Pompey The Great,Latin in full Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus  ( born Sept. 29, 106 BC , Rome—died Sept. 28, 48 BC , Pelusium, Egypt )  one of the great statesmen and generals of the late Roman Republic, a triumvir (61–54 BC), the associate and later opponent of Julius Caesar. He was initially called Magnus (the Great) by his troops in Africa (82–81 BC).
Early career.

Pompey belonged to the senatorial nobility, although his family first achieved the office of consul only in 141. Fluent in Greek and a lifelong and intimate friend of Greek literati, he must have had the normal education of a young Roman nobleman; but his early experience on the staff of his father, Pompeius Strabo, did much to form his character, develop his military capabilities, and arouse his political ambition. The family possessed lands in Picenum, in eastern Italy, and a numerous body of clients, which Strabo greatly enlarged in the year of his consulship. In a civil war (88–87) between the rival generals Lucius Sulla and Gaius Marius, Strabo defied Sulla and favoured the Marians and a fellow general.

After his father’s death, however, Pompey detached himself from the Marians. A report that he was “missing” in Cinna’s army, when it was embarking for the Balkans to deal with Sulla, led to the lynching of Cinna by his troops (84). Pompey’s part in this mutiny is unclear; he next appears with three legions recruited in Picenum, joining Sulla as an independent ally in the campaign to recover Rome and Italy from the Marians (83). Sulla made ample use of his youthful ally’s military abilities. Pompey married Sulla’s stepdaughter. On Sulla’s orders the Senate gave Pompey the job of recovering Sicily and Africa from the Marians—a task he completed in two lightning campaigns (82–81). Pompey ruthlessly executed Marian leaders who had surrendered to him. To his enemies he was Sulla’s butcher; to the troops he was “Imperator” and “Magnus.” From Africa Pompey demanded that a triumph be given him in Rome; he refused to disband his army and appeared at the gates of Rome, obliging Sulla to yield to his demand. After Sulla’s abdication, Pompey supported the renegade Sullan Marcus Lepidus for the consulship of 78. Once in office Lepidus attempted revolution, and Pompey promptly joined the forces of law and order against him. The rising crushed, however, Pompey refused to disband his army, which he used to bring pressure on the Senate to send him with proconsular power to join Metellus Pius in Spain against the Marian leader Sertorius.

The reconquest of Spain taxed Pompey’s military skill and strained his own and the state’s resources to the utmost. In the end it was he, not Metellus, who imposed on Spain a settlement reflecting and promoting his own political aims. His policy was one of reconciliation and rehabilitation. His personal authority and patronage now covered Spain, southern Gaul, and northern Italy. Unlike Metellus, Pompey took his army back to Italy with him, ostensibly to assist in putting down a slave revolt led by Spartacus, but in reality to secure a triumph and election to the consulship for 70. The nobles whom Sulla had restored to power had proved to be more corrupt and incompetent than ever. Pompey promised reforms at home and abroad. A bargain was struck with his rival Marcus Licinius Crassus, the two were jointly elected consuls, and Pompey was given another triumph.

Reorganization of the East.

Although the nobles were to continue to dominate the consular elections in most years, the real sources of power henceforth lay outside of Italy. Extraordinary commands would have to be created if Rome was to recover control of the sea from pirates. It was Pompey who benefitted most from the restoration of tribunician initiative. After his consulship, he waited in Rome while rival nobles undermined the position of Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who was campaigning against Mithradates in Anatolia, and made halfhearted attempts to deal with the pirates. Finally, in 67, the tribune Aulus Gabinius forced a bill through the popular assembly empowering Pompey to settle the pirate problem.

