The projected law, submitted to the suffrages of the people, attacked by Catulus and Q. Hortensius, energetically supported by Cæsar, is then adopted; and they confer on Pompey, for three years, the proconsular authority over all the seas, over all the coasts, and for fifty miles into the interior; they grant him 6,000 talents (35 millions [£1,400,000]),[885] twenty-five lieutenants, and the power of taking such vessels and troops as he should judge necessary. The allies, foreigners, and the provinces, were called on to concur in this expedition. They equipped five hundred ships, they levied a hundred and twenty thousand infantry and five thousand horse. The Senate, in spite of itself, sanctioned the clauses of this law, the utility of which was so manifest that its publication alone was sufficient to lower the price of wheat all through Italy.[886] Pompey adopted an able plan for putting an end to piracy. He divided the Mediterranean coasts from the Columns of Hercules to the Hellespont and the southern shores of the Black Sea into ten separate commands;[887] at the head of each he placed one of his lieutenants. He himself, retaining the general surveillance, went to Cilicia with the rest of his forces. This vast plan protected all the shores, left the pirates no refuge, and enabled him to destroy their fleet and attack them in their dens at once. In three months Pompey re-established the safety of the seas, took a thousand castles or strongholds, destroyed three hundred towns, took eight hundred ships, and made twenty thousand prisoners, whom he transferred into the interior of Asia, where he employed them in building a city, which received the name of Pompeiopolis.[888] [Sidenote: The Manilian Law (688).]