Neither in this case nor in others has our Pompey thought [of an ideal commonwealth.]. Both [Caesar and Pompey] have sought to gain absolute power, not to create a happy and virtuous state." Cicero, Letters to Atticus, I, 20, 2; VII, II.2.

Too long had great Pompeius from the height
Of human greatness, envied of mankind,
Looked on all others; nor for him henceforth
Could life be lowly. The honours of his youth
Too early thrust upon him, and the deeds
Which brought him triumph in the Sullan days,
30 His conquering navy and the Pontic war,
Made heavier now the burden of defeat,
And crushed his pondering soul. So length of days
Drags down the haughty spirit, and life prolonged
When power has perished. Fortune's latest hour,
Be the last hour of life!

Lucan, Pharsalia, Book VIII

Shakespeare portrays - with gentle comedy - Pompey as the font of all military wisdom. Cicero - who generally supported Pompey but whose private letters are venomous about his failings - could still claim, when civil war began, that he would die for him. When the poet Lucan wrote his great epic of the Civil Wars in the age of Nero, Pompey had become the Republican hero and Caesar, the villain.

Pompey is the other side to Caesar's medal, their lives and the perceptions history holds of them, inextricably linked. This has been so, from the earliest days when Pompeius, the confident world conqueror, indulgently viewed the up-and-coming young Caesar's efforts to win fame, to the final battle of Pharsalus, in which Pompey surely knew he was likely to be destroyed by his erstwhile protégé. Friends, allies, related by marriage (Pompey was, at one time, Caesar's son-in-law), adversaries, the story of one is incomplete without the other. It must be remembered that it was Pompey, not Caesar, who was the golden child of Roman Fortune until Caesar's campaigns in Gaul thrust greatness upon him. Pompey was a military superstar by his early 20's, when Caesar was still a teenager. It was Pompey, not Caesar, whom many senators (including Cato) viewed for over a decade as the most serious threat to the Republic, as a warlord with kingly ambitions. Similarly, it apparently took Pompey a long time to see Caesar for what he was. When he finally did, at Pharsalus, the old lion was dethroned.

YOUTH TO CONSULATE, 106-70 BC

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was born on September 29, 106 BC, into a relatively recent senatorial family: the Pompei had only achieved a first consulship some 35 years earlier. He was not a native Roman, but came rather from the northern Italian town of Picenum. Thus he was of respectable but somewhat provincial background, a slight taint that clung to him throughout his long competition with the most powerful patricians in Rome. His father, Pompey Strabo, was elected consul in 89 BC, and was a notable general who fought first with Marius, then with Sulla in the civil wars of 88-87 BC. At age 17, Pompey was fully involved in his father's wars; he also acquired a protégé of his own with the young staff officer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who ever thereafter apparently viewed Pompey as his patron, if not his friend. The converging paths of Pompey and Cicero both reflect one similarity; a willingness to please those in power and a burning desire to prove that the two boys from Picenum could, indeed, "make good" under the Roman system.

Plutarch, who helped idealize Pompey for posterity, writes,

Pompey Strabo's death in the Marian-Sullan controversies left the young Pompey in control of his vast family estates and patronage. When Sulla returned from the Mithridatic War and marched against the hostile administration in Rome, Pompey raised three legions of his father's veterans and raced to Sulla's side (83 BC). Pompey's youth apparently included supreme self-confidence. He presented himself to Sulla not so much as an ally but as a partner. Sulla, not known for toleration, apparently found the 23-year-old Pompey useful (he later married him to his stepdaughter).

Pompey was sent to Sicily to recover the island and its invaluable grain supply from the Marians; in the war, when the citizens of Messina complained of his brutal tactics, he retorted "Stop quoting the laws to us. We carry swords." (Tacitus). He routed opposing forces in Sicily and then went to Africa, where he continued his string of unbroken victories in 82-81 BC. His ruthless extermination of opposing forces created bitter hatred among the surviving Marians. Proclaimed "imperator" on the field in Africa, Pompey at some point assumed the cognomen "Magnus" or "The Great." Some sources say Sulla awarded the title to him: it is difficult to imagine the saturnine Sulla doing it with a straight face. Crassus, always jealous of Pompey's showy style, certainly laughed at him behind his back.

