Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Cilician pirates were organized pirate fleets based primarily in Cilicia on the southern coast of what is now Turkey. They dominated the Mediterranean Sea from the 2nd century BC until their suppression by Pompey in 67-66 BC. The term Cilician became a generic label for Mediterranean pirates because of the notorious strongholds in that region.
According to Plutarch, the Cilician pirates commanded more than 1,000 ships and had captured 400 towns. They plundered temples and sacred sanctuaries in Greece, with Plutarch listing fourteen such sites.
Rome tolerated the pirates largely because they supplied cheap enslaved people to Roman landowners who ran large plantations. The business class in Rome lobbied for inactivity because piracy served their economic interests. Rome also lacked the naval commitment to address the problem, preferring to send fleets only when individual reports stirred them.
In 75 BC, Cilician pirates seized Caesar's vessel while he was sailing to Rhodes, when he was 25 years old. They initially demanded twenty talents (480,000 sesterces), but Caesar insisted the ransom be raised to fifty talents as more befitting his status. After his release he assembled a fleet, captured the pirates, and crucified them as he had promised during captivity.
Pompey divided the Mediterranean into thirteen districts, assigning a fleet and a commander to each. He swept the western Mediterranean in 40 days and then turned east, winning a decisive battle at Coracesium. The entire campaign lasted 89 days in the summer of 66 BC. Strabo records that Pompey destroyed 1,300 pirate vessels of all sizes.
Pompey chose not to execute the captured pirates, reasoning that many had been driven to piracy by desperation. He resettled them in underpopulated areas along the southern coast of Asia Minor. Many were settled at Soli, which was renamed Pompeiopolis, with others placed at Mallus, Adana, and Epiphaneia.
Plutarch wrote that the Cilician pirates were the first to celebrate the mysteries of Mithras. When Pompey resettled some of the captured pirates in Apulia in southern Italy, they may have carried the religion with them, contributing to what became Roman Mithraism in the latter part of the 1st century AD.