The proconsul, Quintus Metellus, took Gnossus, Lyctus, Cydonia, and many
other cities. Lucius Roscius, the plebeian tribune, carried a law, that
the fourteen lower seats in the theatre shall be allotted to the Roman
knights. Cneius Pompeius, being ordered by a law, which had the sanction
of the people, to proceed against the pirates, who had interrupted the
commerce of corn, in forty days drove them wholly from the sea; and
having finished the war against them in Cilicia, and reduced them to
submission, assigned them lands and towns. This book contains, moreover,
the history of the successes of Metellus against the Cretans, the
letters between Metellus and Pompeius. Metellus complained that Pompeius
had robbed him of the glory of his actions, in sending a deputy of his
own to receive the submission of the Cretans. Pompeius alleged that he
had a right to do so.