Pompey Magnus: Rome's Great General

In an earlier article of mine, I covered briefly the life of Alexander the Great, the young Macedonian King who conquered the then world’s largest empire before he turned even thirty.

As mentioned there, the chaotic antiquity gave an opportunity for the rise and sometimes fall of many great military minds like Caesar, Scipio, Hannibal, or Pyrrhus of Epirus, but even among these giants, Alexander stood out.

Yet, in the first century BC, when the crisis of the Roman Republic reached its peak, the Eternal City also had a man whose military career started at a young age like that of Alexander and who, in the prime of his life, had a reputation that many dared to compare to that of Alexander, a general with the Midas touch of turning to success all he touched.

The man I am referring to is, of course, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, otherwise known as Pompey the Great, and it will be his story that I will cover in this article.

Rise

Born in 106 BC at Picinum, Pompey was the son of a rising provincial nobleman called Strabo, the first member of the Pompeyan clan to rise to the consulship, the highest administrative position of the Roman Republic.

Growing up in turbulent times, Pompey’s military career began while he was still a teenager, as he accompanied his father to the Socii War, the conflict that saw many of Rome’s Italian allies rise in rebellion against the republic.

The war officially ended in 87 BC, after four years of devastation, but the Italian peninsula would not return to peace and tranquility just yet.

The Social War saw the rise of upcoming politician Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who secured for himself command for the campaign in the east against Mithridates of Pontus, who attacked Roman territories in Asia Minor while Italy was in civil war.

The Social War, however, caused the reactivation of Gaius Marius, the veteran general who saved Rome in the 100s when Germanic tribes threatened to overrun Italy. Now nearly 70, the old Marius returned to command an army in the Social War and began to covet the command of the eastern campaign, no doubt hoping to gain one last victory.

The East at the time was ruled partially by the Romans directly, but mostly by Greek successor states of the empire of Alexander the Great. However, unlike their great predecessor, these successor states lost their military edge by then and the Romans considered them to be pushovers.

Using his influence in the Senate, Marius succeeded in stripping Sulla of his command, but rather than surrender his forces, Sulla decided to march on Rome and drive out his enemies. New elections were held, and though not all of his candidates won, Sulla deemed the situation stable enough and then departed east to deal with Mithridates.

In his absence, Marius and his allies returned and took over Rome again, ruling the city until 82 BC, when Sulla, victorious in the east, finally returned to Italy.

By this time, Pompey’s father was dead. Strabo was in the Marian camp, but his 24-year-old son decided to throw his lot in with Sulla. Using the fortune he inherited from his father, he raised a legion and began to march south to join Sulla.

En route, he defeated Senatorial forces three times and was welcomed with open arms by Sulla.

Sulla dispatched Pompey to serve alongside his lieutenants Metellus and Crassus, and the 24-year-old prodigy proved himself an able commander.

Once Sulla was victorious in Italy, Pompey was tasked to subdue the remaining rebel forces first in Sicily, then in North Africa, the young general succeeding in both tasks.

By the time he was 26, Pompey was already an accomplished general, winning him great popularity with the masses and drawing comparisons to Alexander the Great.

Despite the Roman admiration for Alexander, Pompey’s career was highly unusual in Rome. Alexander, the son of a King, got command thanks to the fact that his father died relatively young, aged only 46.

In Rome, those who wanted to run for a political career needed to serve in the military, but first, most Roman aristocrats served in the staff of the magistrates leading the armies, and command was reserved for the consuls, and later praetors or governors. Aged in his mid-20s, in less turbulent times, Pompey could not even have run for the office of quaestor, the most junior of the magistrates, and would have had to wait for any serious command well into his 30s if not 40s.

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Yet turbulent times paved the way for the rise of extraordinary men, and young Pompey was one such man. A prodigy who also had extraordinary demands, as once he returned from Africa, he wanted Sulla to award him a triumph due to a victorious general. After some haggling, Sulla agreed, though Pompey’s showmanship caused some embarrassment, as rather than horses, he wanted his chariot to be drawn by elephants, only to find out the elephants could not fit in the narrow streets.

