Pompey the Great: The Rise and Fall of Rome‘s "Alexander"

Introduction

In the final, turbulent decades of the Roman Republic, few figures loomed as large as Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, better known to history as Pompey the Great. Through his military genius and political savvy, Pompey rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most powerful men in Rome, earning comparisons to Alexander the Great himself. Yet for all his triumphs, Pompey‘s legacy is inextricably tied to the Republic‘s collapse into civil war and dictatorship. His extraordinary career exemplifies both the opportunities and dangers of the Roman political system in the 1st century BC.

Family Background and Early Life

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was born in 106 BC to a prominent provincial family from Picenum in central Italy. His father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, was a successful general who earned a triumph for his victories against local tribes. Despite this distinguished lineage, the Pompeii were still considered homines novi, "new men," not fully accepted by the old aristocracy of Rome.[^1]

The young Pompey got his first taste of military life accompanying his father on campaign. In 89 BC, Pompey even helped defend Strabo against a mutiny, showing remarkable courage for a 17-year-old. Plutarch relates that when Strabo asked his son to identify the ringleaders, Pompey replied, "I shall point out no one else, but you, Father, must begin with me; for it was at my invitation that they all came."[^2] This incident foreshadowed Pompey‘s future determination and force of personality.

The Social War and Sulla‘s Civil War

Pompey came of age during a time of upheaval for the Roman Republic. In 91 BC, Rome‘s Italian allies rebelled in the Social War, demanding full citizenship rights. After three hard-fought years, Rome prevailed, but the conflict exposed deep fault lines in Roman society.[^3]

No sooner had the Social War ended than an even greater crisis erupted: the civil war between the consuls Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Gaius Marius. Sulla, backed by the Senate, marched on Rome itself in 88 BC, a shocking violation of sacred tradition. Marius and his ally Cornelius Cinna soon retaliated, seizing control of the city in Sulla‘s absence.[^4]

It was in this chaotic atmosphere that Pompey first distinguished himself as a commander. Raising an army from his father‘s veterans and clients, the 23-year-old Pompey outmaneuvered Marian forces in Picenum and linked up with Sulla. Pompey‘s three legions provided a crucial reinforcement for Sulla‘s final victory.[^5]

The Sicilian and African Campaigns

With Sulla now dictator of Rome, Pompey was rewarded with a special command to recover Sicily and Africa from Marian holdouts. He ruthlessly accomplished this mission, earning the ominous nickname adulescentulus carnifex, the "teenage butcher."[^6]

Pompey‘s efficient brutality impressed Sulla, who allowed Pompey to celebrate a triumph, an unprecedented honor for such a young man who had never held public office. Sulla clearly saw something of himself in his protégé‘s naked ambition, once remarking, "More men worship the rising sun [Pompey] than the setting sun [Sulla]."[^7]

The Sertorian War in Spain

Pompey‘s next major campaign was against the renegade general Quintus Sertorius in Spain. Though a Marian loyalist, Sertorius was no mere partisan; he was a gifted commander who had organized an effective guerrilla resistance movement.[^8]

Pompey, still technically a private citizen, was again entrusted with an extraordinary command to confront this threat. His conduct of the war demonstrated his growing skill as a general. Pompey secured the Pyrenees passes, cutting Sertorius off from Gallic reinforcements, then methodically reduced his strongholds one by one.[^9]

After years of grinding warfare, Pompey finally cornered Sertorius near Osca in 72 BC. Though Sertorius escaped, he was soon afterward assassinated by his own disaffected officers. Plutarch notes that "Pompey…on learning of the death of Sertorius…settled matters in Spain promptly and without difficulty."[^10] Pompey had pacified a troublesome province and emerged as one of Rome‘s most celebrated generals.