Pompey was still in the East, resettling pirates as peaceful farmers, when in Rome another tribune, Gaius Manilius, carried through, against weakened opposition, a bill appointing Pompey to the command against Mithradates, with full powers to make war and peace and to organize the whole Roman East (66). Pompey displaced Lucullus and lost no time defeating Mithradates in Asia Minor. After the death of Mithradates in 63, Pompey was free to plan the consolidation of the eastern provinces and frontier kingdoms. For 6,000 talents he set up King Tigranes in Armenia as a friend and ally of Rome—and as his own protégé. Pompey rejected the Parthian king’s request to recognize the Euphrates as the limit of Roman control and extended the Roman chain of protectorates to include Colchis, on the Black Sea, and the states south of the Caucasus. In Anatolia, he created the new provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Cilicia. He annexed Syria and left Judaea as a dependent, diminished temple state. The organization of the East remains Pompey’s greatest achievement. His sound appreciation of the geographical and political factors involved enabled him to impose an overall settlement that was to form the basis of the defensive frontier system and was to last, with few important changes, for more than 500 years.

Pompey’s power and prestige were at their height in December 62, when he landed at Brundisium (Brindisi) and dismissed the army. His third triumph (61) trumpeted the grandeur of his achievement. The following decade was the period of his ascendancy in Italy, an ascendancy that was to be eroded through Caesar’s growing military power and gradual capture of Pompey’s worldwide clientelae, from the power base Caesar, in turn, created in northern Italy and Gaul. Pompey’s inveterate enemies in Rome were the Optimates, the inner ring of nobles, not Crassus or Caesar, who had merely tried to steal the limelight in Pompey’s absence and to manoeuvre into a better position for bargaining with their former political ally. The nobles meanwhile had gradually reasserted their dominance in Rome and hampered attempts to alleviate the condition of Italy and the Roman populace. Once back in Italy, Pompey avoided siding with popular elements against the Optimates. He was no revolutionary. He wanted all classes to recognize him as first citizen, available for further large-scale services to the state. He had divorced his third wife, Mucia, and now proposed to ally himself by marriage to the party of the young senatorial leader Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger. But the nobles were closing their ranks against him, and his offer was rebuffed. Lucullus and others were determined to prevent the en bloc ratification of Pompey’s eastern settlement and to reject his demand for land for his veterans.

The First Triumvirate.

Help came only when Caesar returned from his governorship in Spain. Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar formed the unofficial and at first secret First Triumvirate. It was to become more than a mere election compact. It would strain all the resources of the triumvirs to wrest one consulship from the Optimates; their continued solidarity was essential if they were to secure what Caesar gained for them in 59. Caesar, for his part, wanted a long-term command. Pompey, who now married Caesar’s daughter, Julia, saw Caesar as his necessary instrument. Caesar, once consul, immediately forced through a land bill and, shortly after, another appropriating public lands in Campania. Once he had secured a five-year command in Illyria and Gaul he could be relied on to take off a large proportion of Pompey’s discharged troops and give them further opportunities for profitable employment.

Pompey solved the problem of Rome’s grain supply with his usual efficiency, but the nobles kept up their opposition. The year 56 was a critical one for the triumvirs. The nobles concocted religious impediments to prevent the dispatch of Pompey on a military mission to Egypt, while Publius Clodius contrived to persuade Pompey that Crassus had designs on his life. An attempt was made to suspend Caesar’s law for the distribution of Campanian land.

Alarmed at Pompey’s suspicions and truculence, Crassus set off to meet Caesar at Ravenna, and Caesar in turn came to the limit of his province at Luca to meet Pompey. The Luca conference (56) prepared the ground for the next phase of triumviral cooperation: Pompey and Crassus were to secure election to the consulship for 55, for they, too, wanted five-year commands in the provinces, while Caesar’s command was to be renewed for another five years. The three secured their ends by violence and corruption after a prolonged struggle. Early in 55 Pompey and Crassus were at last elected consuls, with most of the lesser magistracies going to their supporters. Caesar obtained the extension of his command, while Pompey and Crassus received commands in Spain and Syria, respectively. Pompey could stay on in Italy and govern his provinces by deputies. But the triumvirate was coming to an end. The death of Julia (54) destroyed the strongest bond between Pompey and Caesar, and Crassus suffered disastrous defeat and death in Mesopotamia. The triumvirate existed no longer; but Pompey as yet showed no inclination to break with Caesar.

