Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), Pompey the Great, was a leading general of the late Roman Republic. Born in Picenum to the senator Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, he began his career under his father in the Social War.

In 83 BC, on Sulla's return from the East, Pompey raised a legion at his own expense and joined Sulla's invasion of Italy. By twenty-three he had crushed Marian remnants in Sicily and Africa with such ruthlessness that opponents called him adulescentulus carnifex — "the teenage butcher" — while Sulla bestowed Magnus. His triumph at twenty-five broke Scipio Africanus's record for youth.

From 77 BC he spent five years suppressing Sertorius in Hispania. On returning in 71 BC he intercepted survivors of Spartacus's slave army and claimed credit for ending the war Crassus had largely won. In 70 BC, despite holding no prior magistracy, he was elected consul at thirty-five with Crassus, leaping over the cursus honorum.

The Lex Gabinia of 67 BC gave him authority over the Mediterranean to suppress piracy. Dividing the sea into thirteen zones, he finished the campaign in roughly three months. Cicero praised it as "prepared in winter, begun in spring, finished by summer." The Lex Manilia gave him the Third Mithridatic War in 66 BC. Over four years he defeated Mithridates, annexed Syria, occupied Jerusalem, and more than doubled Roman annual revenue.

Frustrated by senatorial obstruction, Pompey allied informally with Crassus and Caesar in 60 BC — the First Triumvirate — sealed by his marriage to Caesar's daughter Julia. Julia's death in 54 BC and Crassus's at Carrhae in 53 BC destabilised the alliance.

In January 49 BC Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Pompey withdrew to Greece, defeated Caesar at Dyrrachium, but was beaten at Pharsalus in 48 BC. He fled to Egypt, where on 28 September he was murdered by a former officer in Ptolemy XIII's service. Cicero wrote that "his life outlasted his power."