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Pompey is also a common nickname for the
England|English City of Portsmouth.
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This article refers to the General of the Roman
republic. For other uses, see Pompeius. He had
descendants also called Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.


Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Latin:
CN·POMPEIVS·CN·F·SEX·N·MAGNVS
#Notes|¹), known in English language|English
as Pompey the Great (September 29 106 BC –
September 29 48 BC) was a distinguished and
ambitious Rome|Roman general and politician of the
1st century BC. Pompey distinguished himself as a
talented military leader under the Roman
dictator|dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
For his military exploits against the pirates in
the Mediterranean Sea and in eastern Rome he
earned the cognomen of Magnus or the Great.
(Although, according to Plutarch's work on the
subject, Pompey was awarded this title prior to
those campaigns, during some of Sulla's
"mopping-up" operations against the Marians.)

Pompey would serve Rome in putting down a slave
rebelllion, lead by the gladiator Spartacus. To
push forward his own agenda, Pompey would align
himself with Julius Caesar and Marcus Crassus in
the First Triumvirate. To seal the arrangement,
Pompey married Caesar's only daughter, Julia
Caesaris|Julia. But this agreement would be short
lived. After the death of Crassus in 53 BC, Pompey
would attempt to politically outmaneuver Caesar
and dominate the affairs of the Roman Republic,
which sparked an ensuing civil war. Pompey would
battle Caesar until their final confrontation at
the battle of Pharsalus, ending in his final
defeat. Pompey fled from Caesar into Egypt, where
he was betrayed and ultimately murdered by Ptolemy
XIII in Egypt.

==Early life and political debut==
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was born on September 29,
106 BC, as the son or heir of Gnaeus Pompeius
Strabo, an extremely wealthy man from the Italian
region of Picenum. Though a patrician by birth,
their branch of the Pompeius family was
traditionally provincial, making them the
inevitable subject of prejudice from the Roman
elite. His family had only achieved a first
consulship some 35 years earlier. 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 an important
general and the first Roman senate|senator of the
family, being elected consul in 89 BC. Pompey grew
up with his father in the military camps, involved
in army and political affairs. Strabo had 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. According to Plutarch,
sympathetic to Pompey, he was a popular teenager,
considered a look-alike of Alexander the Great.

Strabo died in the conflicts between Marius|Gaius
Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, leaving young
Pompey in control of his affairs and fortune.
Despite his youth, Pompey sided with Sulla after
his return from the First Mithridatic War in 83
BC. In Rome, Sulla was expecting trouble with the
Cinna administration and found the 23-year-old,
and his father's three veteran Roman
legion|legions, useful. This political alliance
boosted Pompey's career in Rome. Sulla, now the
Roman dictator|dictator in absolute control of the
city, forced the divorce of his pregnant
stepdaughter Aemilia Scaura from her husband to
marry his young ally. Pompey was only too happy to
divorce Antistia, a provincial matrona and take
the patrician Aemilia. 

The young Pompey was placed high within Sulla's
ranks, even so far as among his private council.
During Sulla's campaigns across Italy, Pompey
would encounter two individuals that would shape
both his and Rome's futures: Marcus Licinius
Crassus and Gaius Julius Caesar. Pompey would meet
Crassus from within the army. Crassus, like
Pompey, had been left a small fortune and military
force by his father, and sided with Sulla. The two
would develop a rivalry that would last for years
to come. Pompey first met Caesar when Sulla
brought Caesar before him and demanded him to
divorce his wife Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna.
When Caesar refused, Sulla pardoned him. When
Pompey commented on his action, Sulla responded
saying that he wanted to leave a few enemies alive
for later adventures. Pompey viewed Caesar as not
so much an enemy, but as a much respected
obstacle. Some reports of the event suggest that
Pompey was inspired by Caesar's refusal to divorce
his wife, reminding him of the same scenario that
Pompey had faced only two years prior.

==Sicily and Africa==
Although his young age kept him a privatus (a man
holding no political office of – or associated
with – the cursus honorum), Pompey was a very
rich man and a talented general in control of
three veteran legions. Moreover, he was ambitious
for glory and power. Happy to acknowledge his
son-in-law's wishes, and to clear his own
situation as dictator, Sulla sent Pompey to Sicily
to recover the island and its invaluable grain
supply from the Marians. 

Sicily was strategically very important, since the
island held the majority of Rome's grain supply.
Without it, the city population would starve and
riots would certainly ensue. Pompey dealt with the
resistance with a harsh hand and when the citizens
complained about his methods he replied with one
of his most famous quotes: Stop quoting laws, we
carry weapons. 

He routed the 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 by his troops on the field in Africa,
Pompey demanded a Roman triumph|triumph for his
African victories, refusing to disband his legions
and appearing with his demand at the gates of Rome
where, amazingly, Sulla gave in and agreed to
award him his triumph. It is also around this
point that Pompey gained his Roman naming|cognomen
Magnus, meaning The Great. Legend says that it was
Sulla himself who had the idea. The veracity of
this claim has not been established.

