Pompey

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

It seems that from the very beginning the Roman people felt toward Pompey what Aeschylus's Prometheus, saved by Heracles, felt toward him when he said, "Of a hateful father, this is to me a most dear child." For the Romans never displayed a hatred so strong and savage toward any other commander as toward Pompey's father Strabo; while he lived they feared his power in arms, for he was a most warlike man,

but when he died, struck by a thunderbolt, they dragged his body down from the bier as it was being carried out and heaped insult upon it. Yet again, no other Roman ever possessed a good-will more intense, or one that began sooner, or grew more in step with prosperity, or remained more steadfast in misfortune, than that which Pompey received.

The cause of the hatred toward the father was single: an insatiable desire for money. But the causes of the love felt for the son were many: moderation in his manner of living, diligent practice in arms, persuasiveness of speech, trustworthiness of character, and an agreeableness in meeting people, such that no one asked anything of him without least distress, nor did anyone render a service more gladly to one in need. For added to his graciousness was this: he gave without giving offense, and he received with dignity.

From the beginning he also had a look that contributed no small share to winning the people over, coming to meet men even before his voice did; for his charm was combined with a dignity that was kindly, and even in his youth and bloom his prime already showed through the gravity and the kingliness of his character. There was also a certain gentle upward sweep of his hair, and a softness in the lines about his eyes, of his countenance, which produced a resemblance to the images of King Alexander that was spoken of more than it was actually apparent,

and since many people began early on giving him this name, Pompey did not reject it, so some, joking, actually addressed him as Alexander. It was for this same reason that Lucius Philippus, a former consul, defending him in court, remarked that he acted quite naturally, since a man named Philippus loving an Alexander was hardly strange. Flora the courtesan, they say, in her later years still liked to remember with fondness the affair she once shared with Pompey, remarking that no encounter with him ended without her carrying away a bite-mark.

In addition to this, Flora used to relate that Geminius, one of Pompey's intimate friends, conceived a passion for her and gave her much trouble in his courting; and when she said she could not consent because of Pompey, Geminius took the matter up with Pompey himself. Pompey then handed her over to Geminius, but never afterward touched her at all nor met with her, though he seemed to be in love with her; and she did not take this in the manner of a courtesan, but fell ill for a long time from grief and longing.

And yet they say Flora was so much in her bloom and became so renowned that Caecilius Metellus, when adorning the temple of the Dioscuri with statues and paintings, had her portrait painted and dedicated there because of her beauty. Pompey, for his part, treated the wife of Demetrius, his freedman—a man whose influence over him was greatest of all and who died possessing four thousand talents—in a way at odds with his own nature, showing her neither courtesy nor the liberality of a gentleman, out of fear of her beauty, which was irresistible and much talked of, lest he seem mastered by it.

Yet although he was so very cautious and on his guard against such things from far off, he still did not escape the censure of his enemies on this score, but was slandered for overlooking and sacrificing much of the public interest to gratify his wives. Of the ease and simplicity of his manner of living, the following anecdote is told.

A physician, when he was ill and had no appetite for food, prescribed that he take a thrush. When his attendants searched but turned up none available for purchase, since the season for it had passed, someone mentioned that Lucullus kept them year-round and some might be had there. "Then," said Pompey, "if Lucullus were not so extravagant, Pompey would not have lived?" And dismissing the physician, he took some readily available food instead. But this belongs to a later time.

While still quite young and serving in the army alongside his father, who was then in the field against Cinna, he shared his tent with a comrade, a certain Lucius Terentius. Bribed by Cinna with money, this man planned to murder Pompey personally, and others were assigned to set the general's tent ablaze,

and when word of this reached Pompey while he was at dinner, he was not at all disturbed, but drank even more cheerfully and treated Terentius with even greater kindness; then, as he turned in for the night, he slipped unnoticed out of the tent, set a guard about his father, and kept quiet. Terentius, when he thought the moment had come, drew his sword and rose, and going to Pompey's pallet as though he were lying there, dealt many blows into the bedclothes.

After this a great commotion arose out of hatred for the general, and the soldiers rushed toward mutiny, pulling down their tents and taking up arms. The general did not come forward, fearing the tumult, but Pompey, moving about in their midst and weeping, begged them to stop, and at last flung himself face-down across the camp gateway, lying in the path of those leaving, weeping and urging them to walk over him instead; so that each man, ashamed, held back, and all except eight hundred relented and made their peace with the general.

As soon as Strabo died, Pompey was prosecuted on his behalf for theft of public money, and though he uncovered most of it and showed the magistrates that one of his father's freedmen, Alexander, had embezzled it, he himself was accused of possessing hunting-nets and books taken at Asculum. These he had indeed received from his father after the capture of Asculum, but he lost them to Cinna's guards, who, when he came back to Rome, forced their way into his house and plundered it.

There were, before the trial itself, no few preliminary contests with his accuser, in which, showing himself both keen and, beyond his years, steady, he won great reputation and favor, so that Antistius, who was praetor and presiding over that very trial, fell in love with Pompey, offered his own daughter to him as a bride, and discussed the matter with his friends.

Pompey accepted, and secret agreements were made between them; yet the matter did not escape the notice of the many, because of Antistius's own eagerness. At last, when Antistius announced the verdict of the judges acquitting him, the people, as though by a signal, cried out that cry which by ancient custom is shouted at weddings, "Talasio!"

They say the custom began as follows. The Sabine women had traveled to Rome to attend a public spectacle, and when the bravest of the Romans seized them as wives, some obscure retainers and herdsmen took hold of a girl who was beautiful and tall and were carrying her off. So that no one of higher standing might come upon them and take her away, they ran along shouting "To Talasius!"—for Talasius was one of the graceful and well-known men—so that those who heard the name clapped and shouted, as though rejoicing with them and giving their approval.

From this, they say—since the marriage turned out happily for Talasius—this acclamation came to be made in jest at weddings. This account is the most plausible of those given about Talasius. In any case, a few days later Pompey married Antistia.

But when he had gone to Cinna's camp, he took fright because of some accusation and slander, and quickly slipped away unseen; and since he was not to be found, a rumor and report spread through the camp that Cinna had killed the young man. At this those who had long resented and hated Cinna rose up against him. He fled, but a centurion chasing him, sword drawn, caught up with him; he fell at the man's knees and held out his signet ring, which was of great value.

But the centurion, speaking most insolently, said, "I do not come to seal a bond, but to punish an unholy and lawless tyrant," and killed him. So Cinna having thus perished, affairs were taken up and held together by Carbo, a still more reckless tyrant than he; but Sulla was longed for by most, since under their present evils they did not think even a mere change of master a small good—so far had misfortunes brought the city that they sought a more tolerable slavery, having despaired of freedom.

At that time Pompey was spending his time in Picenum, in Italy, where he had estates, and where he took greater pleasure in the cities, which through his father were on close and friendly terms with him. Seeing the most distinguished and best of the citizens abandoning their homes and rushing from every quarter into Sulla's camp as into a harbor, he himself did not think it fitting to flee there as a fugitive, without resources, and in need of help, but rather to come to him gloriously, having already conferred some benefit and bringing an armed force with him.

Accordingly he set about stirring up the people of Picenum, testing their disposition. They responded to him eagerly and paid no heed to those who came from Carbo. When a certain Vedius said that a demagogue had leapt out from the schoolroom to lead them—meaning Pompey—they were so angered that they set upon Vedius immediately and struck him dead.

From this point Pompey, then twenty-three years old, appointed general by no one, but giving himself the command, set up a tribunal in the marketplace at Auximum, a large city, and ordered the two leading men there, the brothers Ventidii, who were acting against him on Carbo's behalf, to leave the city by edict; he then enrolled soldiers, and having duly appointed centurions and other officers for each unit, went about to the surrounding cities doing the same thing.

As those who favored Carbo's cause rose up and withdrew, while the rest gladly gave themselves over to him, he thus in a short time organized three complete legions, and having procured provisions, pack-animals, wagons, and all the rest of the equipment, he led them toward Sulla, not hurrying nor content merely to escape notice, but lingering along the way to do harm to the enemy, and trying, in every part of Italy he passed through, to detach it from Carbo.

Against him three enemy generals then rose together—Carinas, Cloelius, and Brutus—not confronting him from a single side or the same quarter, but surrounding him with three armies as if to seize him. Undaunted, he consolidated all his forces and attacked one army alone, that of Brutus, stationing his cavalry in front, he himself riding among them.

When the Celts on the enemy side rode out to meet them, he was first to strike down their leader, the strongest of them, with a spear-thrust from close at hand. The rest turned and threw their own infantry into confusion, so that a general flight resulted; and after this the generals, quarreling among themselves, withdrew as each found opportunity, while the cities went over to Pompey, since the enemy had scattered in fear.

Again, when Scipio the consul advanced against him, before the phalanxes came within javelin range, Scipio's men greeted Pompey's soldiers and changed sides, and Scipio fled. Finally, when Carbo himself sent numerous squadrons of cavalry against him near the river Arsis, Pompey stoutly withstood them and, routing them, drove them all into difficult country impassable for horses, pursuing them; and they, seeing no hope of safety, surrendered themselves along with their arms and horses.

Sulla had not yet learned of these events, but on the first reports and rumors concerning Pompey, being alarmed that he was maneuvering among so many and such great enemy generals, he hastened to his aid. Pompey, learning that he was near, ordered his officers to arm and array the force so that it might appear as splendid and fine as possible to the commander-in-chief; for he hoped for great honors from him, and indeed obtained even greater ones.

For when Sulla saw him approaching, and his army standing arrayed, admirable in the manliness of its men and elated and cheerful because of its successes, he leapt down from his horse, and being hailed, as was fitting, as Imperator, he in turn hailed Pompey as Imperator—though no one would have expected Sulla to share that title, over which he was warring against Scipios and Marii, with a young man not yet even a member of the Senate.

And in other respects too his conduct matched that first display of friendliness: he would rise partway from his seat as Pompey approached, and would remove the cloak from his head—things not easily seen him do for another, though there were many good men about him.

Yet Pompey was not made light-headed by these honors; rather, when Sulla at once sent him into Gaul, which was held by Metellus, who seemed to be accomplishing nothing worthy of the preparation made there, Pompey said it was not right to take a command away from an older man of superior reputation; he was ready, however, to serve under Metellus and assist him in the war, if Metellus wished it and ordered it.