The Slave Revolt of Spartacus

Pompey returned to Italy to find Rome facing yet another crisis: the massive slave revolt of Spartacus. This gladiator-turned-rebel leader had humiliated Roman armies and terrorized the Italian countryside for two years.[^11]

Though the main credit for defeating Spartacus belonged to Pompey‘s rival Marcus Licinius Crassus, Pompey nevertheless managed to intercept and destroy several thousand fugitive slaves. Ever the master of propaganda, he sent a letter to the Senate claiming that "while Crassus had defeated the slaves in open battle, himself had destroyed the very root and foundaton of the revolt."[^12]

The Eastern Campaigns

Pompey‘s most spectacular victories came in the eastern Mediterranean, as he wielded an extraordinary set of commands that gave him control over virtually the entire Roman military. In 67 BC, he received a three-year mandate to clear the seas of pirates; he accomplished the task in a mere three months through a brilliant combined arms strategy.[^13]

Pompey then leveraged his authority to annex Bithynia and intervene in the Third Mithridatic War, despite lacking explicit approval from the Senate. Over the next four years, he methodically reduced the power of Rome‘s old nemesis Mithridates VI of Pontus while reorganizing the patchwork of kingdoms and cities in the East into new Roman provinces.[^14]

The scale of Pompey‘s achievements was breathtaking. He had more than doubled the empire‘s annual revenue and founded 39 cities.[^15] His settlement of the East would endure for centuries as the basis of Roman rule. No wonder then that Pompey was hailed as "the Roman Alexander," a world-conquering hero to rival the Macedonian king.[^16]

Wealth, Triumph, and Political Friction

Pompey‘s eastern victories made him fabulously wealthy and powerful, but they also bred resentment among his rivals in Rome, who saw his extra-legal authority as a threat to the Republic. Pompey was himself frustrated that the Senate refused to ratify his eastern settlement or grant land to his veterans.

This conflict came to a head when Pompey returned to Italy in 62 BC and rashly disbanded his army in a show of good faith. Without his legions to back him up, Pompey found himself isolated and blocked by his enemies in the Senate.[^17] His political future now depended on an alliance with rising stars Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus.

The First Triumvirate

In 60 BC, Pompey joined Crassus and Caesar in a three-way political pact that became known as the First Triumvirate. Though informal, this alliance of the three most powerful men in Rome effectively sidelined the Senate and traditional Republican institutions.[^18]

For Caesar, the Triumvirate provided a springboard to his own commands in Gaul and beyond. Crassus, already the richest man in Rome, sought new military glory to rival Pompey‘s. Pompey himself used the Triumvirate to push through his eastern settlement and secure land grants for his veterans.[^19]

But the Triumvirate was inherently unstable, as the ambitions of the three men increasingly clashed. Crassus‘s ignominious defeat and death at Carrhae in 53 BC left Pompey and Caesar as dueling rivals for power. The final break came when Pompey married Cornelia, daughter of Caesar‘s implacable foe Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica.[^20]

Road to Civil War

As Caesar racked up victory after victory in Gaul, Pompey drew closer to the conservative faction in the Senate. These men, led by Cato the Younger, saw Caesar‘s growing power as an existential threat to the Republic. They pushed through measures to curb Caesar‘s authority and demanded he disband his army.[^21]

Caesar rejected these ultimatums, instead marching his battle-hardened legions south toward Italy. In January 49 BC, he famously crossed the Rubicon River, the boundary of his province, in arms against the state. Pompey, as sole consul, took command of the Republic‘s defenses.[^22]

Defeat and Betrayal

Despite his martial reputation, Pompey was ill-prepared for Caesar‘s lightning offensive. Within three months, Caesar had seized Italy and cornered Pompey into Greece. After a hard-fought campaign, Pompey suffered a crushing defeat at Pharsalus in 48 BC, his once-mighty army disintegrating.[^23]

Pompey fled to Egypt, hoping to regroup, but he found only betrayal. On September 28, as Pompey rowed ashore to meet a welcoming party, he was brutally stabbed to death on the beach. His decapitated head was later presented to Caesar as a macabre token of friendship.[^24]

It was an ignoble end for a man once hailed as the savior of Rome. Pompey had risen from obscurity to become the most celebrated general of his generation, but his reliance on extra-constitutional authority to maintain his power left him vulnerable when that authority crumbled. In many ways, his career encapsulated the opportunities and dangers of military success in the cutthroat world of late Republican politics.