Pompey the Conqueror

After he reformed the Roman constitution, Sulla gave up power willingly and retired into private life. Despite overseeing a bloodbath that saw the death of hundreds, if not thousands of Rome’s elite, not to say anything about the lower classes, the retired general dared to walk among the people without even a bodyguard and died of natural causes in 78 BC.

Unrest followed the death of Sulla, and a governor named Lepidus marched on Rome. Pompey was given the command to defeat Lepidus’s subordinate Marcus Brutus( the father of the man who betrayed Caesar) and succeeded, though he also had Brutus executed. By this time, Pompey had already gained a reputation for executing rebels without trial, gaining himself the nickname adolescent butcher.

Lepidus was defeated by another senatorial army to bring back peace to Italy.

While Italy was in peace, in Hispania, a Marian loyalist general called Quintus Sertorius rose in rebellion and repelled the attempts of the Senatorial armies to defeat him.

As a last resort, the Senate sent Pompey to deal with Sertorius in 76 BC. Still aged only 30 and not holding any official position, Pompey’s rather unusual career continued.

In Sertorius, however, the young general who wanted to emulate Alexander finally found his match and suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Lauron. After Lauron, Pompey was forced to concede that Sertorius was superior to him as a battlefield commander. Even so, Pompey also knew there were plenty of other ways to win a war than just by winning battles.

From that moment on, Pompey tried to avoid confrontation with Sertorius and rather targeted his subordinates and strongpoints. The strategy worked out well and in three years undermined Sartorius’s support to the point he was assassinated by his subordinate Perpenna.

Perpenna, however, was a much less gifted battlefield commander than Sertorius, and Pompey did not hesitate to engage and destroy him in battle, finally bringing an end to the rebellion in Hispania.

For the next twelve months, the victorious Pompey remained behind and tried to restore order in the province, but developments in Italy forced the Senate to recall him.

In 73 BC, in the city of Capua, a group of gladiators led by the Thracian Spartacus rebelled and broke out from their ludus. After defeating the local Roman forces sent against them, a full-scale slave rebellion broke out, and for two years, Spartacus vexed the Romans by defeating them.

With many legions abroad fighting in Spain and Asia Minor and local commanders outmatched, the Senate even swallowed their pride and gave command to Marcus Licinius Crassus, who raised and equipped an army out of his pocket.

Crassus came close to destroying Spartacus a couple of times, but the elusive Thracian slipped out of his grasp all the time, prompting the Senate to recall Pompey from Spain.

By the time Pompey arrived, Crassus had finally defeated Spartacus in battle, but Pompey ran into some 6,000 slaves fleeing after the battle and beat them, then rushed to Rome, claiming he ended the rebellion.

Crassus naturally was outraged by this blatant attempt to steal his victory and held a grudge against Pompey for more than a decade.

Still, on the recommendation of the Senate, both men were awarded the consulship for the year 70 BC, though their mutual hatred only led to the blockage of effective government for a year.

Pompey gaining the consulship in 70 BC was again contrary to the rules, as according to the cursus honorum legislated by Sulla, one needed to be at least 41 to run for the office( Pompey was 35) and had to be first elected to the junior magistracies ( Pompey was not elected to any as he was off in Spain when he could have ran for them), though by 70 BC, most people probably accepted that the rules were not made for Pompey.

Once their time in office was up, Pompey and Crassus retired to private life. Crassus, for the time being, seemingly was content to remain in Rome and speak in the Senate and the courts, but Pompey was much more a military man than a politician and when he got his chance to take up arms again, he readily accepted the opportunity.

His new opponents were to be the Cilician pirates.

With the great Hellenistic kingdoms of the east destroyed or in steep decline and Rome not yet willing to fill the power vacuum created gave the chance to the daring Cilician pirates to run rampant in the Mediterranean Sea, initially in the eastern half, but by the 70s and 60s the pirates ventured to the west also, raiding even the port of Ostia, a mere 14 miles away from Rome itself.

