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State of kept the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of provincial matters generally; and that most of all in the case of the Asiatic lands, whose remote and unwarlike nations did not thrust themselves so directly on the attention of the government as A frica, Spain, and its Transalpine neighbours. After the annexation of the kingdom of A ttalus, which took place contemporaneously with the outbreak of ihe revolution, for a whole generation there is hardly any evidence of Rome taking a serious part in Oriental affairs with the exception of the establishment of the province of Cilicia in 652 (iii. 382), to which the 102. Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the Cilician pirates, and which was in reality nothing more than the institution of a permanent station for a small division of the Roman army and fleet in the eastern waters. It was not till the downfall of Marius in 654 had in some 100. measure consoli