s as allies of king
Mithradates of Pontus as well as of the Roman democratic emigrants;
we find them giving battle to the fleets of Sulla in the eastern
and in the western waters; we find individual pirate princes ruling
over a series of considerable coast towns. We cannot tell how far
the internal political development of this floating state had
already advanced; but its arrangements undeniably contained
the germ of a sea-kingdom, which was already beginning to establish
itself, and out of which, under favourable circumstances,
a permanent state might have been developed.

Nullity of the Roman Marine Police

This state of matters clearly shows, as we have partly indicated
already,(5) how the Romans kept--or rather did not keep--order
on "their sea." The protectorate of Rome over the provinces
consisted essentially in military guardianship; the provincials
paid tax or tribute to the Romans for their defence by sea and land,
which was concentrated in Roman hands. But never, perhaps,
did a guardian more shamelessly defraud his ward than the Roman
oligarchy defrauded the subject communities. Instead of Rome equipping
a general fleet for the empire and centralizing her marine police,
the senate permitted the unity of her maritime superintendence--
without which in this matter nothing could at all be done--to fall
into abeyance, and left it to each governor and each client state
to defend themselves against the pirates as each chose and was able.
Instead of Rome providing for the fleet, as she had bound herself
to do, exclusively with her own blood and treasure and with those
of the client states which had remained formally sovereign,
the senate allowed the Italian war-marine to fall into decay,
and learned to make shift with the vessels which the several
mercantile towns were required to furnish, or still more frequently
with the coast-guards everywhere organized--all the cost
and burden falling, in either case, on the subjects. The provincials
might deem themselves fortunate, if their Roman governor applied
the requisitions which he raised for the defence of the coast
in reality solely to that object, and did not intercept them
for himself; or if they were not, as very frequently happened, called
on to pay ransom for some Roman of rank captured by the buccaneers.
Measures undertaken perhaps with judgment, such as the occupation
of Cilicia in 652, were sure to be spoilt in the execution.
Any Roman of this period, w