Pompey demanded a triumph for his African victories. This, of course, was a ludicrous request; only consuls or senators could be awarded triumphs, and Pompey was far too young to qualify for either position. Pompey refused to disband his legions and appeared with his demand at the gates of Rome where, amazingly, Sulla apparently gave in and agreed to award him his triumph. Plutarch writes that it was because of Pompey's audacious reply to Sulla's refusal: "He asked Sulla to bear in mind the fact that more people worshipped the rising than the setting sun, implying that while his own power was on the increase, that of Sulla was growing less and less." Plutarch, Life, 14.

Pompey's reputation for military genius, and occasional bad judgment, continued when he decided to support the Marian Lepidus as Consul (against Sulla's bitter advice) and then, when Lepidus turned too revolutionary, joined the forces that destroyed him. Significantly, Pompey now demanded proconsular imperium (although he had not yet served as Consul) to go to Spain to fight against Sertorius, a Marian general who maintained a lone presence there. He refused to disband his legions until his request was granted, and he joined Metellus Pius against Sertorius. The campaign against the brilliant guerilla general would last from 76-71 BC; this must have marked Pompey, used hitherto to brilliant, quick, and popular victories. It is significant that the war was finally won only when rivals murdered Sertorius, not because either Pompey or Metellus Pius had been able to achieve a clean victory on the battlefield.

In the months after Sertorius' death, however, Pompey revealed one of his most significant talents; a genius for the organization and administration of a conquered province. Fair and generous terms extended his patronage throughout Spain and into southern Gaul. When Marcus Licinius Crassus was in difficulties against Spartacus at the end of the Servile Revolt in 71, Pompey returned to Italy with his army to be in at the kill. Disgruntled opponents said he was developing a talent for showing up late in a campaign and taking all the glory for its successful conclusion. Admirers saw in Pompey the most brilliant general of the age.

It would be fascinating to know just when Pompey became intimate with the 30-year-old patrician, Julius Caesar, but he would certainly have become familiar with him during his Consulship in 70 BC, which he shared uneasily with Crassus on a reform platform. Pompey was also able to celebrate his second Triumph, over Sertorius in Spain. The two men between them dismantled many of the reactionary features of Sulla's constitution, including returning the power of veto to the Tribunes of the people. Pompey would be the best manipulator of tribunician power in the Republic, until Caesar surpassed him. The personal animosity between Crassus and Pompey, however, grew to such an extent that only the pleas of the citizens could achieve a token reconciliation by the end of their Consular year. The rivalry between the two men would last until Crassus' death in 53:

By 69 BC, Pompey was the darling of the Roman masses although many Optimates were deeply suspicious of his intentions. His primacy in the state was enhanced by two extraordinary proconsular commands, unexcelled in Roman history for both the vastness of his authority and his success in wielding it. In 67, the tribune Aulus Gabinius forced a bill through the popular assembly awarding Pompey command of the campaign against the pirates in the Eastern Mediterranean. Lucullus (of the "Lucullan banquet") had been in Anatolia and the east for some time attempting both to destroy the pirates who were damaging Roman shipping, and to make a dent against the ever-troublesome king, Mithridates, but was making little headway. Pompey received the command in the face of entrenched Optimate opposition. As the well-respected Catullus noted, the sheer scale of the forces to be allotted to Pompey was a signal danger to the Republic.

MITHRIDATES AND THE PIRATES, 67-62 BC

Significantly, Caesar was one of a handful of Senators who supported Pompey's command from the start. This anomalous command gave Pompey sole authority over the entire forces available in the Mediterranean and beyond and set him above every military leader in the eastern Empire. In three short months (67-66 BC), Pompey's forces literally swept the Mediterranean free of the pirates, showing extraordinary precision, discipline, and organizational ability. Pompey was the hero of the hour.

