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Pompey....
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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known
in English as Pompey the Great (September 29, 106 BC – September 29, 48
BC) was a distinguished and ambitious Roman general and politician of the
1st century BC. Pompey distinguished himself as a talented military leader
under the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. For his military explots
against the pirates in the Mediterranean Sea and in the eastern
Roman he
earned the cognomen of Magnus or the Great.
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Pompey would serve Rome in putting down a slave rebelllion, lead by the gladiator Spartacus. To push forward his own agenda,
Pompey would allign himself with Julius Caesar and Marcus Crassus in the
First Triumvirate. To seal the arrangement, Pompey married Caesar's only
daughter, 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. |
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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.
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His father, Pompey Strabo, was an important general and
the first 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. |
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