The Campaigns of Servilius Isauricus against the Pirates

One of the effects of the defeat of king Antiochus, followed by a treaty of peace whose terms limited his fleet to ten vessels of war and prevented him from sending an armed vessel to the west of the Calycadnus, had been that the slight amount of control, which the kings of Syria had formerly exercised on the coast of Cilicia Tracheia, could no longer be maintained. As yet the Romans themselves had no interest in the districts outside the Taurus. Of the southern coast of Asia Minor, Lycia was handed over to the Rhodians, Pamphylia after some delay to Eumenes, and although western Cilicia remained a part of the Syrian kingdom, the terms of the treaty effectually prevented the nominal rulers from exercising any sort of control. It is scarcely surprising that the wild tribes which inhabited both sides of the Taurus once more betook themselves to occupations which had been natural to them from the earliest times. The piracy which, according to Strabo, now began in these waters, was moreover encouraged by the Rhodians and the kings of Egypt, in so far as it crippled the Syrian power, while Rome, if we may except a tour of inspection by Scipio Aemilianus without armed force, took no cognisance of its existence. Rather the operations of the pirates, as the purveyors of slaves, were regarded, together with the similar activities of the tax-farmers, as an integral part of the economic basis of life.