M. Tullius Cicero, On the Consular Provinces
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[31] For who is there who is not aware that all our other possessions are safe from all danger, and even from all suspicion of wars? We have for some time seen that immense sea,—by the disturbed condition of which not only our voyages by sea were impeded, but even our cities and our military marches and roads were exposed to annoyance,—now, in consequence of the valour of Cnaeus Pompeius, possessed from the ocean to the very extremity of Pontus, like one vast harbor in a safe and defensible state; and as for those nations, which by their mere numbers and the immensity of their population, were sufficient to overthrow our provinces, we have seen some of them so thinned in numbers, and others so severely checked by that same man, that Asia, which was formerly the limit of our empire, is now itself bounded on the further side by three of our provinces. I might go on speaking of every region and of every race of men. There is no nation which is not either so far destroyed as scarcely to have any existence at all, or so utterly subdued as to be quite tranquil; or else so entirely at peace with us, as to share our exultation at our victories and at the extension of our empire.