Cicero was now a candidate for ædile and tried to aid his candidacy by some signal achievements. Just at this time a number of the Sicilians, to whom Cicero had endeared himself by the honesty and ability with which he had exercised his duty as quæstor in their island, besought Cicero to undertake the prosecution of C. Cornelius Verres, who had just returned from three years' service as prætor in Sicily, in which province he had been guilty of the most extreme extortions, dishonesty, and cruelty. The evidence Cicero was able to produce against Verres, and the impassioned eloquence of the orations against him which he prepared (for the evidence against Verres was so unanswerable that his counsel, the great Hortensius, threw up the case, and Verres fled into exile, thus depriving Cicero of an opportunity of delivering all the carefully prepared speeches orally in court) so demoralized the senatorial party that opposition to Cotta's bill now ceased, and the law was passed without further difficulty. In the same year, 70 B.C., censors were again appointed, after the office had been suspended for sixteen years, and the corruption of the times, and particularly of the Senate, was shown by the fact that by the action of the censors sixty-four members of the Senate were degraded from their office. The greatest military triumphs in the life of Pompey were in the years following his consulship. In 67 B.C. he was sent to subdue the Sicilian pirates, armed with more complete powers than had ever before been voluntarily given by Roman citizens to any Roman general. "The terms of the proposal are extraordinary, and require close attention. First, a generalissimo was to be appointed by the senate from the consulars, to hold supreme command over the whole Mediterranean and over all the coast for fifty miles inland, concurrently with the ordinary governors, for three years. Second, he might select from the men of senatorial rank twenty-five lieutenants with prætorian powers, and two treasurers with questorian power. Third, he might raise an army of 120,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry, and a fleet of 500 ships, and for this purpose might dispose absolutely of all the resources of the provinces. Besides this, a large sum of money and a considerable force of men and ships were at once handed over to him. "By the introduction of this law the government was practically taken out of the hands of the senate; it was the final collapse of the oligarchic rule. But it was more than this--it was practically the institution of an unlimited dictatorship.