The southern map of Pompey's command, 67 BC

Pompey was then nominated to replace Lucullus in the Mithridatic War, essentially entrusted, single-handed, with the conquest and reorganization of the entire Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. He conducted the campaigns of 65-62 with such military and administrative star power that, Rome annexed much of Asia firmly into her Empire. Pompey destroyed not only Mithridates but also defeated Tigranes the Great, king of Armenia, with whom he later developed treaties. He conquered Antiochus XIII of Syria, which he annexed, and moved on to Jerusalem, which he captured. Pompey imposed an overall settlement on the kings of the new eastern provinces, which took intelligent account of the geographical, and political factors involved in creating Rome's new frontier on the East. With Tigranes as a friend and ally of Rome, the chain of Roman protectorates was extended as far east as the Black Sea and the Caucasus. New provinces were created out of former Anatolia (Bithynia-Pontus and Cilicia). The amount of tribute and booty Pompey brought back to Rome was almost incalculable: Plutarch lists 20,000 talents in gold and silver added to the treasury: the increase in taxes to the public treasury rose from 50 million to 85 million drachmas annually. His administrative brilliance was such that his dispositions endured largely unchanged until the fall of Rome.

Pompey returned to Rome in December 62 to celebrate his third, most magnificent Triumph the next year. Now at his zenith, by this time Pompey had been largely absent from Rome for over five years and a new star had arisen. He had been busy in Asia during the consternation of Cataline's Conspiracy, when a young Julius Caesar pitted his will against that of the Consul, Cicero, and the rest of the Optimates. His old colleague and enemy, Crassus, had loaned Caesar money; some sources say the two men had become friends. Cicero was in eclipse, now hounded by the ill will of Publius Clodius and his factional gangs. New combinations had been made and the conquering hero had been out of touch.

Back in Rome, Pompey deftly dismissed his armies, disarming worries that he intended to spring from his conquests into domination of Rome. Yet Pompey, if an aging lion, was still the supreme tactician; he simply sought new allies and pulled strings behind the political scenes. The Optimates had fought back to control much of the real workings of the Senate; in spite of his efforts, Pompey found their inner counsels were woundingly closed to him. His magnificent settlements in the East were not promptly confirmed. The public lands he had promised his veterans were not forthcoming. From now on, Pompey's political maneuverings suggest that, although he toed a cautious line to avoid offending the conservatives, he was increasingly puzzled by Optimate reluctance to acknowledge his solid achievements. Pompey's baffled frustration would force him into strange political beds. "Thus he learned that he did not possess any real power, but merely the name and envy resulting from his former authority, while in point of fact he received no benefit from it; and he repented of having let his legions go so soon and of having put himself in the power of his enemies." Cassius Dio, History, 37.

THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE, 60-54 BC

Although Pompey and Crassus distrusted each other, they both felt aggrieved in 61; Crassus' tax farming clients were being rebuffed at the same time Pompey's veterans were being ignored. Enter Caesar, six years younger than Pompey and returning from service in Spain ready to seek the Consulship for 59 BC. Caesar somehow managed to forge a political alliance with both Pompey and Crassus (the so-called "First Triumvirate"): they would make him Consul, and he would force through their laws. Plutarch quotes Cato as later saying that the tragedy of Pompey was not that he was Caesar's defeated enemy, but that he had been, for too long, Caesar's friend and supporter.

Caesar's tempestuous Consulate in 59 brought Pompey not only the land and political settlements he craved, but a new wife; Caesar's own young daughter, Julia. Pompey was supposedly besotted with his bride. After Caesar secured his proconsular command in Gaul at the end of his Consular year, Pompey was given the governorship of Further Spain, yet was permitted to remain in Rome overseeing the critical Roman grain supply, exercising his command through subordinates. Pompey handled the grain issue with his usual excellent efficiency but his success at political intrigue was less sure. The Optimates had never forgiven him for abandoning Cicero when Publius Clodius forced his exile; only when Clodius began attacking Pompey was the great man persuaded to work with others towards Cicero's recall in 57. Once Cicero was back, his usual vocal magic helped soothe Pompey's position somewhat, but many still viewed him as a traitor for his alliance with Caesar. Other agitators (including Clodius) tried to persuade Pompey that Crassus was plotting to have him assassinated. Rumor (quoted by Plutarch) also suggested that the aging conqueror was losing interest in politics in favor of domestic life with his young wife. He was occupied by the details of construction of the mammoth complex later known as Pompey's Theater on the Campus Martius; not only the first permanent theater ever built in Rome, but an eye-popping complex of lavish porticoes, shops, and multi-service buildings (in one of which, in 44 BC, Caesar was to be assassinated). There was a period of drift.