Legacy and Historical Significance

Pompey the Great‘s stunning rise and tragic fall marked a critical turning point in Rome‘s bloody transition from republic to empire. His use of military force to advance his political agenda, though frowned upon, had ample precedent. Marius and Sulla had shown the way in the previous generation; Caesar would follow Pompey‘s example on an even grander scale.[^25]

But Pompey was more than just a transitional figure. His extraordinary commands and settlements, especially in the East, left a lasting imprint on the empire Rome would become. Provinces like Syria and Bithynia, annexed and organized by Pompey, would remain key centers of Roman power for centuries.[^26] The wealth and glory he had won in foreign conquests set a new standard for Roman imperatores.

At the same time, Pompey‘s career exposed the Republic‘s growing dysfunction. His clashes with the Senate over ratifying his settlements and rewarding his veterans demonstrated how military commanders could now hold the state hostage to their own ambitions. His alliance with Crassus and Caesar in the so-called First Triumvirate revealed how far the Republic‘s political center of gravity had shifted from the Senate to the generals and their armies.[^27]

In the end, Pompey himself fell victim to the same genie of military autocracy he had helped unleash. Though he eventually cast himself as the Republic‘s defender against Caesar, Pompey was no selfless champion of the old order. He was a product of the ruthless new world of late Republican warlords, a world he had helped create but could no longer control.[^28]

For later Romans, Pompey became a potent symbol of the Republic‘s fall. The poet Lucan held him up as a doomed hero, the last defender of liberty against Caesar‘s tyranny.[^29] But for modern historians, Pompey‘s legacy is more ambiguous. He was a man of his time, a brilliant general and politician who epitomized both the triumphs and the tragedies of Rome‘s bloody century of civil strife.

In the story of Pompey the Great, we see the Roman Republic in microcosm: a system bursting with energy and dynamism, but also fractured by ambition, violence, and the weight of its own conquests. Pompey‘s meteoric rise and precipitous fall encapsulate the often paradoxical nature of Roman power, a force that could subdue nations abroad while tearing itself apart at home. In the end, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was neither hero nor villain, but rather a product and a symbol of the turbulent age that gave birth to an empire.

References

[^1]: Seager, Robin. Pompey the Great: A Political Biography. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002, pp. 3-4.
[^2]: Plutarch. Parallel Lives, "The Life of Pompey," 3.2.
[^3]: Flower, Harriet I. Roman Republics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 80-81.
[^4]: Flower 2010, pp. 83-85.
[^5]: Greenhalgh, Peter. Pompey The Roman Alexander. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981, pp. 12-13.
[^6]: Plutarch, "The Life of Pompey," 10.6.
[^7]: Plutarch, "The Life of Pompey," 14.6.
[^8]: Spann, Philip. Quintus Sertorius and the Legacy of Sulla. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1987.
[^9]: Greenhalgh 1981, pp. 42-44.
[^10]: Plutarch, "The Life of Pompey," 20.1.
[^11]: Strauss, Barry. The Spartacus War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
[^12]: Plutarch, "The Life of Crassus," 11.7.
[^13]: de Souza, Philip. Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 149-178.
[^14]: Seager 2002, pp. 43-63.
[^15]: Plutarch, "The Life of Pompey," 45.2.
[^16]: Greenhalgh, Peter. Pompey The Republican Prince. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982, pp. 125-127.
[^17]: Seager 2002, pp. 64-67.
[^18]: Gruen, Erich S. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, pp. 83-120.
[^19]: Seager 2002, pp. 68-88.
[^20]: Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939, pp. 32-37.
[^21]: Gruen 1974, pp. 462-487.
[^22]: Seager 2002, pp. 138-149.
[^23]: Sheppard, Si. Pharsalus 48 BC: Caesar and Pompey–Clash of the Titans. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2006.
[^24]: Plutarch, "The Life of Pompey," 79-80.
[^25]: Flower 2010, pp. 132-158.
[^26]: Freeman, Philip. Julius Caesar. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, pp. 320-328.
[^27]: Gruen 1974, pp. 498-507.
[^28]: Syme 1939, pp. 28-44.
[^29]: Lucan. Pharsalia, translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.