When Metellus accepted this and wrote for him to come, Pompey, after invading Gaul, both accomplished marvelous deeds on his own account, and rekindled and warmed anew the fighting spirit and boldness of Metellus, now being quenched by old age—just as molten, glowing bronze, when poured around solid, cold metal, is said rather to soften and melt it together with itself.

But just as when an athlete has won first place among men and has gloriously carried off victories everywhere, no one takes any account of his boyhood victories nor records them, so I have been afraid to dwell on the deeds Pompey did at that time, superb though they were in themselves, because they have been buried by the number and magnitude of his later contests and wars — afraid that if we spent much time on his early exploits, we should be left short of space for the greatest deeds and sufferings that most clearly reveal the man's character.

Once Sulla had become master of Italy and taken the title of dictator, he rewarded his other commanders and generals by making them rich, advancing them to offices, and granting freely and eagerly whatever each of them wanted; but Pompey he admired for his excellence, and thinking him a great asset to his own cause, he was eager to attach him to himself by some family connection.

At the urging of his wife Metella, Sulla and Metella induced Pompey to divorce Antistia and take as his bride Sulla's stepdaughter Aemilia, the daughter of Metella and Scaurus, though she was at the time living with another husband and pregnant by him. This marriage had the character of tyranny, more suited to Sulla's circumstances than to Pompey's own disposition, since Aemilia was taken from another man while pregnant and given to him,

while Antistia was driven out in disgrace and pitiably, having but lately been deprived of her father on Pompey's account — for Antistius had been cut down inside the senate-house, on the suspicion that for Pompey's sake he favored Sulla's cause — and her mother, seeing this, took her own life of her own will, so that this suffering too was added to the tragedy of that marriage; and, by Zeus, Aemilia herself died shortly afterward in Pompey's house while giving birth,

After this it was reported that Perpenna was securing Sicily for himself and offering the island as a base to those who still survived from the opposing faction, while Carbo too was hovering about there with a fleet, and Domitius had descended on Libya, and many other great men, fugitives who had fled ahead of the proscriptions, were being pushed further still. Against these Pompey was sent out with a large force.

Perpenna at once yielded Sicily to him, and Pompey took the cities in hand, worn down as they were, and treated all of them humanely except the Mamertines of Messene; for when they objected to his tribunal and jurisdiction as forbidden by an old Roman law, he said, "Will you not stop quoting laws to us who wear swords at our sides?"

He was also thought to have treated Carbo's misfortunes inhumanely. For if it was necessary to put him to death, as perhaps it was, he ought to have had him seized and killed at once, and the deed would then have rested with the one who ordered it. But instead he brought the man out in chains — a Roman who had been consul three times — set him before the tribunal, sat down himself and examined him, to the distress and displeasure of those present; then he ordered him led away and killed.

They say, however, that when he was led away and saw the sword already drawn, he begged for a little time and a place to himself, since he was troubled by his bowels. Gaius Oppius, Caesar's companion, says that Pompey behaved inhumanely also toward Quintus Valerius. For knowing that Valerius was among the few men devoted to learning and study, when he was brought before him, Pompey drew him aside, walked about with him, asked what he wanted to know and learned it, and then ordered his attendants to take him away and kill him at once.

But whenever Oppius speaks of Caesar's enemies or friends, one must trust him only with great caution; as for Pompey, he punished, as he was compelled to, those of Sulla's enemies who were most notorious and openly caught, but of the rest, as many as he could, he let escape unnoticed, and some he even helped send away.

When he had resolved to punish the city of the Himerans, since it had taken the enemy's side, Sthenis, a leading man among them, asked to speak and said that Pompey would not be acting justly if he let the guilty man go and destroyed those who had done no wrong. When Pompey asked whom he meant by the guilty man, Sthenis said it was himself — among his fellow citizens he had won over friends by persuasion and driven his opponents to comply by force.

Pompey, admiring the man's frankness and spirit, released first him from the charge, then all the rest as well; and hearing that the soldiers were behaving disorderly on their marches, he put a seal on their swords, and whoever failed to keep it intact was punished.

While he was doing this and administering affairs in Sicily, a decree of the senate reached him, along with a letter in which Sulla directed him to cross to Libya and wage all-out war on Domitius, who had gathered a force many times greater than that with which Marius, not long before, had crossed from Libya to Italy and had thrown Roman affairs into confusion, becoming a tyrant instead of a fugitive.

Pompey quickly made all his preparations, left Memmius, his sister's husband, as governor of Sicily, and himself put to sea with a hundred and twenty warships and eight hundred transports carrying grain, missiles, money, and siege engines. When he put in, some ships at Utica and some at Carthage, seven thousand of the opposing troops abandoned their side and joined him, while he himself led six full legions.

A ridiculous thing is said to have happened to him. Some soldiers, it seems, stumbled upon buried treasure and got a good deal of money; and when this became known, all the rest formed the notion that the whole place was full of money, deposited there long ago in the days of Carthaginian prosperity.

So for many days Pompey had no use of his soldiers, who were busy hunting for treasure, but went about laughing as he watched so many tens of thousands digging and turning over the plain, until at last, giving up, they told him to lead them wherever he wished, having paid a sufficient penalty for their foolishness.

When Domitius drew up his forces opposite, having placed in front of him a ravine difficult and rough to cross, a heavy rain accompanied by wind began at dawn and continued, so that Domitius, giving up hope of fighting that day, ordered a withdrawal; but Pompey, seizing this as his opportunity, advanced swiftly and crossed the ravine.

The enemy, in disorder and confusion, did not all stand their ground evenly, and the wind whirled about, driving the storm into their faces. Even the Romans were thrown into confusion by the storm, since they could not clearly make out one another, and Pompey himself came near being killed unrecognized, when he was slow in answering a soldier who asked him for the watchword.

Having routed the enemy with heavy losses — of twenty thousand, it is said, only three thousand got away — the soldiers hailed Pompey as imperator. But he said he would not accept the honor while the enemy's camp still stood intact; if they thought him worthy of the title, they must first bring that down. At once they rushed upon the rampart, and Pompey fought without a helmet, fearing a repetition of what had befallen him before.

The camp was taken and Domitius was killed. Of the cities, some submitted at once, others were taken by force; he also captured one of the kings, Iarbas, who had fought as Domitius's ally, and handed over the kingdom to Hiempsal. Taking advantage of his good fortune and the momentum of his army, he invaded Numidia, and after marching many days' journey and overcoming everyone he encountered,

he restored, once more strong and formidable, the fear of Rome among the barbarians which had by then drained away, saying that not even the wild beasts that inhabit Libya should be left ignorant of Roman strength and daring. For this reason he spent a few days hunting lions and elephants; and in all, they say, in forty days he destroyed the enemy, subdued Libya, and settled the affairs of the kings, being then in his twenty-fourth year.

When he returned to Utica, letters reached him from Sulla, directing him to break up the rest of his army and stay there himself with a single legion, awaiting the general who was to succeed him. At this Pompey himself was secretly annoyed and took it hard, but the army was openly indignant; and when Pompey begged them to go forward, they spoke ill of Sulla and said they would not desert him, nor would they let him trust the tyrant.

At first Pompey tried to calm and soothe them; but when he could not persuade them, he came down from the tribunal to his tent and departed in tears. But they seized him and set him back again upon the tribunal, and much of the day was spent, some urging him to stay and take command, while he for his part pleaded with them to fall in line and not stir up rebellion, until at last, as they kept pressing and shouting, he swore that he would take his own life should they resort to force, and only with difficulty did they desist.

The first news that reached Sulla was that Pompey had revolted, and he said to his friends that it was, it seemed, his fate now that he was old to fight the battles of children, since Marius too, when quite young, had given him the most trouble and had brought him into the utmost dangers.

But once he found out the truth and saw that everyone was keen to welcome and accompany Pompey warmly, he hastened to outdo them all; he came forward to meet him, greeted him as warmly as he could, and in a loud voice hailed him as Magnus, and ordered those present to address him so.

Magnus means "the Great." Others say that this acclamation was first uttered by the whole army in Libya, and only gained its full force and authority when confirmed by Sulla. He himself, however, was the last of all, and only long afterward, when sent out as proconsul to Iberia against Sertorius, began to write himself "Magnus Pompeius" in his letters and edicts, since by then the name, having become familiar, was no longer resented.

One may fairly admire and marvel at the Romans of old, who repaid such titles and surnames not only for military successes and victories in war, but also honored with them political achievements and virtues.

At any rate the people proclaimed two men Maximus, that is, "Greatest": Valerius, for having reconciled the senate when it was torn by faction, and Fabius Rullus, for having removed from the senate a group of men who, though risen from the ranks of freedmen, had grown wealthy, and had been enrolled among its members.

Following this Pompey requested a triumph, which Sulla resisted. For the law grants a triumph only to a consul or a praetor, no one else; that is why Scipio, though he was the first to conquer the Carthaginians in Iberia in greater and more important contests, did not ask for a triumph, since he was neither consul nor praetor.

"If Pompey, who has not even yet grown a full beard, and who by reason of his age has no place in the senate, should ride into the city celebrating a triumph, it will be altogether invidious both to my authority and to his own honor." This is what Sulla said to Pompey, meaning that he would not permit it, but would oppose him and check his ambition if he refused to obey.

But Pompey was not cowed; instead he bade Sulla consider that more people worship the rising sun than the setting one — meaning that his own power was increasing, while Sulla's was waning and fading. Sulla did not hear these words distinctly, but seeing from the faces and gestures of those who did hear them that they were amazed, he asked what had been said. On learning it, amazed at Pompey's daring, he called out twice, one right after the other, "Let him triumph!"

Since many were displeased and indignant, Pompey, wishing to vex them still further, as they say, attempted to make his entry on a chariot pulled by four elephants, since he had brought back numerous captured royal elephants out of Libya; but since the gate was too narrow, he gave this up and changed to horses.

When the soldiers, failing to get the rewards they expected, wanted to make trouble and stir up disturbance, he said he did not care in the least, and would rather give up the triumph than flatter them — at which point Servilius, a distinguished man and one who had most strongly opposed Pompey's triumph, said that now he saw Pompey as truly great and worthy of a triumph.

It is clear that if he had wished it, he could easily have obtained a seat in the senate at that time as well. But he did not pursue it, they say, since he was hunting after the glory of the extraordinary. For it would not have been remarkable if Pompey had held a senate seat before the legal age, but it was spectacular that, while not yet a senator, he celebrated a triumph. This, too, did him no small service in winning the goodwill of the people; for the populace delighted in him being reviewed among the knights after his triumph.