Civil war.

Meanwhile, from outside the walls of Rome, Pompey watched the anarchy in the city becoming daily more intolerable. He was prepared to wait without committing himself until the Optimates found an alliance with him unavoidable. He refused further offers from Caesar of a marriage alliance. There was talk in Rome as early as 54 of a dictatorship for Pompey. Street violence made it impossible to hold the elections. In January 52 Clodius was killed by armed followers of Titus Annius Milo, whose candidacy for the consulship was being bitterly opposed by both Pompey and Clodius. Now both factions exploded into even greater violence. The senate house was burnt down by the mob. With no senior magistrates in office, the Senate had to call on Pompey to restore order. It was the hour he had waited for. He speedily summoned troops from Italy. The nobles would not have him as dictator; they thought it safer to appoint him sole consul.

Pompey’s legislation of 52 reveals his genuine interest in reform and the duplicity of his conduct towards Caesar. He reformed procedure in the courts and produced a panel of respectable jurors. A severe law against bribery at elections was made retrospective to 70 and, for all Pompey’s protests, was rightly taken by Caesar’s friends as aimed at him. Another useful law enforced a five-year interval between tenure of magistracies in Rome and assumption of provincial commands. But this law and another, which prohibited candidature in absence, effectively destroyed the ground of Caesar’s expectation that he should become designated consul, and so safe from prosecution, before he had to disband his army in Gaul. Several attempts were made in the years 51–50 to recall Caesar before the expiration of his second term in Gaul. They were frustrated by the assertiveness of Caesar’s faction and agents in Rome. Pompey, for all his growing fear and suspicion of Caesar’s ambitions, did not come out openly against Caesar until late in 51, when he suddenly made clear his intentions. He declared that he would not consider the suggestion that Caesar should become designated consul while still in command of his army. His proposals for a compromise date for Caesar’s recall were unacceptable to Caesar, whose sole resource now was to use the wealth he had accumulated in Gaul to buy men who could obstruct his enemies in the Senate. When war came, the Senate was evenly divided between Caesar and Pompey. The consulars were solidly for Pompey, although they saw him simply as the lesser evil. Late in 50 the consul Gaius Marcellus, failing to induce the Senate to declare Caesar a public enemy, visited Pompey with the consuls designate and placed a sword in his hands. Pompey accepted their invitation to raise an army and defend the state. Caesar continued to offer compromise solutions while preparing to strike. On Jan. 7, 49, the Senate finally decreed a state of war. Four days later Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Pompey’s strategic plan was to abandon Rome and Italy to Caesar and rely on his command of the sea and the resources of the East to starve out the Caesarians in Italy; but he did not have the disciplined loyalty and full cooperation of his Optimate allies, and Caesar’s swift advance southward only just failed to prevent his withdrawal from Italy. Across the Adriatic at Dyrrhachium the wisdom of Pompey’s strategy became clear. Caesar, after a hazardous crossing in pursuit, found himself cut off from his base in Italy by sea and facing superior land forces. Pompey, however, eventually had to abandon his naval blockade of the rest of Caesar’s forces in Brundisium and failed to prevent their crossing to join Caesar. Caesar’s army was repulsed in an assault on Pompey’s camp at Dyrrhachium and, failing a quick decision in the West, Caesar was obliged to move eastwards into Thessaly. Pompey followed and joined forces with the Senate’s army there under Scipio, rendering Caesar’s position untenable. At this juncture, Pompey, under pressure from his Optimate allies, decided for battle, a sensible enough decision if his opponent had not been a commander of genius. Pompey suffered a disastrous defeat on the plain of Pharsalus (48). He fled from his camp as the enemy stormed it and made his way to the coast. His supporters were to rally and involve Caesar in strenuous fighting in Africa, Spain, and the East for three more years; but Pompey did not live to play a part in this struggle. Hurried on by Caesar’s rapid pursuit, he lost contact with his own fleet. He moved on southward to Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. He decided to land at Pelusium and seek the assistance of Ptolemy, his former client. The King marched down to the coast, ostensibly to welcome him; but he and his counsellors had chosen not to risk offending the victorious Caesar. Pompey’s small squadron lay offshore while Pompey, bidding farewell to his wife, Cornelia, complied with an insidious invitation to enter, with several companions, a small boat sent to bring him to land. As he prepared to step ashore he was treacherously struck down and killed (Sept. 28, 48 BC).