Modern model of the theater and complex.
Image courtesy of Theatrum Pompei Project

Caesar, meanwhile, was gaining a greater name himself as a general of genius in his Gallic campaigns. By 56, the bonds between the three men were fraying; Caesar called first Crassus, then Pompey, to a secret meeting in the northern Italian town of Luca to rethink both strategy and tactics. By this time, Caesar was no longer the amenable silent partner of the trio. At Luca it was agreed that Pompey and Crassus would again stand for the consulship in 55. At their election, Caesar's command in Gaul would be extended for an additional five years, while Crassus would receive command in Syria (from which he longed to conquer Parthia and extend his own achievements). Pompey would continue to govern Spain in absentia after their consular year. This time, however, opposition to the three men was electric; it took bribery and corruption on an unprecedented scale to secure the election of Pompey and Crassus in 55. Their supporters received most of the important remaining offices. The violence between Publius Clodius and other factions (including those of Milo) were building and civil unrest was becoming endemic.

CONFRONTATION AND WAR, 54-47 BC

Then, the bonds of the triumvirate were snapped by death. First, Pompey's wife (and Caesar's only child), Julia, died in 54 in childbirth. Later that year, Crassus and his army were annihilated by the Parthian armies. Caesar's name, not Pompey's, was now firmly before the public as Rome's great new general. The public turmoil in Rome resulted in whispers as early as 54 that Pompey should be made dictator to force a return to law and order. Pompey, coyly, said nothing overtly, although he stated ".he had always come into office earlier than he had expected and had always laid his offices down more quickly than others had expected." Plutarch, 54. After Julia's death, Caesar sought a second matrimonial alliance with Pompey, offering a marital alliance with one of his endless supply of grandnieces. This time, Pompey refused. In 52, he married Cornelia, daughter of Metellus Scipio, and continued to drift toward the Optimates, Caesar's enemies to a man. They had apparently decided that Pompey was the lesser of two evils.

In that year the murder of Publius Clodius, and the burning of the Senate house by an inflamed mob led the Senate to beg Pompey to restore order, which he did with ruthless efficiency. The trial of the accused murderer, Milo, is notable in that Cicero, counsel for the defense, was so shaken by a Forum seething with armed soldiers that he was unable to complete his defense. After order was restored, the suspicious Senate and Cato, seeking desperately to avoid giving Pompey dictatorial powers, came up with the lame alternative of entitling him sole Consul without a colleague; thus his powers, although sweeping, were not unlimited. While Caesar was fighting for his life against Vercingetorix, Pompey proceeded with a genuinely beneficial legislative agenda for Rome, which also revealed that he was now covertly allied with Caesar's enemies. While instituting legal and military reorganization and reform, Pompey also passed a law making it possible to be retroactively prosecuted for electoral bribery - an action correctly interpreted by Caesar's allies as opening Caesar to prosecution once his imperium was ended. Pompey also prohibited standing for the consulship in absentia, although this had frequently been allowed in the past. This was an obvious blow at Caesar's plans after his term in Gaul expired. Finally, in 51, Pompey made it clear that Caesar would not be permitted to stand for Consul unless he turned over control of his armies. This would, of course, leave Caesar defenseless before his enemies. The Civil War was inevitable.

Many historians have suggested that Pompey was, in spite of everything, politically unaware of the fact that the Optimates, including Cato, were merely using him against Caesar so that, with Caesar destroyed, they could then dispose of Pompey. As Plutarch, noted,

In any event, the facts of the Civil War (see Civil War and Battles: The Battle of Pharsalus, this site) would reveal a Pompey diminished by age, uncertainty, and the harassment of being the chosen tool of a quarreling Optimate oligarchy. As Cicero sadly noted, Pompey had begun to fear Caesar.