==Hispania and Spartacus==
Pompey's reputation for military genius, and
occasional bad judgment, continued when he
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 guerrilla general
would last from 76 BC to 71 BC. 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 Crassus was
facing difficulties against Spartacus at the end
of the Slave Revolt in 71 BC, Pompey returned to
Italy with his army to bring a decisive ending to
the revolt. 

Disgruntled opponents, especially Crassus, said he
was developing a talent for showing up late in a
campaign and taking all the glory for its
successful conclusion. This would grant Pompey
Crassus's permanent enmity, something that would
not be resolved for over decade. Back in Rome,
Pompey celebrated his second extralegal triumph
for the victories in Hispania. Admirers saw in
Pompey the most brilliant general of the age. In
71 BC, at only 35 years of age (see cursus
honorum), Pompey was elected Consul for the first
time, serving in 70 BC as junior partner of
Crassus, with the overwhelming support of the
Roman population.

==The Pirates and the Middle East== 
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.
In 67 BC, two years after his consulship, Pompey
was nominated commander of a special naval task
force to campaign against the pirates that
controlled the Mediterranean. This command, like
everything else in Pompey's life, was surrounded
with polemic. 

The conservative faction of the senate was most
suspicious of his intentions and afraid of his
power. The Optimates tried every means possible to
avoid it. Significantly, Caesar was one of a
handful of Senators who supported Pompey's command
from the start. The nomination was then proposed
by the Plebeian Tribune Aulus Gabinius who
proposed the Lex Gabinia, giving Pompey command in
the war against the Mediterranean pirates, with
extensive powers that gave him absolute control
over the sea and the coasts for 50 miles inland,
setting him above every military leader in the
east. 

It took Pompey only a few months to clear the
Mediterranean of the danger of pirates. 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. The quickness of the
campaign showed that he was a talented general
also at sea, with strong logistic abilities too.
Pompey was the hero of the hour. 

Pompey was then nominated to the Third Mithridatic
War to fight Mithridates VI of Pontus in the East.
This command essentially entrusted Pompey with the
conquest and reorganization of the entire Eastern
Mediterranean. This was the second command that
Caesar support in favor of Pompey. He conducted
the campaigns of 65 BC to 62 BC with such military
and administrative star power that, Rome annexed
much of Asia firmly under it’s control. 

Pompey destroyed not only Mithridates, but also
defeated Tigranes the Great, king of Armenia, with
whom he later developed treaties. He conquered
Antiochus XIII Asiaticus|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. 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),
and 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’s Return to Rome==
In December 62 BC, Pompey finally returned to Rome
with a dilemma to address. On one hand he wanted
his third triumph, on the other he wanted to run
for a second consulship. Roman laws state that a
general cannot cross the pomerium without losing
the right of the triumph, but an electoral
candidate must be in the city in order to apply
personally for the election. Pompey tried to use
diplomacy and asked the senate to postpone the
consular election for the day after the triumph.
The Optimates, led by Cato the Younger, strongly
opposed this and forced Pompey to choose. He chose
the triumph, but didn't let go of the consulship.
If he couldn't be elected, at least he could bribe
the voters to pick his candidate, Affranius.
According to several sources, it was a huge
scandal with the voters heading in masses to
Pompey's house outside the pomerium.

His third triumph took place on September 29, 61
BC (Pompey's 45th birthday), celebrating the
victories over the pirates and in the Middle East,
and was to be an unforgettable event in Rome. Two
entire days were scheduled for the enormous parade
of spoils, prisoners, army and banners depicting
battle scenes to complete the route between Campus
Martius and the temple of Jupiter (god)|Jupiter
Optimus Maximus. To conclude the festivities,
Pompey offered an immense triumphal banquet and
made several donations to the people of Rome,
enhancing his popularity even further.

Although now at his zenith, by this time Pompey
had been largely absent from Rome for over five
years and a new star had arisen. Pompey had been
busy in Asia during the consternation of the
Catiline|Catiline 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. 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 as Roman
Dictator|Dictator. Yet Pompey was still a 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 councils were 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 frustration would
force him into strange political alliances.

==Caesar and the First Triumvirate==
Although Pompey and Crassus distrusted each other,
they both felt aggrieved in 61 BC. Crassus' tax
farming clients were being rebuffed at the same
time Pompey's veterans were being ignored. Thus
entered Caesar, six years younger than Pompey,
returning from service in Hispania, and 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). Pompey and Crassus would make him
Consul, and he would use his power as Consul to
force their claims. 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 Caesaris|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 Hispania Ulterior, 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 BC. 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 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.

Caesar, meanwhile, was himself gaining a greater
name as a general of genius in his own right. By
56 BC, 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 BC. 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 were building
and civil unrest was becoming endemic. 

