etween the two powers hitherto leagued
for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-
democratic opposition and the military power daily aspiring
to greater ascendency. The exceptional position of Pompeius
even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian,
law was incompatible with a republican organization. He had been
as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed
by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire;
not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern
affairs "king of kings." If he should hereafter, on returning
from the east once more victorious and with increased glory,
with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted
to his cause, stretch forth his hand to seize the crown--who would
then arrest his arm? Was the consular Quintus Catulus, forsooth,
to summon forth the senators against the first general of his time
and his experienced legions? or was the designated aedile Gaius Caesar
to call forth the civic multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted
on his three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silver
equipments? Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be necessary once
more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol, in order to save liberty.
It was not the fault of the prophet, that the storm came not,
as he expected, from the east, but that on the contrary fate,
fulfilling his words more literally than he himself anticipated,
brought on the destroying tempest a few years later from Gaul.

Chapter IV

Pompeius and the East

Pompeius Suppresses Piracy

We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs
of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687
Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook
the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing
the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts
and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants,
for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching
the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them
into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part
of the ships of war that were available--among which on this occasion
also those of Rhodes were distinguished--early in the year to sea,
and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian
waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain
from these pr