Embarrassingly for Rome, the grain supplies needed to feed the greatly enlarged city were also under attack, threatening to cause food shortages. Rome, the city that claimed to be the mistress of the Mediterranean seemingly could not even protect her own supplies.

Pompey was given extraordinary authority to deal with the pirates, but the speed with which he solved the pirate threat surprised even his ardent supporters. In three months, Pompey captured the pirate outlets in the western Mediterranean and then struck at their bases in the Cilicia, forcing them to surrender.

Despite some military victories, Pompey’s victory over the pirates came down to diplomacy as much as force, as he correctly diagnosed that the lawlessness and insecurity created by the decline of the Hellenistic kingdoms created the pirate problem in the first place, so he offered land and stability to those who surrendered willingly.

As Asia Minor was ravaged by war since 74 BC, free land was there in abundance for the surrendering pirates, and Pompey was eager to bring back a measure of order to the area as well.

Through his agents in Rome, Pompey lobbied to have the command of another Roman general Lucullus transferred to himself, but his lobby secured for Pompey far more resources and executive power than Lucullus ever had.

Lucullus had been in the east since 74 BC, and he mostly fought a victorious campaign against the Kings of Pontus and Armenia, but his enemies in Rome frustrated his efforts to finish the war by undermining and dividing his command.

Pompey faced no such problems, and between 66 and 61 BC, he brought to a successful conclusion the war with Pontus and Armenia, annexing the first and turning the latter into a Roman ally. In five years, Pompey conquered and reorganized the east in a major way, created new Roman provinces, won allies, and put in place loyal puppet rulers.

When he finally arrived back in Italy in 61 BC, his reputation was higher than ever.

Alliance with Caesar and Crassus, the formation of the First Triumvirate

Though many Senators feared that Pompey with his returning legions may become a second Sulla, he had no such intention and disbanded his armies willingly.

Nonetheless, in the following two years, his ambitions were thwarted, as a group of influential senators led by Crassus blockaded the ratification of his eastern settlement and even refused to grant land to his veterans.

The unusual career route of Pompey seemingly finally came back to haunt him, as with Senators like Crassus, Cato, and others blocking his legislations, he was left frustrated. More a soldier than a politician, at last, he found himself outmatched.

Pompey was still very popular with the masses, but as he had no intention of turning the mob against his enemies, that was of little use to him at the moment.

Then came Julius Caesar.

Ambitious but heavily in debt, Caesar was eager to secure for himself the consulship for 59 BC and came up with a bold plan. He contacted both Crassus and Pompey and proposed to support their legislation while he was in office if they would finance his election career for 59 BC and secure for him a province once his term was up.

Pompey and Crassus agreed, and with their backing, Caesar won the consulship. Though his co-consul Bibbulus was a lot less friendly to Caesar’s allies, Caesar used strong-arm tactics to silence Bibbulus and pushed through legislation that secured land for Pompey’s men, ratified his eastern settlement and gave tax cuts to Crassus’s clients.

Caesar kept his word and so did his new allies, with whose help he gained the provinces of Illyria and Cisalpine Gaul.

To further cement their alliance, Pompey also married Caesar’s daughter Julia.

Despite the huge age gap, the marriage was seemingly happy enough, with some people criticizing Pompey for neglecting politics in order to spend time with his new young wife.

Pompey also ordered the construction of a new theatre, completed in 55 BC. Pompey’s theatre was a monumental building, its scale closer to structures like the Colosseum than what we today associate with modern theatres.

The alliance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus was renewed in 55 BC, though there were some lingering tensions already, as Crassus, jealous of his colleague’s military victories, secured for himself the province of Syria, from where he planned to launch an invasion against Parthia.

Crassus, just like Pompey, looked up to Alexander and hoped to imitate Alexander’s conquest of Persia, but Crassus, the talented politician he may have been, was no Alexander and led his men to disaster rather than triumph, dying at Carrhea in 53 BC.

