Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/362

332 Hellenic Asia, except the cities on the Propontis and Euxine, and especially Cyzicus, which had to stand a long siege. Lucullus, who commanded in this war, spent the winter of B.C. 71–70 in Ephesus in reorganising the finances of many of the Greek cities, now overburdened with debt, by cutting down the interest to 12 per cent, which, according to the edict of several praetors, was the highest rate that the Roman courts would recognise. He also prevented debtors from being deprived of the whole of their property. These measures were doubtless a great relief, but their necessity shows how quickly the Roman moneylender had regained his footing in the province. Careful governors mitigated the evil by refusing to nominate any man engaged in business in the province (negotiator) as a praefectus. But others were less scrupulous, and the deplorable result has been already illustrated in the case of Salamis in Cyprus.

The next event of importance to the Greek world was Pompey's suppression of the pirates B.C. 67–66) and his settlement of the East after the death of Mithradates (B.C. 63). These two things contributed largely to make European and Asiatic Greece what they were when the Empire began. Some partial attempts to check piracy in the Mediterranean had been already made by P. Servilius Isauricus in Cilicia B.C. 74; and by Q. Caecilius Metellus when praetor in Sicily, B.C. 71–70. But C. Antonius had failed (apparently from corruption) in Crete (B.C. 74), and when Metellus undertook the task in B.C. 68–7 he seems to have, to a great extent, depopulated the