than Gabinius had desired, for they allowed
him to equip 500 ships, to raise 120,000 foot, and to select out of the
senate twenty senators to act as his lieutenants.

As soon as Pompey was vested with the authority conferred by this law, he
put to sea; and, by his prudent and wise measures, not less than by his
activity and vigour, within four months (instead of the three years which
were allowed him) he freed the seas from pirates, having beaten their fleet
in an engagement near the coast of Cilicia, and taken or sunk nearly 1000
vessels, and made himself master of 120 places on the coast, which they had
fortified: in the whole of this expedition he did not lose a single ship.
In order effectually to prevent the pirates from resuming their
depredations, he sent them to people some deserted cities of Cilicia.

It might have been supposed that as the Romans had suffered so much from
the pirates, and as Rome itself was dependent for subsistence on foreign
supplies of corn, which could not be regularly obtained, while the pirates
were masters of the seas, they would have directed their attention more
than they did to maritime affairs and commerce, especially after the
experience they had had of the public calamities which might thus be
averted. This, however, was not the case, even after the war against the
pirates, which was so successfully terminated by Pompey; for Pompey's son,
who opposed the triumvirate, by leaguing with the pirates, (of what nation
we are not informed,) repeatedly, during his warfare, reduced the city of
Rome to great straits for want of corn.