[33]
Need I mention, how Cnidus, and Colophon, and Samos, most noble cities,
and others too in countless numbers, were taken by them, when you know that your own harbours,
and those harbours too from which you derive, as it were, your very life and breath, were in
the power of the pirates? Are you ignorant that the harbour of Caieta, that illustrious harbour, when full of ships, was plundered by the
pirates under the very eyes of the praetor? and that from Misenum, the children of the very man who had before that waged war against the
pirates in that place, were carried off by the pirates? For why should I complain of the
disaster of Ostia, and of that stain and blot on
the republic, when almost under your very eyes, that fleet which was under the command of a
Roman consul was taken and destroyed by the pirates? O ye immortal gods! could the incredible
and godlike virtue of one man in so short a time bring so much light to the republic, that you
who had lately been used to see a fleet of the enemy before the mouth of the Tiber, should now hear that there is not one ship belonging to
the pirates on this side of the Atlantic?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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