Sulla was troubled to watch how far Pompey's fame and influence kept climbing, yet felt it beneath him to stand in the young man's way, so he held his peace — except on one occasion, when, against Pompey's own wishes, he pushed through by sheer force the election of Lepidus to the consulship, campaigning at his side and transferring to him the popular favor that properly belonged to Pompey. When Sulla saw Pompey departing through the forum with a great crowd around him,

he said, "I see you, young man, delighting in your victory. And how could these things not be splendid and fine — that Lepidus, the worst of all men, has been declared consul ahead of Catulus, the best of all men, because you arranged the people so for him? It is time for you, though, not to sleep, but to watch events closely — for you have made your rival stronger against yourself." And Sulla made it especially clear that he was not well disposed toward Pompey through the will he wrote.

For he left gifts to his other friends, and named guardians for his son, but passed over Pompey entirely. Yet Pompey bore this very moderately and with great civic spirit, so that when Lepidus and certain others opposed the burial of the body in the Campus and objected to a public funeral procession, he came to the rescue and secured both honor for the burial and its safety.

When Sulla died and the oracles he had suppressed soon came out into the open, and Lepidus, insinuating himself into Sulla's power, went about it not by roundabout means or with any show of pretense but took up arms at once, stirring up again and gathering around himself the long-diseased remnants of factional strife that had escaped Sulla's notice — his colleague in office, Catulus, to whom the sound and healthy part of the senate and people were most attached, held then the highest reputation for prudence and justice among the Romans of that time,

and seemed more suited to civic leadership than to military command; and since events themselves called for Pompey, he did not hesitate which way to turn, but attached himself to the party of the best men, and thus received command of a force sent against Lepidus — a man who by then had roused much of Italy to revolt and, using Brutus's army, controlled Gaul on the near side of the Alps.

Now Pompey easily overcame the rest of the resistance by moving against it; but at Mutina in Gaul he sat encamped opposite Brutus for a long time, during which Lepidus, streaming toward Rome and encamping outside it, demanded a second consulship, intimidating those within the city with his great mob.

But a letter brought from Pompey dissolved the fear, announcing that he had settled the war without a battle. For Brutus — whether he handed over his forces of his own accord, or was betrayed when they went over to the other side — surrendered his person to Pompey, and taking an escort of cavalry, withdrew to a small town near the Po, where after a single day, Pompey having sent Geminius against him, he was put to death.

And Pompey incurred great blame for this. For he had written at once, at the beginning of the change of sides, to the senate that Brutus had come over to him willingly, but then afterward, once the man had been killed, sent other letters accusing him. This man's son was the Brutus who, with Cassius, killed Caesar — a man who, like his father, neither fought nor died, as is written in his own account.

Lepidus, then, immediately driven out of Italy, crossed over to Sardinia, and there fell ill and died of despondency — not, they say, over the state of affairs, but because he came upon a note by which he detected an act of adultery on the part of his wife.

Unlike Lepidus, a general holding Iberia, Sertorius, hung over the Romans as a fearsome threat, as though the civil wars had, as a final malady, all flowed together into this one man — one who had already destroyed many of the lesser generals, and was then locked in struggle with Metellus Pius,

a brilliant and warlike man, but one thought to follow the war's opportunities rather sluggishly because of his age, and to fall behind as events were seized upon with sharpness and speed, while Sertorius engaged him recklessly and more like a bandit, harassing with ambushes and encircling maneuvers a man who was a champion of regular pitched battles and a leader of a stationary and heavy force,

against this Pompey, having his army under his own command, managed to be sent as reinforcement to Metellus; and though Catulus ordered him to disband, he did not, but remained under arms around the city, always inventing some pretext, until they gave him the command, on the motion proposed by Lucius Philippus.

At which time they say that in the senate, when someone asked in wonder whether Philippus thought Pompey ought to be sent out as proconsul, Philippus said, "Not I — but rather in place of the consuls," implying that neither of the men then serving as consuls was worth anything.

When Pompey had taken hold of Iberia, as is usual before a new commander's reputation is established, he made men change their allegiance according to their hopes, and the peoples not very firmly attached to Sertorius were stirred and began to change sides; Sertorius let loose contemptuous remarks about Pompey, jesting that he would deal with this mere boy using nothing but a switch and a whip, were it not for his fear of that old woman — meaning Metellus.

In fact, though, he was guarding himself very carefully and, fearing Pompey, was generalling more cautiously. For Metellus, contrary to what anyone would have expected, had grown soft in his manner of living, giving himself over entirely to pleasures, and a great change toward ostentation and extravagance had suddenly come over him, so that this too brought Pompey a remarkable goodwill along with glory, since by contrast he intensified the plainness of his own way of life, which by nature required little effort — for he was by nature temperate and disciplined in his desires.

The war took many forms, but what most distressed Pompey was the capture of Lauro by Sertorius. For thinking he had surrounded Sertorius, and having boasted rather grandly of it, he himself suddenly found that he was the one encircled; and being afraid to move because of this, he watched the city burn while he himself stood by. He did, however, defeat Herennius and Perperna, commanding officers among those who had fled to Sertorius and served as generals for him, near Valentia, killing more than ten thousand.

Elated by this success and full of confidence in himself, he hurried against Sertorius alone, so that Metellus would have no share in the victory. Near the river Sucro, with the day already ending, they joined their forces in battle, each side fearing that Metellus would arrive — the one fighting as though alone, the other as though against him alone.

Now the outcome of the battle was doubtful, for each side's opposite wing won; but of the two commanders, Sertorius came off with the greater advantage, for he routed the force opposed to himself. Against Pompey a huge man, on foot against his horse, charged; and when they closed together and grappled hand to hand, the sword-blows fell upon the hands of both, though not equally — for Pompey was only wounded, while he cut off the other man's hand,

but as more men rushed together upon him, the rout having already begun, he escaped unexpectedly by letting go his horse to the enemy, decked as it was with golden trappings and ornament worth a great deal. For as they divided this booty among themselves and fought each other over it, they were left behind.

At daybreak both sides drew up again, each confirming their claim to victory, but when Metellus approached, Sertorius withdrew, his army scattering. Such were the dispersals and regatherings of his men that Sertorius was often wandering with only a handful, but often again marched forth at the head of some hundred and fifty thousand men, swelling like a torrent that suddenly fills up.

Pompey, then, after the battle, once he had gone to meet Metellus and the two drew close together, gave his lictors orders to dip their rods, showing deference to Metellus as the man of higher rank. But Metellus prevented even this, and was in all other respects a generous man toward him, granting himself nothing more as a former consul and elder — except that the watchword, when they camped together, was sent out to everyone by Metellus; for the most part, though, they camped separately.

For the enemy, resourceful and adept at turning up in many places over a very brief span, kept shifting his engagements and so cut the two commanders apart and held them separated; and finally, cutting off their supplies, ravaging the country, and mastering the sea, he pushed them both out of the region of Iberia he controlled, compelling them to seek refuge in provinces not their own for want of supplies.

Pompey, having spent and used up most of his own wealth on the war, asked the senate for money, warning that he would bring his army back to Italy should they fail to send it. Lucullus, who was consul at the time and at odds with Pompey, but was angling for the Mithridatic war for himself, hastened to have the money sent, fearing to give Pompey a pretext, if refused, to abandon Sertorius and turn against Mithridates — a splendid opponent for reputation, but one who looked easy to handle.

Meanwhile Sertorius died, murdered treacherously by his own friends; of whom Perperna, the chief instigator, attempted to do the same things Sertorius had done, starting from the same forces and resources, but without the same judgment in using them. Pompey at once marched against him, and perceiving that Perperna was floundering in his handling of affairs, set out ten cohorts as bait for him, ordering them to scatter over the plain.

When Perperna turned toward these and pursued them, Pompey appeared with his full force, joined battle, and defeated them all, and most of the commanders were destroyed in the battle; Perperna was brought to him and he had him killed — not ungrateful nor forgetful of what had happened around Sicily, as some accuse him, but acting from a great and salutary judgment for the good of the whole state.

For Perperna, having gotten possession of Sertorius's papers, was showing letters from the most powerful men in Rome, who, wanting to overturn the present state of affairs and change the constitution, had been inviting Sertorius into Italy. Pompey, fearing this — that it might kindle wars greater than those just concluded — put Perperna to death and consigned the letters to the fire unread.

After this he remained as long as was needed to stamp out the greatest disturbances and settle and dissolve the most inflamed affairs, then led his army back into Italy, arriving as it happened just as the war against the slaves was at its height. For this reason Crassus the general hurried the battle recklessly, and had good fortune, killing twelve thousand three hundred.

Nevertheless, fortune somehow contrived to give Pompey a share even in this success: some five thousand men fleeing the fight crossed his path, and once he had wiped them out to the last man, he sent word ahead to the senate that while Crassus had beaten the gladiators in open combat, it was he who had torn out the war entire, roots and all. And the Romans were glad, out of goodwill toward him, to hear and to say this. Yet as for Iberia and Sertorius, no one, even in jest, would have called that the achievement of anyone but Pompey.

Amid such honor and expectation surrounding the man, there was nevertheless also a certain suspicion and fear, that he would not give up his army, but would march with arms straight toward sole rule, following Sulla's model of government. For this reason, no fewer were those who ran to greet him and pay their respects along the road out of fear than those who did so out of goodwill.

But when Pompey had removed even this suspicion, by announcing beforehand that he would disband his army after the triumph, one complaint remained available to those who begrudged him: that he was attaching himself to the people rather than to the senate, and had resolved to restore the office of tribune, which Sulla had abolished, and to grant it as a favor to the multitude — which was indeed true.

For there was nothing the Roman people had ever loved so madly or longed for so much as to see that office restored again, so that Pompey too counted the occasion of this political move a great stroke of luck, reckoning that he could have found no other favor with which to repay the goodwill of the citizens, if someone else had gotten to it first.

When, then, a second triumph and the consulship were voted to him, he did not seem wonderful and great on that account so much as by this token of his distinction: that Crassus — a man who among the politicians of that time was richest, and ablest at speaking, and greatest — though he looked down on Pompey himself and on everyone else besides, did not dare to seek the consulship until he had asked Pompey for it.

And indeed Pompey was pleased, having long wished for some occasion to do Crassus a service and show him goodwill; so that he welcomed the request eagerly and canvassed the people on Crassus's behalf, promising that he would owe no less gratitude for it than for the office itself.

Nonetheless, once they were declared consuls, they disagreed on everything and clashed with one another. In the senate Crassus had more influence, but among the people Pompey's power was great. For he restored the tribunate to the people, and allowed the courts, once again, to be transferred by law to the equestrian order. And he gave the people a most delightful spectacle, when he himself begged to be excused from further military service.

