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Pompey

Latin namePompeius Magnus

"The Great," thrice a triumphator, and the loser of the civil war

Soul of the Legions · Commanders

First TriumvirateThree triumphsPharsalus

Who they are

At twenty-three Pompey raised three legions of his own and threw them to Sulla, and was called "the young butcher"; Sulla, half in mockery and half in respect, called him "the Great" (Magnus) — and he calmly took it as a title. In forty days he swept the Mediterranean of pirates, his eastern campaign ended the Mithridatic War and redrew Rome’s map of the East, and he won a triumph for each of the three continents — the first man of Rome. He allied with Caesar and Crassus and married Caesar’s daughter Julia; after Julia’s death and Crassus’s fall he slid toward the Senate’s side and became the sword of the Republicans. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, Pompey abandoned Rome and withdrew east to Greece, and at Pharsalus his main force was destroyed. He fled to Egypt for refuge, and the Egyptian court, to please Caesar, had him stabbed in the small boat as he came ashore — the thrice-triumphant Great One died the day before his birthday, buried on a foreign beach.

Key stories

Clearing the pirates in forty days

By 67 BC the Mediterranean pirates were so rampant they seized Rome’s grain ships and kidnapped magistrates. Pompey was given an extraordinary command: authority over the whole Mediterranean and fifty miles of its coasts, five hundred warships, a hundred and twenty thousand men. He divided the sea into thirteen zones for piecemeal sweeps and led a mobile fleet rolling from west to east — clearing the western Mediterranean in forty days and ending the war in three months. Rarer still was the aftermath: he did not crucify them but resettled twenty thousand surrendered pirates inland to farm. The campaign is still a textbook case of "systems-engineering warfare."

The small boat of Egypt

After the defeat at Pharsalus, Pompey fled with his wife to Egypt — he had once been patron to Egypt’s late king. The council of Ptolemy XIII made a shrewd calculation: to take him in would offend Caesar, to turn him away would offend Pompey, but to kill him settled both. A small boat came to fetch him, crewed by Egyptian officers who had once been his own men. His wife watched from the great ship. The moment he stepped ashore, the knife fell from behind. Days later Caesar reached Alexandria, and the Egyptians presented the head and signet ring — Caesar turned his face away, wept, and ordered the assassins put to death. What he had wanted was the chance to pardon Pompey; the Egyptians spared him that, and took the blame for him too.