Pompey’s name cast a lasting shadow. His end inspired some of Lucan’s finest verses. In the empire he acquired official respectability, and the greatness of his achievement was fully appreciated by the great writers. But there are few clear-headed or unbiassed accounts of Pompey by his own contemporaries. Caesar would have his readers believe that he wrote of Pompey more in sorrow than in anger; his propaganda was discreet and subtly damaging to his rival’s reputation. Cicero’s veering, day-to-day judgments of Pompey reveal his inability to see clearly through the distorting medium of his own vanity. The inflated eulogies of Pompey in Cicero’s speeches are punctured by his persistent sniping at him in his letters. Yet he looked up to him for leadership and, in the moment of decision, joined him. But Pompey was neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary, willing to wreck the fabric of the commonwealth for the advantage of self or class. He expected a voluntary acceptance of his primacy but was to discover that the methods he had used to get his commands had permanently alienated the dominant nobility. So year after year he had to play a passive role, covertly intriguing or waiting for successive occasions to arise that would force them to accept his leadership. Some thought his waiting game duplicity, others, sheer political incompetence. He was an ineffective politician, not from incapacity for intrigue or ruthless action but from lack of candour and consistency in speech and action.

As a military leader, Pompey fell short of real greatness, lacking Caesar’s genius, his dynamism and panache, and his geniality in personal relationships. He was circumspect and thorough—the perfect administrator. His vision of empire was no narrower than Caesar’s. Like many a more recent imperialist, he was satisfied with the ideal of efficient and clean-handed administration and justice, and many of his contemporaries believed that he went far to achieve that aim in his own practice. Pompey, the wealthiest man of his age, invested his millions prudently; his landed estates were distributed throughout Italy in manageable units. For all the extravagance of his triumphal shows and the inexcusable heartlessness of the contests in slaughter with which he entertained the populace, he was a plain-living man, friend and admirer of the Stoic Panaetius. His third wife, Mucia, bore him two sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, and a daughter, Pompeia, before he divorced her for infidelity (62). Julia was the wife he loved most dearly; Cornelia outlived him and mourned his death.

Of ancient sources, Plutarch’s Lives (of Pompey and his Roman contemporaries) are invaluable; also the Histories of Cassius Dio (books 36–42); Appian’s Civil Wars, books I and II; and Caesar’s Civil War; but Cicero’s speeches and letters throw most light on Pompey’s role in the public life of his day. Peter A.L. Greenhalgh, Pompey: The Roman Alexander (1980), and Pompey: The Republican Prince (1981), constitute a substantial biography; John D. Leach, Pompey the Great (1978), is an introduction for the general reader; Robin Seager, Pompey: A Political Biography (1979), assesses his political life. For background to his career, see The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9 (1932); or, more briefly, Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, ch. 2–5 (1939, reissued 1960), a masterly analysis. Matthias Gelzer, Pompeius, 2nd ed. (1959), is a balanced and realistic political biography. Jules Van Ooteghem, Pompée le grand (1954), breaks little new ground, but is useful for its overall coverage, its brief discussion of the iconography of Pompey, and its bibliography of articles on points of detail. See also, for Pompey’s operations in the East, David Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, vol. 1, ch. 15–16 (1950, reprinted 1975).