==Confrontation to War==
The triumvirate was about to end. The bonds of the
triumvirate were snapped by death. First, Pompey's
wife (and Caesar's only child), Julia, died in 54
BC in childbirth. Later that year, Crassus and his
army were annihilated by the Parthian armies at
the Battle of Carrhae. 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. 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 BC, he married Cornelia, daughter
of Metellus Scipio, one of Caesar’s greatest
enemies, and continued to drift toward the
Optimates. 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 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 in Gaul, 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 BC, 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. In any event, Pompey had been
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.  The coming conflict was
inevitable.#Notes|²

==Civil War==
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
BC, with Caesar crossing the Rubicon|crossed the
Rubicon and his invading legions sweeping down the
peninsula, Pompey ordered the abandonment of Rome.
His legions fled south towards Brundisium, where
Pompey intended 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).
With Caesar on their backs, the conservatives led
by Pompey fled to Greece. The armies clashed in
the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. The fighting was
hard for both sides but would eventually return a
decisive victory for Caesar. Like all the other
conservatives, Pompey had to run for his life. He
met his wife Cornelia and his son Sextus Pompeius
on the island of Mytilene. He then wondered where
to go next. The decision of running to one of the
eastern kingdoms was overruled in favor of Egypt.

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. It was decided to murder Caesar's
enemy to ingratiate themselves with him. On
September 29, his 58th birthday, 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. After
decapitation, the body was left, contemptuously
unattended and naked, on the shore. His freedman,
Philipus, organized himself a simple funeral pyre
and cremated the body on a pyre of broken ship's
timbers.

Caesar arrived a short time afterwards. As a
welcoming present he received Pompey's head and
ring in a basket. However, he was not pleased in
seeing his enemy, once his ally and son-in-law,
murdered by traitors. When 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). He deposed
Ptolemy, executed Pothinus, and elevated Cleopatra
to the throne of Egypt. Caesar gave Pompey's ashes
and ring to Cornelia, who took them back to his
estates in Italy.

In late 45 BC, Pompey was deified by the Senate
through the request of Caesar. In a stroke of
irony, Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of
March, 44 BC, in Pompey's Theater at the base of
Pompey’s statue. It is rumored that Caesar
prayed to his best friend, son-in-law, and
greatest rival as he lay dying.

==Historic View==
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 his own efforts,
yet fell from power and influence and, in the end,
was murdered through treachery. 

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.

==Pompey's marriages and children:==
* First wife, Antistia
* Second wife, Aemilia Scaura (Sulla's
stepdaudghter)
* Third wife, Mucia Tertia (from whom he divorced
for adultery, according to Cicero's letters)
** Gnaeus Pompeius, execution|executed in 45 BC,
after the Battle of Munda
** Pompeia, married to Faustus Cornelius Sulla
** Sextus Pompeius, who would rebel in Sicily
against Augustus
* Fourth wife, Julia Caesaris (daughter of Caesar)
* Fifth wife, Cornelia Metella (daughter of
Metellus Scipio)

==Chronology==

*106 BC September 29 — born in Picenum
*83 BC — aligns with Lucius Cornelius
Sulla|Sulla, after his return from the Mithridatic
War; marriage to Aemilia Scaura
*82 BC|82–81 BC — defeats Marius's
allies in Sicily and Africa; first triumph
*76 BC|76–71 BC — campaign in Hispania
against Sertorius
*71 BC — returns to Italy and puts an end to
the Spartacus's slave rebellion; second triumph
*70 BC — first consulship (with Marcus
Licinius Crassus|M. Licinius Crassus)
*67 BC — defeats the pirates and goes to
Asia province
*66 BC|66–61 BC — defeats king
Mithridates of Pontus; end of the Third
Mithridatic War
*61 BC September 29 — third triumph
*59 BC April — the first triumvirate is
constituted; Pompey allies to Julius Caesar and
Licinius Crassus; marriage to Julia Caesaris
*58 BC|58–55 BC — governs Hispania
Ulterior by proxy, construction of Pompey's
Theater
*55 BC — second consulship (with M. Licinius
Crassus)
*54 BC — Julia Caesaris dies; the first
triumvirate ends
*52 BC — third consulship with Metellus
Scipio; marriage to Cornelia Metella
*51 BC — forbids Caesar (in Gaul) to stand
for consulship in absentia
*49 BC — Caesar crosses the Rubicon River
and invades Italy; Pompey retreats to Greece with
the conservatives
*48 BC — led by Pompey, the conservatives
lose the battle of Pharsalus; Pompey runs away to
Egypt, where he is killed on September 29

==Notes==
1-  Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, son of Gnaeus,
grandson of Sextus

2-  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 him.

==Further reading==
*Pompey the Great by Robin Seager ISBN 0631227210
Wikiquotepar|Pompey the Great