Legacy of Pompey the Great

Pompey’s name cast a lasting shadow. His end inspired some of Lucan’s finest verses. In the empire he acquired official respectability, and the greatness of his achievement was fully appreciated by the great writers. But there are few clearheaded or unbiased accounts of Pompey by his own contemporaries. Caesar would have his readers believe that he wrote of Pompey more in sorrow than in anger; his propaganda was discreet and subtly damaging to his rival’s reputation. Cicero’s veering, day-to-day judgments of Pompey reveal his inability to see clearly through the distorting medium of his own vanity. The inflated eulogies of Pompey in Cicero’s speeches are punctured by his persistent sniping at him in his letters. Yet he looked up to him for leadership and, in the moment of decision, joined him. But Pompey was neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary, willing to wreck the fabric of the commonwealth for the advantage of self or class. He expected a voluntary acceptance of his primacy but was to discover that the methods he had used to get his commands had permanently alienated the dominant nobility. So year after year he had to play a passive role, covertly intriguing or waiting for successive occasions to arise that would force them to accept his leadership. Some thought his waiting game duplicity, others sheer political incompetence. He was an ineffective politician, not from incapacity for intrigue or ruthless action but from lack of candour and consistency in speech and action.

As a military leader, Pompey fell short of real greatness, lacking Caesar’s genius, his dynamism and panache, and his geniality in personal relationships. He was circumspect and thorough—the perfect administrator. His vision of empire was no narrower than Caesar’s. Like many a more recent imperialist, he was satisfied with the ideal of efficient and clean-handed administration and justice, and many of his contemporaries believed that he went far to achieve that aim in his own practice. Pompey, the wealthiest man of his age, invested his millions prudently; his landed estates were distributed throughout Italy in manageable units. For all the extravagance of his triumphal shows and the inexcusable heartlessness of the contests in slaughter with which he entertained the populace, he was a plain-living man, friend and admirer of the Stoic Panaetius. His third wife, Mucia, bore him two sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, and a daughter, Pompeia, before he divorced her for infidelity (62). Julia was the wife he loved most dearly. Cornelia outlived him and mourned his death.