Pompey’s wife also died in childbirth in 54 BC, and rather than marry some other relative of Caesar, two years later, Pompey married the daughter of Metellus Scipio, an enemy of Caesar.

Civil War and the Fall of Pompey

From 52 BC on, Pompey began to drift to the camp of Caesar’s enemies like Scipio, Cato, and Domitian.

Caesar’s term as governor was to expire in 49 BC, and to avoid prosecution by his enemies, he planned to run for the consulship in absentia to gain immunity. His plans, however, were foiled by new legislation pushed through by his enemies and their lackeys. According to their new laws, only people present in Rome could run for the magistracies, killing Caesar’s plan stone cold.

Though there were further attempts to stop the eruption of a civil war between Caesar and Pompey and his new friends, all ended in failure, and on January 7, 49 BC, Caesar was proclaimed an enemy of Rome.

Four days later, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, signaling the beginning of the Civil War.

Despite having only a single legion, Caesar’s actions took his enemies by surprise. Facing Caesar’s veteran XIII legion, Pompey had raw recruits and men who formerly served with Caesar in Gaul. Deeming these men unreliable, he and his allies decided to flee from Rome and eventually from Italy to Greece, where using Pompey’s large clientele, they planned to build a new army, then return and crush Caesar.

Lacking a fleet to follow Pompey to Greece, Caesar initially attacked Hispania, the provinces where Pompey was governor in absentia since 54 BC, and defeated the Pompeian loyalists.

After scrapping together a fleet, though still not inferior to that of his enemies, Caesar was able to transport to Greece some 15,000 men, but by this time, Pompey assembled a large force and heavily outnumbered Caesar. Still, as Pompey’s men were mostly raw recruits, he refrained from facing Caesar in battle just yet, and a game of cat and mouse developed, with the two generals trying to outmaneuver each other in the early months of 48 BC.

Caesar called Mark Antony to bring reinforcements, and Antony succeeded, but even with him, Caesar was still outnumbered more than 2–1.

To force Pompey’s hand, Caesar planned to capture Dyrrachium, the main supply base of the Pompeians, but his enemies arrived just in time to foil his plan. Still, making the best of a bad situation, Caesar then decided to build fortifications around the city, effectively blockading Pompey’s larger army.

The blockade lasted for four months until Pompey’s men breached Caesar’s wall, forcing him to retreat.

Pompey followed Caesar for a month but avoided battle despite Caesar offering it a few times.

Despite his advantage in numbers, Pompey still felt unsure about his raw troops against Caesar’s veterans, men who served for 10 years in Gaul and preferred to down Caesar’s army through maneuver warfare rather than risk everything in a decisive battle.

The strategy was more than reasonable, and had it been implemented from start to finish, it probably would have worked. Unfortunately for Pompey, he was accompanied by many Senators, proud, wealthy, and influential but military incompetent, who harried him into giving battle and began to undermine his prestige by questioning him and his strategy.

In the end, Pompey relented and gave battle on August 9, 48 BC, at Pharsalus. The battle was to prove correct Pompey’s fears, as Caesar’s veterans routed his larger force.

With the army melting away, most of the Senators surrendered to Caesar, though the die-hards like Cato and Scipio fled to Africa, while Pompey headed to Egypt.

The old King of Egypt, Ptolemy XII, was a friend of Pompey, but by now, he was dead, and the country was in civil war as Ptolemy’s son and his daughter Cleopatra.

The news of Pompey’s defeat arrived before he did, and the advisors of the young Ptolemy XIII had given up on him as a lost cause and had him assassinated shortly after his arrival to Egypt. They believed that the killing of Pompey may win them the favor of Caesar, though as events were to show, they were very wrong in that belief.

Alone, defeated, and killed on the run, that’s how Pompey the Great, the man who in his prime was compared to the likes of Alexander the Great, ended his days.

Source

Holland, Tom (2005) Rubicon.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

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