It is, in fact, a Roman practice that knights who have finished their legally required years of service must bring their mounts down to the forum in front of the two officials known as censors; there each man lists the generals and commanders he served under, gives an account of his conduct, and is then released from duty, receiving praise or blame fitting to how he had lived.

So on that occasion the censors Gellius and Lentulus presided in full state, and the parade of knights being scrutinized was already under way, when people caught sight of Pompey descending toward the forum from higher ground, dressed in the remaining marks of his rank yet himself guiding his own horse on foot. Once he drew close enough to be plainly recognized, he told the lictors to clear a path and led the horse up to the platform.

The people were struck with wonder, and there was complete silence, while the magistrates felt both awe and joy at the sight. Then the elder censor asked him: "I ask you, Pompey Magnus, whether you have served all the campaigns required by law?" And Pompey answered in a loud voice, "All of them," he said, "I have served, and all of them under myself as commander." Hearing this, the people cried out, and it was no longer possible to hold back the shout for joy; and the censors rose up and escorted him home, granting this favor to the citizens who followed along, clapping.

Now when Pompey's term of office was already coming to its end, and the quarrel with Crassus was growing, a certain Gaius Aurelius, a knight who kept clear of public affairs, stepped forward while an assembly was underway, climbed onto the platform, and declared that Zeus had come to him in a dream, instructing him to tell the consuls they must not step down from their posts until they had made peace with each other.

At this, Pompey remained quiet, but Crassus, reaching out his hand and speaking to him, said: "Citizens, I regard it as nothing shameful or low to be the one who yields first to Pompey — a man you deemed worthy of the name Magnus before his beard had even come in, and to whom you granted two triumphs before he had so much as sat in the senate." Upon these words the two were reconciled and stepped down from office together.

And Crassus kept to the manner of life he had chosen from the beginning, while Pompey withdrew from most of his advocacy work, and little by little gave up the forum, and rarely went out in public, and always with a crowd — since one could hardly encounter him or catch sight of him except amid a crowd — but he showed himself most gladly together with many people all at once, wrapping himself in this way in a certain solemnity and weight for the public eye, thinking he ought to keep his dignity untouched by frequent and familiar dealings with the many.

For a life spent in the toga is precarious in regard to loss of repute for men who have become great through arms, and ill-suited to the equality of the common people. For such men think it right to hold first place there too, just as in the field; yet for those who fall behind there, it is unbearable if such men do not, at any rate, have no more than others here. Hence they take the man who is brilliant in camps and triumphs, and, once they catch him in the forum, bring him under their hand and cast him down; but to the man who declines and withdraws, they preserve his honor and power there without begrudging it. And events themselves made this clear not long after.

For the power of the pirates first set out from Cilicia, taking a beginning that was hazardous and went unnoticed, but it gained spirit and daring during the Mithridatic war, having lent itself to the service of the king.

Then, when the Romans fell to fighting among themselves in civil wars at the very doors of Rome, the sea, left without any guard, drew them on little by little and led them forward, so that they no longer attacked only those sailing upon it, but even cut off islands and coastal cities. And by now men powerful in wealth and brilliant in birth and reputed to excel in intelligence were embarking upon piratical enterprises and taking part in them, as though the work brought with it a certain glory and ambition.

And there were pirate anchorages and fortified watch-towers in many places, and fleets fell upon their prey equipped not only with crews of fine manpower, nor with the skill of their helmsmen, nor with the speed and lightness of their ships trained for their proper work — but rather the invidious arrogance of them was what troubled people more than their fearsomeness: gilt-tipped masts, canopies dyed purple, and oars plated with silver — as though they took pleasure in their crimes and paraded them with pride.

Flute music, harp-playing, and drunken feasting up and down every coastline, together with the abduction of officials and the holding of whole towns for ransom, brought shame upon Roman power. The pirate fleet by now counted over a thousand vessels, and the towns they had seized numbered four hundred.

And they attacked and plundered temples formerly inviolate and unapproached: the Clarian, the Didymaean, the Samothracian; the temple of Chthonia at Hermione, and that of Asclepius at Epidaurus, the shrine of Poseidon situated at the Isthmus, another at Taenarum, and another at Calauria; and of Apollo the one at Actium and at Leucas; and of Hera the one at Samos, the one at Argos, the one on the Lacinian promontory. And they themselves offered strange sacrifices, those of Olympus, and performed certain secret rites, of which that of Mithras survives even to this day, first introduced by them.

Having insulted the Romans in very many ways, they climbed up from the coast onto the highways themselves and pillaged travelers, and stripped out nearby farms. On one occasion they even captured two praetors, Sextilius and Bellinus, still dressed in their purple-trimmed togas, and carried them off along with their attendants and lictors together with them. And the daughter of Antonius, a man of triumphal rank, was captured while walking to her country estate, and was ransomed for a great sum of money.

But this was the most insolent thing of all. Whenever a prisoner shouted out his Roman citizenship and gave his own name, they pretended to be terrified and afraid, and struck their thighs and fell before him, begging his pardon; and he believed it, seeing them humbled and pleading — whereupon some of them put shoes on his feet, and others threw a toga around him, so that, forsooth, he might not again go unrecognized.

After mocking and amusing themselves with the man in this way for a long time, at last, in the middle of the open sea, they would set up a ladder and bid him disembark and go off rejoicing; and if he refused, they themselves would push him overboard and drown him.

This power spread over practically the whole of our sea at once, so that it became unnavigable and impassable for all trade; and this above all turned the Romans, who were being squeezed in their market and expecting a great scarcity, to send out Pompey to strip the sea of the pirates. Gabinius drafted the law —

one of Pompey's intimates — a law that gave him not merely command of a fleet but outright monarchy and power over all mankind unaccountable to anyone. For the law gave him rule over the sea within the Pillars of Heracles, and over all the mainland to a distance of four hundred stadia from the sea — a measure which escaped very few places at all in the Roman world, but rather embraced the greatest of the nations and the most powerful of the kings.

In addition, fifteen legates were his to select from among the senators to head the different commands, and to take as much money as he wished from the treasuries and from the tax-farmers, and two hundred ships, being master of the number and the levy of the army and of the rowing-crews. When these terms were read out, the people received them with extraordinary enthusiasm, but to the greatest and most powerful men of the senate it seemed that such unlimited and undefined authority, beyond mere envy, was a thing to be feared.

Hence they opposed the law — all except Caesar; he spoke in favor of the law, caring very little for Pompey, but ingratiating himself with the people and winning them for himself from the outset. But the others attacked Pompey vehemently. And one of the consuls, having said to him that in emulating Romulus he would not escape the same end as he did, came close to being torn apart by the crowd. But when Catulus came forward against the law,

the people, out of respect, kept a great silence; but after he had spoken at length, honorably and without malice, on Pompey's behalf, and advised them to spare him and not to expose such a man to danger upon danger and war upon war, he said, "But if you should lose this man, who else would you have in his place?" And with one voice they all cried back, "You yourself."

Catulus, then, since he could not persuade them, withdrew. But when Roscius came forward, no one would listen to him; so he signaled with his fingers that they should choose not Pompey alone, but a second man besides him. At this, it is said, the people, angered by this, let out such a roar that a crow passing overhead above the forum was knocked senseless and dropped down among them.

Hence it seems that it is not by any breaking-up and rending of the air, which thereby takes in a great void, that falling birds slip down, but rather they are struck by the very blow of the voice, whenever a great and strong volume of sound produces a swell and wave in the air.

At that time, then, they dispersed; but on the day when they were to cast their vote, Pompey slipped away to the countryside. When he heard that the law had been ratified, he entered the city by night, thinking that a meeting and gathering to greet him in public would provoke envy. But at daybreak he came forth and offered sacrifice; and when an assembly convened on his behalf, he succeeded in having numerous additional grants voted to him beyond what had already been decreed, so that his resources were nearly doubled.

Five hundred ships in all were fitted out and crewed on his behalf, along with a hundred and twenty thousand foot-soldiers and five thousand cavalry mustered together. He selected twenty-four men of senatorial standing as suitable commanders and generals, and two quaestors were appointed to serve him. Prices of goods dropped at once, much to the people's delight, and it was said that Pompey's name alone had brought the war to an end.

Nevertheless, dividing the seas and the whole expanse of the inner sea into thirteen districts, and assigning to each a number of ships and a commander, he simultaneously scattered his forces everywhere; and whatever bands of pirates he caught in a body he hunted down at once and brought them in, while those who anticipated this and, escaping destruction, slipped away like bees into a hive, poured down from every side into Cilicia — and against these he himself set sail, having sixty of the best ships.

He did not, however, sail out against them before he had thoroughly cleansed of the pirate-nests there the Tyrrhenian sea, the Libyan, and the sea around Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, in forty days in all, sparing neither himself, tireless as he was, nor his eager lieutenants.

At Rome, since the consul Piso out of anger and envy was damaging the preparations and disbanding the crews, Pompey sent the fleet around to Brundisium, while he himself went up to Rome through Tyrrhenia. When everyone learned of it they poured out into the road, as if he had not sent them off only a few days before,

and the joy was made all the greater by the swiftness of this unexpected turn, since the market now had overflowing abundance. Because of this Piso came near to being stripped of his consulship, Gabinius already having a law drawn up for the purpose. But Pompey prevented this too, and after conducting his other business reasonably and accomplishing what he needed, he went down to Brundisium and set sail.

Though he was pressed by the occasion and was sailing past the cities in haste, he nevertheless did not pass by Athens, but went up, sacrificed to the gods, addressed the people, and immediately as he was leaving read the single-line inscriptions written for him — the one inside the gate: "So far as you know yourself to be a man, to that degree you are a god"; and the one outside: "We were expecting you, we were paying you homage, we saw you, we are sending you on your way."

Since some of the pirate bands still banding together and roaming outside had made requests of him, he treated them with fairness, and taking over their ships and their persons he did them no harm; and the rest, coming to have good hope, escaped the other commanders and delivered themselves, together with their children and wives, into Pompey's hands. He spared them all, and it was chiefly through these men that he tracked down and seized those who were still hiding, and punished them, since they were conscious of irremediable crimes against their own kind.

The majority, and the most powerful of them, kept their families, money, and useless crowd of followers stored away in strongholds and fortified towns around Taurus, while they themselves manned their ships and met Pompey as he sailed against Coracesium in Cilicia; and when battle was joined they were defeated and besieged. In the end they held out suppliant branches, giving themselves up along with every city and island under their sway, strongholds walled and hard to force and difficult of approach.

