ho was not wholly carried away
by the current intoxicating idea of the national greatness, must have
wished that the ships' beaks might be torn down from the orator's
platform in the Forum, that at least he might not be constantly
reminded by them of the naval victories achieved in better times.

Expedition to the South Coast of Asia Minor
Publius Servilius Isauricus
Zenicetes Vanquished
The Isaurians Subdued

Nevertheless Sulla, who in the war against Mithradates had
the opportunity of acquiring an adequate conviction of the dangers
which the neglect of the fleet involved, took various steps
seriously to check the evil. It is true that the instructions
which he had left to the governors whom he appointed in Asia,
to equip in the maritime towns a fleet against the pirates, had borne
little fruit, for Murena preferred to begin war with Mithradates,
and Gnaeus Dolabella, the governor of Cilicia, proved wholly
incapable. Accordingly the senate resolved in 675 to send one
of the consuls to Cilicia; the lot fell on the capable Publius
Servilius. He defeated the piratical fleet in a bloody engagement,
and then applied himself to destroy those towns on the south coast
of Asia Minor which served them as anchorages and trading stations.
The fortresses of the powerful maritime prince Zenicetes--Olympus,
Corycus, Phaselis in eastern Lycia, Attalia in Pamphylia--
were reduced, and the prince himself met his death in the flames
of his stronghold Olympus. A movement was next made against
the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the Rough Cilicia,
on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, inhabited a labyrinth
of steep mountain ridges, jagged rocks, and deeply-cut valleys,
covered with magnificent oak forests--a region which is even
at the present day filled with reminiscences of the old robber times.
To reduce these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats
ofthe freebooters, Servilius led the first Roman army over the Taurus,
and broke up the strongholds of the enemy, Oroanda, and above all
Isaura itself--the ideal of a robber-town, situated on the summit
of a scarcely accessible mountain-ridge, and completely overlooking
and commanding the wide plain of Iconium. The war, not ended
till 679, from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself
and his descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without fruit;
a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in consequence
of it into the power of the Roma