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.
As the operations by sea which he carried on, in conjunction with the
pirates, are the last recorded in history, by means of which Rome was
reduced to such straits, and as this repeated proof of the absolute
necessity of rendering her independent of any maritime power for supplies
of corn, seems to have been the chief inducement with Augustus to establish
regular and powerful corn fleets, we shall notice them in this place,
though rather posterior to the period of Roman history at which we have
arrived.
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