So the war was ended and the pirate bands everywhere were driven from the sea in not more than three months' time, and he took many other ships besides ninety with bronze rams. As for the pirates themselves, who numbered more than twenty thousand, he did not so much as consider killing them; but to release them and let them go, to be scattered abroad or to band together again, poor and warlike and numerous as they were, he did not think it good policy.

Reflecting, then, that by nature man neither has been nor is a savage and unsociable creature, but becomes so by departing from his nature through vice, while by habits and changes of place and manner of life he grows civilized — and that even wild beasts, when they share in a gentler mode of living, shed their fierce and savage nature — he decided to transplant the men from the sea onto land, and to give them a taste of a decent life, accustoming them to dwell in cities and till the soil.

Some, then, were received by the small and thinly-populated cities of the Cilicians, who added territory to their own and mingled the newcomers among themselves; and taking up Soli, which had recently been laid waste by Tigranes king of the Armenians, he settled many in it. To most of them he gave as a home Dyme in Achaea, a place then emptied of inhabitants and rich in good soil.

These measures those who envied him found fault with; but even those who were quite fond of him took no pleasure in what happened with regard to Metellus in Crete. For Metellus, being a kinsman of the man who had shared command with Pompey in Iberia, had been sent as praetor to Crete before Pompey was chosen; for this was a second source of piracy after the one in Cilicia, and Metellus, catching many of them, was destroying and wiping them out.

Those who still survived and were under siege sent a suppliant branch and called upon Pompey to come to the island, on the ground that it belonged to his sphere of command and everywhere fell within the measure reckoned from the sea; and he, accepting their appeal, wrote to Metellus forbidding the war, and wrote also to the cities telling them not to obey Metellus, and sent as commander one of the officers under him, Lucius Octavius,

who, entering within the walls together with the besieged and fighting alongside them, made Pompey not only odious and burdensome but even ridiculous, lending his name to unholy and godless men and wrapping his own reputation around them like a charm against harm, out of envy and rivalry toward Metellus,

for even Achilles, they said, was behaving not like a true man but like a reckless boy mad for glory, when he waved the others back and stopped them from striking Hector down, for fear that someone else might land the blow and take the credit, leaving him in second place:

so too Pompey was acting, striving to save the common enemies of all, in order to rob a general who had labored hard of his triumph. Metellus, however, did not yield, but destroyed the pirates and took vengeance on them, and as for Octavius, he heaped abuse and insult on him in the camp and let him go.

When it was reported at Rome that the pirate war was finished and that Pompey, having leisure, was going about visiting the cities, one of the tribunes, Manilius, drafted a law that Pompey should take over all the territory and forces that Lucullus commanded, adding also Bithynia, which Glabrio held, to make war on Mithridates and Tigranes, the kings, keeping also the naval force and command of the sea which he had received at the outset.

This amounted, taken all together, to placing the Roman command in the hands of one man; for whatever provinces were thought not to be reached by the former law — Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, upper Colchis, Armenia — these were added, together with the armies and forces with which Lucullus had warred down Mithridates and Tigranes.

But while Lucullus was being stripped of the glory of what he had accomplished, and was receiving a successor for his triumph rather than for his war, the aristocratic party's protest carried less weight, though they thought the man was suffering injustice and ingratitude; but bearing heavily as they did the power of Pompey, as being set up like a tyranny, they privately urged and encouraged one another to lay hold of the law and not surrender their liberty. But when the moment for action arrived,

fearing the people, they gave up, and the rest fell silent; but Catulus, after denouncing the law and the tribune at length, when he could persuade no one, kept crying out repeatedly from the platform, bidding the senate to seek out, as their ancestors had done, some mountain and cliff, where it might take refuge and preserve its liberty.

The law, then, was ratified, as they say, by all the tribes, and Pompey, though not present, was declared master of nearly everything that Sulla had held by force of arms and war in mastering the city. He himself, on receiving the letter and learning what had been decreed, with his friends present and rejoicing with him, is said to have drawn his brows together and struck his thigh and said, as one already weighed down and displeased at having to command, "Alas for these endless labors!

How much better it would have been to remain one of the unrenowned, if I am never to cease campaigning, nor ever to shed this envy and live in the country with my wife." At these words even his closest intimates could not bear his irony, knowing that, having in his rivalry with Lucullus fuel for his innate love of honor and love of power, he rejoiced all the more.

Indeed his actions soon revealed the truth, for by posting notices everywhere he called back the soldiers and summoned to himself the subject princes and kings, and in going over the country he left nothing that Lucullus had done unaltered, but he even remitted punishments to many, and took away gifts, and did everything, in short, to show, in his rivalry with those who admired the man, that Lucullus was master of nothing.

When Lucullus complained of this through friends, it was decided that they should meet together; and they met near Galatia. As befitted the greatest of generals and men who had accomplished the greatest deeds, their attendants approached bearing rods wreathed alike with laurel; but Lucullus was coming from regions green and shaded, while Pompey had happened to pass through a country much of it treeless and parched.

So when the lictors of Lucullus saw that Pompey's laurels were withered and altogether faded, they gave up a portion of their own still-fresh wreaths and used them to adorn and crown the other men's rods. Many took this as an omen that Pompey had arrived to make off with the victories and the renown that belonged to Lucullus:

Lucullus was senior both in the order of his consulship and in age, but Pompey's rank was the greater because of his two triumphs. Nevertheless, at their first meeting they conducted themselves, as far as possible, in a statesmanlike and friendly manner, extolling each other's deeds and rejoicing in each other's successes; but in their discussion they came to no fair or moderate terms at all, and even fell to abusing each other, the one taunting Lucullus with love of money, the other taunting him with love of power, and they were separated only with difficulty by their friends.

And Lucullus, in Galatia, distributed lands from among the conquered territory and other gifts to whomever he wished, while Pompey, encamping a little farther off, forbade anyone to pay attention to him, and stripped him of every soldier save sixteen hundred, men he considered, on account of their unruly disposition, both worthless to his own purposes and hostile toward Lucullus,

and besides this, openly disparaging his achievements, he said that Lucullus had been fighting against mere stage-tragedies and painted royal shadows, while for himself was left the contest against a true and disciplined force, since Mithridates was now taking refuge in shields and swords and cavalry. Lucullus, defending himself, said that Pompey was marching to fight a phantom and shadow of war, being accustomed, like a lazy bird of prey, to swoop down upon corpses left by others and tear apart the remains of wars already fought.

For in this way, he said, Pompey had inscribed his name upon the achievements of Sertorius, of Lepidus, and of the followers of Spartacus, when it was really the doing partly of Crassus, partly of Metellus, partly of Catulus. Hence it was no wonder if he was appropriating for himself the glory of the Armenian and Pontic wars too, a man who had contrived somehow or other to insinuate himself even into a triumph over runaway slaves.

After this Lucullus departed. Pompey stationed his entire fleet to watch over the waters from Phoenicia to the Bosporus, and set out in person against Mithridates, who had thirty thousand foot soldiers arrayed in phalanx formation along with two thousand horsemen, yet would not risk battle.

At first Mithridates was encamped on a strong mountain hard to attack, but abandoned it as being without water; and Pompey, occupying this very position, and inferring from the kind of vegetation there and the contour of the hillsides that water lay underground, gave orders for wells to be sunk throughout the camp; at once it overflowed with abundant water, so that it was a wonder that Mithridates had all this time remained ignorant of it.

Next, encircling him with a camp, Pompey walled him in. Mithridates, besieged for forty-five days, secretly escaped with the most vigorous part of his force, having killed those who were useless and sick. But Pompey caught up with him at last near the Euphrates and pitched camp beside him; and fearing that Mithridates might get there first and cross the river ahead of him, he led his army forward, armed, from the middle of the night,

at the very time when Mithridates is said to have seen in his sleep a vision foreshadowing what was to come. For he seemed to be sailing the Pontic sea with a favorable wind, already sighting the Bosporus, and greeting warmly his fellow-voyagers, as one rejoicing at a sure and certain deliverance; but suddenly he seemed to appear bereft of everyone, drifting on a small piece of wreckage. While he was in the grip of such feelings and visions, his friends came and roused him, telling him that Pompey was advancing.

It was necessary, then, of sheer necessity to fight in defense of the palisade, and the generals led out the force and drew it up in order; but Pompey, perceiving their preparation, hesitated to go into danger in the darkness, and thought it best only to ride around them in a circle, so that they might not escape, and to attack when it was day, since his men were superior. But the eldest of the tribunes, begging and urging him, roused him to action; for it was not altogether dark, but the moon, sinking low, still afforded a fair view of men's bodies. And this above all proved the undoing of the king's forces.

For the Romans were advancing with the moon at their backs; and as the light was low toward its setting, their shadows ran out far in front of their bodies and fell upon the enemy, who could not accurately judge the distance but, thinking them already at close quarters, hurled their javelins in vain and hit no one.

Seeing this, the Romans charged with a shout, and since the enemy no longer dared to stand but were struck with terror and fled, they cut them down, so that far more than ten thousand died, and the camp was taken. Mithridates himself at the start cut through and drove past the Romans with eight hundred horsemen, but when the rest were quickly scattered he was left with three companions, among whom was Hypsicrateia his concubine,

a woman always of a manly and daring spirit—indeed the king used to call her Hypsicrates—who at that time, wearing a Persian man's dress and mounted on a horse, neither gave out in body under the length of the ride nor wearied of tending to the king's person and his horse, all the way to their arrival at a place called Sinora, which was stocked with money and royal valuables.

From there Mithridates took costly garments and distributed them to those who had run to join him in his flight, and handed each of his friends a lethal dose of poison to keep with them, so that none should fall unwillingly into the hands of the enemy. From there he set out for Armenia to join Tigranes; but Tigranes turned him away and offered a hundred talents as a bounty for capturing him, so Mithridates skirted the springs where the Euphrates rises and fled through Colchis.

Pompey invaded Armenia at the invitation of the younger Tigranes, who had already revolted from his father, and met Pompey near the river Araxes, which rises from the same region as the Euphrates but turns off eastward and empties into the Caspian sea,

These, then, advanced together, taking over the cities as they went; but King Tigranes the elder, having recently been crushed by Lucullus, and hearing that Pompey was by nature gentle and mild, admitted a garrison into his palace, and taking his friends and kinsmen set out himself to surrender in person,

and when he arrived on horseback at the camp, two lictors of Pompey came up to him and ordered him to dismount and come on foot, for no man had ever been seen seated on a horse within a Roman camp. Tigranes obeyed even in this, and untying his sword handed it over to them; and finally, when he came before Pompey himself, he took off his tiara and made to lay it before his feet, and throwing himself down—most shameful of all—fell upon his knees before him.