Although in the beginning, Pompey claimed he could defeat Caesar and raise armies merely by stamping his foot on the soil of Italy, by the spring of 49, with Caesar's invading legions sweeping down the peninsula, Pompey ordered the abandonment of Rome. His legions fled south towards Brundisium, where Pompey intended, like Atlas going to ground, to find renewed strength by waging war against Caesar in the East. In the process, almost unbelievably, neither Pompey nor the Senate thought of taking the vast Treasury with them, which was left conveniently for Caesar when his forces entered Rome. Escaping Caesar by a hair in Brundisium, Pompey regained his confidence during the siege of Dyrrhachium, in which Caesar nearly lost the war. Yet, by failing to pursue at the critical moment of Caesar's defeat, Pompey threw away the chance to destroy Caesar's armies. As Caesar himself said, "Today the enemy would have won, if they had had a commander who was a winner." Plutarch, 65.

Pompey's judgment in the Civil War seems frequently so bad that one wonders if the aging 58-year-old was simply past the contest with his rival. After Dyrrhachium, Pompey wanted to avoid battle, confident that Caesar's agonizing supply problems would conquer for him without Pompey's army being put at risk. But he allowed himself to be persuaded to give battle against his better judgment by the consortium of opinionated Senators who had accompanied him to the east. At Pharsalus, Pompey felt he had been manipulated: ". Although his feelings of anger were justified he nevertheless concealed them and from hesitation and fear held his tongue, like a man no longer giving the orders, but receiving them and forced to act in every respect against his better judgment. Such was the extent of the despondency that overwhelmed this man." Appian, Civil War, II, 65. After his armies broke before Caesar, Pompey (who looked "half-crazed" with grief) returned to his camp and fled ahead of the victorious Caesarians. Disguised and in despair - after all, Pompey had seldom lost a battle, let alone such a battle - he took ship on the coast and hurried to collect his wife and son who were waiting in Mytilene. Pompey originally thought of taking refuge in an eastern kingdom but his advisers convinced him that the dangers of Parthian action made the east untenable. It was agreed to go to Egypt, where he was known as a respected conqueror.

Alleged bust of Pompey; like Alexander the Great, whom he wished to emulate, Pompey's distinctive hair style (with the curly 'quif' at the center of the forehead) helps identify his various portraits.

Arriving in Egypt, Pompey's fate was decided by three counselors of Ptolemy, the boy-king. While Pompey waited offshore for word, they argued the cost of offering him refuge with Caesar already en route for Egypt. Because "dead men don't bite," it was decided to murder Caesar's enemy to ingratiate themselves with him. Alone, the great Pompey was lured toward a supposed audience on shore in a small boat in which he recognized two old comrades-in-arms from the glorious, early battles. They were his assassins. While he sat in the boat, studying his speech for the boy king, they stabbed him in the back with sword and dagger. Cutting his head off, the body was left, contemptuously unattended and naked, on the shore for a slave to tend and cremate on a pyre of broken ship's timbers. When Caesar arrived, a slave offered him Pompey's head;" .he turned away from him with loathing, as from an assassin; and when he received Pompey's signet ring on which was engraved a lion holding a sword in his paws, he burst into tears." Plutarch, 80.

To the historians of his own and later Roman periods, the life of Pompey was simply too good to be true. No more satisfying historical model existed than the great man who, achieving extraordinary triumphs through Fortune's aid and his own efforts, yet fell from power and influence and, in the end, was murdered through treachery:

The Palazzo Spada Pompeius, which may have been the statue
in Pompey's Curia on the Ides of March, where Caesar fell.

He was the hero of the Republic, who seemed once to hold the Roman world in his palm only to be brought low by his own weak judgment and Caesar's indomitability. Pompey was idealized as a tragic hero almost immediately after Pharsalus and his murder: Plutarch portrayed him as true Roman Alexander, pure of heart and mind, destroyed by the cynical ambitions of those around him. The truth, of course, is another matter.

Sources:

There are many contemporary likenesses of Pompey the Great, many of which may be found at Theatrum Pompeii Project. For Lucan's Pharsalia online, see The Online Medieval and Classical Library. Thanks to the Theatrum Pompei Project for the image of Pompey's statue.