But Pompey forestalled him by taking hold of his right hand and drawing him forward, and setting him near himself, with the son on the other side, said that for the rest Tigranes must blame Lucullus, for it was by him that Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, Galatia, and Sophene had been taken from him; but what he had kept until now he should keep, upon paying six thousand talents to the Romans as penalty for his wrongdoing, and that the son should be king of Sophene.

Tigranes was quite delighted at this, and once the Romans hailed him as king his joy overflowed, so he pledged half a mina of silver to every soldier, ten minae to every centurion, and a full talent to every tribune. The son, however, took offense, and when he was asked to dinner remarked that he had no need of Pompey to bestow such honors on him, since he would find some other Roman to do it. For this remark he was placed in chains and reserved for the triumph.

And not long after, Phraates the Parthian sent demanding the young man back, as his son-in-law, and asking that the Euphrates be used as the boundary of their respective realms. Pompey replied that Tigranes belonged to his father rather than to his father-in-law, and that as for the boundary, the just one would be used.

Leaving Afranius as guard of Armenia, Pompey himself marched through the nations dwelling around the Caucasus, of necessity, against Mithridates. The greatest of these nations are the Albanians and the Iberians, the Iberians reaching to the Moschian mountains and the Pontus, and the Albanians inclining toward the east and the Caspian sea,

these first granted passage to Pompey when he asked for it; but when winter overtook the army in their land and the Roman festival of Saturn was approaching, they, being no fewer than forty thousand, attempted to attack them, crossing the river Cyrnus, which has its source among the mountains of Iberia and, after taking in the Araxes flowing down out of Armenia, discharges through twelve mouths into the Caspian.

Others say that the Araxes does not join this river but flows on its own and empties near the same sea, close by. Pompey, though he was able to oppose the enemy at the crossing, allowed them to cross unmolested, and then, attacking, routed and destroyed a great multitude of them.

When the king begged and sent ambassadors, Pompey let go the wrong done and made a truce, then marched against the Iberians, a people not fewer in number but more warlike than the others, and strongly inclined to please Mithridates and thrust Pompey back.

For the Iberians had submitted neither to the Medes nor to the Persians, and they had also escaped the rule of the Macedonians, since Alexander had departed swiftly from Hyrcania. Nevertheless Pompey routed these too in a great battle, so that nine thousand were killed and more than ten thousand taken, and he invaded Colchis, and Servilius met him at the Phasis with the ships with which he was guarding the Pontus.

The pursuit of Mithridates, who had slipped away into the nations around the Bosporus and the Maeotis, presented great difficulties; and word came that the Albanians had again revolted against him. Turning against them in anger and eagerness for battle, he crossed the Cyrnus again, with difficulty and danger, since it had for a long distance been fortified with stakes by the barbarians on the far side,

and since a long, waterless, and toilsome road awaited him, he filled ten thousand skins with water and drove against the enemy, and came upon them drawn up at the river Abas, sixty thousand foot and over twelve thousand horse, most of them poorly armed and wearing the pelts of wild animals for clothing; their leader was the king's brother, a man named Cosis.

This man, once the fighting closed to close quarters, charged Pompey and caught him with a javelin in the folded seam of his breastplate; Pompey, however, drove his own weapon through him and brought him down. It is said that Amazons also joined the barbarians in this engagement, descending from the mountains around the river Thermodon, for afterward, as the Romans were stripping the barbarian dead, they found Amazonian light shields and buskins among them, though no woman's corpse turned up anywhere.

The Amazons dwell in the region of the Caucasus that slopes down toward the Hyrcanian sea, not bordering directly on the Albanians, but with the Gelae and Leges dwelling between; and each year for two months they go to meet these peoples at the river Thermodon and consort with them, and then withdraw again to live by themselves.

Once the battle was over Pompey began his march toward Hyrcania and the Caspian sea, but he was turned back by the multitude of deadly reptiles when he was still three days' journey away, and he withdrew into Lesser Armenia.

To the king of the Elymaeans and the Medes, who sent envoys, he wrote back in friendly terms; but the Parthian, who had invaded Gordyene and was cutting down those subject to Tigranes, he drove out by sending a force under Afranius, pursuing him as far as Arbelitis. As for the concubines of Mithridates who were brought to him, he took none of them for himself, but sent them all back to their parents and families; for most of them were the daughters and wives of generals and princes.

Stratonice, who held the highest rank among them and had charge of the fortress richest in gold, was, it seems, the daughter of a musician who was otherwise not very fortunate, an old man; and she had so quickly captivated Mithridates by playing the harp for him at a drinking party that he took her to his bed and sent the old man away, aggrieved at not even receiving a courteous greeting.

But when, rising about dawn, the old man saw within tables set with silver and gold cups, a great crowd of attendants, eunuchs and boys bringing him costly garments, and before the door a horse standing adorned as for one of the king's friends, he supposed the whole thing to be a mockery and a joke, and started to flee through the doors,

but the servants took hold of him and told him that a rich man had recently died and the king had given him his great house, and that these were only small first-fruits and samples of the rest of the money and property; so he hardly believed it, but at last he took up the purple robe, leaped onto the horse, and went riding through the city, shouting, 'All this is mine!'

When people laughed at him, he told them that this was not the remarkable part—what was remarkable was that he was restraining himself from pelting passersby with stones, so overcome with joy was he. Such was the lineage and stock from which Stratonice sprang. It was she who surrendered this stronghold to Pompey and lavished many gifts upon him, of which he accepted only what seemed suitable for adorning temples and lending splendor to his triumph, telling Stratonice to keep and enjoy the remainder.

In the same way, the king of the Iberians once presented him with a golden couch, a golden table, and a golden throne, urging him to accept and retain them; yet Pompey handed these over as well to the quaestors for the public treasury.

In the fortress called Caenum, Pompey came upon secret letters and papers of Mithridates, and read through them with no little pleasure, for they contained much insight into his character. They were memoranda from which it was discovered that he had done away with many others by poison, including his own son Ariarathes, and Alcaeus of Sardis, because he had beaten him in a chariot race.

There were also written accounts of dream interpretations, a number of them dreams he himself had seen, others reported by certain of his women, along with letters of an indecent nature exchanged between Monime and himself, hers to him and his to her. Theophanes claims that a speech by Rutilius was likewise discovered there, urging on the slaughter of Romans throughout Asia,

though most people reasonably suspect it to be a spiteful fabrication by Theophanes, who may have loathed Rutilius simply for being so unlike himself, but who probably acted also on Pompey's behalf, since Rutilius in his own histories had portrayed Pompey's father as a thoroughly wicked man.

From there Pompey came to Amisus and suffered a lapse deserving of censure, brought on by ambition. For after mocking Lucullus at length for issuing edicts and distributing gifts and honors while the enemy was still alive—things which victors are accustomed to do when a war is finished and settled—he himself, while Mithridates still held power in the Bosporus and had gathered a force fit to fight, acted in just the same way, as though everything were already accomplished,

arranging the provinces and distributing gifts, while many commanders and princes, and twelve barbarian kings, came to him; and so he did not even see fit, in writing back to the Parthian, to address him as King of Kings as the rest did, in order to gratify the others. But he was gripped by a certain yearning and ambition to win back Syria and push through Arabia toward the Red Sea, so as to reach the Ocean that girds the inhabited world on every side

wherever he pressed on he won; for in Libya too he was the first to advance, conquering, all the way to the Outer Sea, and again in Iberia he set the boundary of Roman rule at the Atlantic ocean, and a third time, lately, pursuing the Albanians he came within a little of driving into the Hyrcanian Sea, so that he was setting out, it seemed, to close the circuit of his campaigning at the Red Sea. For besides this he saw that Mithridates was hard to hunt down by arms, and harder to deal with in flight than in battle.

For this reason, saying that he would leave hunger as an enemy stronger against him than himself, he set guards of ships upon the merchants sailing to the Bosporus, and death was the penalty for those caught. Then, taking up the mass of his army, he led it forward in great numbers; and coming upon the men of Triarius who had fought unsuccessfully against Mithridates and fallen, and finding their bodies still unburied, he buried them all splendidly and with lavish honor — an omission which seems to have been not the least cause of the hatred felt toward Lucullus.

Having subdued through Afranius the Arabs about Mount Amanus, and having himself come down into Syria, he declared this land, since it had no legitimate kings, to fall under Rome's dominion as one of her provinces, and he subdued Judaea, and seized Aristobulus the king. Of the cities, some he founded, others he set free, punishing the tyrants who ruled in them.

Most of his days were taken up sitting as judge, settling quarrels between cities and kings, and whatever business he could not handle personally he sent his friends, just as when the Armenians and Parthians, who were at odds over a territory, submitted the decision to him, he sent three men as judges and arbitrators.

His power was famed far and wide, and his kindness and virtue were renowned no less; and by this reputation he concealed most of the wrongdoings committed by his friends and associates around him — being by nature unable either to prevent or to punish those who did wrong, yet presenting himself to those who dealt with him in such a way that they easily endured even the greed and heavy-handedness of those men.

Chief among those who swayed him was Demetrius, a freedman still young, a man of no small shrewdness in other matters, but one who made altogether too free a use of his fortune. About him a story of this sort is told: Cato the philosopher, while still young but already possessed of great reputation and great pride, went up to Antioch — Pompey not being there at the time — wishing to view the city.

He himself, as always, went on foot, while his friends rode along beside him on horses. Seeing before the gate a crowd of men in white garments, and along the road, on one side the young men drawn up, on the other the boys, separately arranged, he was displeased, supposing that all this was being done in his honor and attendance, though he wanted no such thing.

He did, however, bid his friends dismount and walk along with him; and when they had come near, the man overseeing and directing the whole arrangement, carrying a garland and a rod of office, came forward to greet them, inquiring at what point they had parted from Demetrius and when he was expected to show up. At this Cato's friends burst out laughing, but Cato said only, "O wretched city," and passed on, making no other answer.

And yet Pompey himself, being toyed with by this Demetrius and not taking offense, made the man less an object of resentment to others as well. For it is said that often, while Pompey waited in his own receptions and welcomed the other guests, Demetrius would already be reclining haughtily, with his cloak drawn over his head down past his ears.

Even before he had returned to Italy, Demetrius had acquired the most pleasant suburbs of Rome and the finest of its places of resort, and there were costly gardens named after him — and this though Pompey himself, up to his third triumph, lived modestly and simply. Later, when raising for the Romans that beautiful and famous theater, he built onto it, as a kind of appendage, a house more splendid than that theater — yet this too gave no offense — so that the man who became its master after Pompey, on entering it, marveled and asked where Pompey the Great used to dine. Such, then, is the story that is told.

As for the king of the Arabs about Petra, who formerly held Roman power in no account, but who now, in great fear, had written that he had resolved to obey and do everything commanded, Pompey, wishing to confirm this resolve of his, marched against Petra — a campaign not altogether free of censure among most people;

for they took it as a way of dodging the chase after Mithridates, and believed he ought instead to turn against that old adversary, who was again rekindling and preparing, as was reported, to drive an army through the Scythians and Paeonians against Italy. But Pompey, thinking it easier to destroy the man's power while he was making war than to seize his person while he fled, was unwilling to wear himself out fruitlessly in pursuit, and instead made other additions to the war and let time pass.

But fortune resolved the difficulty. For while he was no longer far distant from Petra, and had that very day pitched his camp and was exercising himself on horseback beside it, couriers rode up from Pontus bringing good news. They are at once recognizable by the points of their spears, for these are wreathed with laurel. Seeing them, the soldiers ran together toward Pompey.

He at first wished to finish his exercises, but as they shouted and pressed him, he leapt down from his horse, took the letters, and went forward. Since there was no platform, nor had time allowed a military one to be made (such a mound as soldiers normally build by cutting thick clods of turf and stacking them layer upon layer), in the eagerness and zeal of the moment they heaped together the packsaddles of the baggage animals and raised a height;

mounting upon this, Pompey announced to them that Mithridates was dead, having destroyed himself when his son Pharnaces rose in revolt, and that Pharnaces had taken possession of all affairs there, and had written making them over to himself and to the Romans.

After this the army, giving itself over to rejoicing, as was natural, passed the time in sacrifices and feastings, as though ten thousand enemies had died in the person of Mithridates alone. Pompey, having set a crown, so to speak, upon his own deeds and campaigns not at all so easily expected as this, at once broke camp from Arabia;

and quickly passing through the provinces that lay between, he arrived at Amisus, and there found many gifts that had been sent by Pharnaces, and many bodies of the royal household, and the corpse of Mithridates himself, not altogether recognizable by its face, for those who embalmed it had failed to remove the brain; but those who wished to view it recognized it by its scars.

Pompey himself could not bear to look upon it, but, discharging what was due to the dead as a matter of religious scruple, sent it off to Sinope; and he marveled at the size and splendor of the clothing Mithridates had worn, and of his arms. And yet the sword-belt, which had cost four hundred talents to make, was taken by Publius and sold off to Ariarathes, while the tiara, a piece of astonishing workmanship, Gaius, the foster-brother of Mithridates, secretly gave, at his request, to Faustus the son of Sulla; this at the time escaped Pompey's notice. Pharnaces, learning of it later, punished those who had taken these things.

Having settled and arranged affairs there, Pompey now conducted the rest of his journey in a more festive fashion; for on arriving at Mytilene he set the city free, on account of Theophanes, and watched the traditional contest of the poets, which had as its single subject his own deeds; and being delighted with the theater, he had its shape and design traced, meaning to build one like it, but greater and more magnificent, at Rome.

Coming to Rhodes, he heard all the sophists, and gave each a talent as a gift; Posidonius even wrote down the discourse he delivered before him, in which he argued against Hermagoras the rhetorician on the question of general topics. At Athens his behavior toward the philosophers was much the same;

and having given the city fifty talents for repairs, he hoped, most splendid of men, to set foot in Italy and, longing to be seen, to be seen by those at home who longed for him. But it seems that whatever divine power is charged with always mixing some portion of ill into the bright and great goods that come from fortune had long been secretly at work preparing for him a more painful homecoming.

For Mucia had behaved shamefully during his absence abroad, and while Pompey was far off he made light of the report; but when he had come near Italy, and, with more leisure for reflection, had, it seems, taken the charge to heart more seriously, he sent her a bill of divorce, neither then in writing nor afterward in speech explaining the grounds on which he divorced her; but the charge is set down in the letters of Cicero.

All manner of reports about Pompey were falling upon Rome in advance of him, and there was great tumult, as if he would at once lead his army against the city and a firm monarchy would result. Crassus gathered up his money and his children and left the city, either because he truly feared, or, as seemed more likely, because he wished to lend credit to the slander and make the ill-will against Pompey harsher.

As soon as Pompey set foot in Italy, he gathered the soldiers into an assembly, and after addressing them fittingly and speaking kindly to them, he bade each disperse to his own city and turn to his own affairs, remembering only to assemble again with him for the triumph. And so, when the army had thus been scattered and everyone was inquiring what would happen, an astonishing thing came to pass:

for the cities, seeing Pompey the Great passing through unarmed and with only a few of his intimates, as though returning from some other kind of journey abroad, poured out in goodwill and, escorting him, brought him into Rome with a greater force than before — had he then had any design to stir up revolution — though he had no need at all of that army.

Since law forbade him from setting foot inside the city until his triumph, he dispatched a request to ask the senate to postpone the consular elections, and to grant him this favor, that he might be present to help Piso in the canvass.

Cato, however, blocked the appeal, so Pompey failed to get what he wanted; still, struck with admiration for Cato's frankness and for the boldness with which he alone stood up openly in justice's defense, Pompey wanted somehow to bring the man over to his side. Cato happened to have two nieces, and Pompey hoped to marry one of them himself while giving the other to his son.

But Cato, suspecting the overture as in some sense an attempt to corrupt him by bribery through this connection, although his wife and his sister were unhappy that he would turn down a marriage tie to Pompey the Great. Meanwhile Pompey, wishing to secure the consulship for Afranius, spent money among the tribes on his behalf, and men went down to Pompey's gardens to collect it,

so that the matter became notorious and Pompey was ill spoken of, for making venal — for the benefit of those unable to acquire it through merit — that very office which he himself had won, on account of what he had accomplished, as the greatest of honors. "Yet these reproaches too," Cato said to the women, "must be shared by those who become kin to Pompey." And hearing this, they acknowledged that he judged better than they did concerning what was fitting.

For the greatness of the triumph, though it was divided over two days, the time did not suffice, but many of the things prepared fell out of the spectacle, enough in themselves to furnish the dignity and adornment of another procession; and inscriptions carried in advance declared the peoples over whom he triumphed.

The list ran thus: Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis, the Iberian people, the Albanian people, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, the lands of Phoenicia together with Palestine, Judaea, Arabia, and every last bit of the pirate power that had been subdued by land and sea. Among these, strongholds captured numbered no fewer than a thousand, cities not much short of nine hundred, pirate ships eight hundred, and colonies of cities, one short of forty.

In addition to these he declared in his dispatches that fifty million had come in from the tribute-taxes, and that from what he himself had added to the city's revenues they were now receiving eighty-five million, and that there was carried into the public treasury, in coin and in vessels of silver and gold, twenty thousand talents, apart from what had been given to the soldiers, of whom even the one who received the least share got, in proportion, fifteen hundred drachmas.

Among the captives paraded, apart from the pirate chiefs, were the son of Tigranes the Armenian together with his wife and daughter, the wife of Tigranes the king himself, Zosime, Aristobulus the king of the Jews, a sister of Mithridates and her five children, Scythian women, and hostages given by the Albanian and Iberian peoples as well as by the king of Commagene, and a great number of trophies, equal in count to all the battles which either he himself or his generals had won.

But what most contributed to his glory, and what had happened to none of the Romans before him, was that he brought home his third triumph, this time from a third continent. Others before him had likewise triumphed on three occasions, but he alone, having celebrated his first triumph over Libya, his second over Europe, and now this final one over Asia, seemed in some sense to have subdued the whole inhabited world through his three triumphs.

At that time his age was, according to those who in every way compare and liken him to Alexander and press the comparison, younger than thirty-four years, though in truth he was approaching forty. How fortunate it would have been for him had he ended his life there, up to the point where he possessed the fortune of Alexander; for the time beyond brought him successes that provoked envy, and misfortunes past all remedy.

For the power which he himself had rightfully acquired in the city, using it unjustly on behalf of others, he unwittingly stripped himself of his own glory to the very degree that he added strength to them, and by the might and greatness of his own power he was undone unawares—just as the strongest parts and positions of cities, when they admit the enemy, add their own strength to them—so through the power of Pompey, Caesar, lifted up against the city over the heads of others, overthrew and cast down the very man through whom he had gained his strength. It came about in this way.

When Lucullus returned from Asia, having been treated with contempt by Pompey, the Senate at once received him splendidly, and all the more, when Pompey arrived, in curtailing his glory they roused him to take part again in public affairs. He had otherwise grown blunted and his capacity for action had cooled, having given himself over to the pleasure of leisure and to pursuits concerned with wealth; but against Pompey he at once darted forth and, laying hold of him vigorously over the arrangements which he had undone, prevailed, and had the greater strength in the Senate, with Cato joining in the struggle beside him,

and Pompey, being cast out and pushed aside, was forced to take refuge with tribunes and to attach himself to mere youths; of these the most repulsive and most brazen, Clodius, took him up and flung him beneath the feet of the people, and kept him rolling about the marketplace unworthily, dragging him around, using him to vouch for the things written and spoken to court the favor and flattery of the mob, and moreover asking a fee for it,

as if he were not disgracing but doing him a favor—the fee which he later received from Pompey, namely, that he abandon Cicero, who was his friend and had done more than anyone in public life on his behalf. For when Cicero was in danger and asking for help, Pompey did not even come out to see him, but shut the front gate against those who came and slipped away through other doors. And Cicero, fearing the trial, withdrew quietly from Rome.

At that time Caesar, coming back from his campaign, took up a policy which brought him the greatest favor and power for the future, but did the greatest harm to Pompey and to the city. For he was seeking the consulship first; and seeing that, since Crassus and Pompey were at odds, siding with either one meant making a foe of the other, he turned instead to reconciling the two of them—a thing fine and statesmanlike in itself, but contrived by him from a base motive and with cunning, and to malicious purpose.

For the power of the city, which, like a single ship, had been balancing the opposing inclinations, once come together and made one, produced an irresistible momentum that threw down and overturned everything in its path. Cato, at any rate, used to say that those who claimed the city had been overturned by the later quarrel between Pompey and Caesar were mistaken in their blame,

for it was not their discord or their enmity, but rather their union and concord, that proved the worst calamity ever visited upon the city. For Caesar was elected consul; and immediately, to court favor with the poor and destitute, he proposed the settling of colonies in cities and distributions of land, overstepping the bounds proper to his office and turning the consulship, in a way, into something like a tribuneship,

and when his colleague in office, Bibulus, opposed him, and Cato had prepared himself most vigorously to assist Bibulus, Caesar brought Pompey forward openly onto the rostrum and, addressing him, asked whether he approved of the laws. When he agreed, Caesar said, "Then if anyone should use violence against the laws, are you prepared to defend the people?" "Certainly,"

said Pompey, "I shall come, bringing against those who threaten with swords a sword of my own, and a shield." Of nothing that Pompey had ever said or done up to that day did it seem to him that anything was more vulgar, so that even his friends made excuses, saying that the phrase had escaped him on the spur of the moment. Yet in what was done afterward it was already altogether plain that he had surrendered himself wholly to Caesar's use.

For Julia, Caesar's daughter, who had been promised in marriage to Caepio and was to be wed within a few days, Pompey married, to no one's expectation, having appeased Caepio's anger by promising him his own daughter in marriage, though she had earlier been betrothed to Faustus, Sulla's son. Caesar himself took as his wife Calpurnia, daughter of Piso.

After this Pompey, filling the city with soldiers, held everything by force. For when Bibulus the consul was coming down into the marketplace with Lucullus and Cato, men fell upon them suddenly and broke his rods of office, dumping a basket of dung over Bibulus's head from above, and injuring two of the tribunes accompanying him in the process.

Having in this manner emptied the marketplace of those who opposed them, they ratified the law concerning the distribution of lands. The people, having been won over by this bait, had by now become entirely tame and compliant to their doing, meddling in nothing but silently casting their vote in favor of whatever was proposed.

There were then ratified for Pompey the arrangements over which Lucullus had contended, and for Caesar Gaul, on both sides of the Alps, along with Illyricum, for a term of five years, together with four full legions of soldiers; and it was decreed that the consuls for the coming year should be Piso, Caesar's father-in-law, and Gabinius, the most shameless flatterer to be found among Pompey's followers.

While these things were being carried out, Bibulus confined himself indoors and would not emerge for the whole eight months of his consulship, but sent forth edicts containing accusations and reproaches against both of them; and Cato, as if inspired and possessed by a prophetic frenzy, foretold in the Senate what was to come upon the city and upon Pompey; while Lucullus, giving up, kept quiet, as one no longer of an age fit for public life—at which Pompey remarked that for an old man, indulgence in luxury was more unseasonable than engaging in politics.

Yet soon he himself was softened by love of the girl and devoted much of his time to her, spending whole days with her in the country and in gardens, neglecting what was being done in the marketplace, so that even Clodius, then holding the tribunate, came to despise him and undertook the most audacious measures; for once he had driven out Cicero,

and had sent Cato off to Cyprus on the pretext of a command, with Caesar having already set out for Gaul, and saw the people attentive to himself, since he did everything and conducted his politics to win their favor, he at once attempted to overturn some of Pompey's arrangements, and, snatching away Tigranes the captive, kept him with himself, and brought lawsuits against Pompey's friends, testing in their persons the strength of Pompey's power.

Finally, when Pompey had come forward to attend some trial, Clodius, having under him a crowd of men full of licentiousness and contempt, took his stand in a conspicuous place and put forth questions such as these: "Who is an unbridled commander? What man seeks out a man? Who is it that scratches his head using just one finger?" And they, resembling a chorus drilled to answer in unison, whenever he gave his toga a shake, would shout the answer to every question: "Pompey."

These things then vexed Pompey, who was unaccustomed to being spoken of ill and inexperienced in such a contest; but he was more distressed still on perceiving that the Senate rejoiced over him being insulted and paying the penalty for his betrayal of Cicero,

and when it happened that there were blows in the marketplace even to the point of wounds, and one of Clodius's household slaves, slipping through the crowd toward Pompey, was found out to be carrying a sword—doing this, he claimed, as a pretext, but in truth fearing Clodius's licentiousness and abuse—Pompey no longer came out into the marketplace for as long a time as Clodius held office, but stayed at home continually, deliberating with his friends how he might allay the anger of the Senate and of the leading men against him.

He did not listen to Culleo, who urged him to put away Julia and turn from friendship with Caesar toward the Senate; but he was persuaded by those who thought it right to bring Cicero back, a man most hostile to Clodius and most dear to the Senate. And bringing forward Cicero's brother, who begged on his behalf with a great following, after wounds had been inflicted in the marketplace and some men killed, he prevailed over Clodius.

And Cicero, having returned by law, at once reconciled the Senate to Pompey, and by supporting the grain law made Pompey in a sense master again of all the land and sea which the Romans possessed. For under his authority came harbors, markets, the disposal of crops—in a word, the affairs of those who sailed the sea and of those who worked the land.

Clodius, however, charged that the law had not been written because of the grain shortage, but that the grain shortage had come about so that the law might be passed—as though Pompey, his power fading away as if in a swoon, were rekindling and reviving it by a fresh command. Others declare this to have been a device of Spinther the consul, to shut Pompey up in a greater office so that Spinther himself might be dispatched to assist King Ptolemy.

Nonetheless Canidius, while holding the tribunate, brought in a law that Pompey, without an army, taking only two lictors, should reconcile the king to the Alexandrians; and Pompey seemed not to be displeased with the law, but the Senate rejected it, giving as a decent pretext that they feared for the man's safety. There were letters found scattered about in the marketplace and near the senate-house, purporting to be from Ptolemy, asking that Pompey be given to him as commander in place of Spinther.

Timagenes, however, says that Ptolemy departed when there was otherwise no necessity for it, and that he abandoned Egypt because persuaded by Theophanes, who was working to secure for Pompey both financial gain and the occasion of a new command. But this account is made less credible not so much by the wickedness of Theophanes as it is made incredible by Pompey's own nature, which had nothing of malice or servility in its love of honor.

Being placed in charge of the management and business of the grain supply, he sent legates and friends to many places, while he himself sailed to Sicily and Sardinia and Libya, gathering grain; and when about to put to sea, with a great wind blowing and the pilots hesitating, he was the first to go aboard and, ordering the anchor to be raised, cried out: "Sailing is a necessity, living is not."

Employing such boldness and eagerness, together with good fortune, he filled the markets with grain and the sea with ships, so that the abundance of that provisioning sufficed even for peoples beyond, and there came, as if from a spring, a plentiful outflow to all.

At this time the Gallic wars raised Caesar to great heights; and though he seemed to be very far from Rome and entangled with the Belgae, the Suebi, and the Britons, he was, by his cleverness, unnoticed, working out Pompey's political overthrow in the very midst of the people and amid the most decisive affairs.

He himself, wearing the army as a body around himself, was not exercising it against the barbarians, but training it, as if in hunts and huntings, on the contests fought against those men, and was making it invincible and formidable; and the gold and silver and further plunder, together with whatever riches had piled up from so many wars, he dispatched to Rome, and, testing men with bribes and subsidizing aediles and praetors and consuls and their wives, he made many his own.

So that when he had crossed the Alps and was wintering at Luca, while a great multitude of other men and women competed and streamed to him, two hundred senators, among whom were Pompey and Crassus, were seen at Caesar's doors, and one hundred twenty rod-bundles belonging to proconsuls and praetors.

All the rest, then, he filled with hopes and money and sent off, but with Crassus and Pompey agreements were made with him: that they should stand for the consulship, and that Caesar should assist them by sending many of his soldiers to the vote, and that once they had won election, they would secure provincial governorships and military commands for themselves, and would extend by five further years the commands Caesar already held.

When these things were carried out to the many, the leading men bore it badly; and Marcellinus, standing before the people opposite both of them, asked whether they were going to stand for the consulship. And when the many bade them answer, Pompey spoke first, saying that perhaps he would stand, and perhaps he would not; but Crassus answered more like a statesman, for he said he would do whichever course he thought would benefit the commonwealth.

When Marcellinus pressed hard upon Pompey and seemed to speak vehemently, Pompey said that Marcellinus was the most unjust of all men, since he felt no gratitude for having become, thanks to him, eloquent from being speechless, and given to vomiting from having been given to hunger.

Nevertheless, when all the others gave up canvassing for the consulship, Cato persuaded Lucius Domitius and encouraged him not to withdraw; for the struggle, he insisted, concerned not a magistracy but liberty, against the tyrants. But Pompey's party, fearing the vigor of Cato, lest he should draw off the whole senate and turn the sound part of the people, did not allow Domitius to be brought down to the forum,

but sent armed men against him and killed the torch-bearer who led the way, and put the others to flight; last of all Cato withdrew, wounded in his right forearm while defending Domitius. Having thus made their way to office by such a path, they conducted the rest no more decorously. But first, as the people were selecting Cato for the praetorship and casting their ballots, Pompey broke up the assembly, alleging unfavorable omens, and in place of Cato they proclaimed Vatinius, having corrupted the tribes with money.

Then, through Trebonius as tribune, they brought in laws granting Caesar, as had been agreed, a second five-year term added on, and giving Crassus Syria and the campaign against the Parthians, and to Pompey himself all Libya and both Spains and four legions of soldiers, of which he lent two to Caesar when he asked for them for the war in Gaul.

Crassus went out to his province after being released from the consulship, but Pompey, having dedicated his theater, held gymnastic and musical contests at its consecration, and contests of wild beasts, five hundred lions being slain, and, to crown it all, the fight of elephants, a most astonishing spectacle, he provided.

Admired and beloved for these things, he again incurred no less envy, because, after handing over his armies and provinces to friendly legates, he himself spent his time in the resort-towns of Italy, moving now here now there with his wife, whether because he loved her, or because he could not bear to leave her when she loved him; for this too is said,

and the girl's devotion to her husband was much talked of, though she was not, by her age, one who would naturally long for Pompey; but the cause seems to have been both the man's self-restraint, in knowing only his wedded wife, and his dignity, which was not harsh but had a graciousness in its company most apt to win women over — if indeed one must not disbelieve even Flora the courtesan's testimony —

So then, at the aedilician elections, when some men came to blows and not a few were killed around him, he came away drenched in blood and changed his clothes; and when much confusion and running to the house occurred among the servants carrying the clothes, the girl happened to be pregnant, and seeing the toga stained with blood, she fainted and barely recovered, and from that disturbance and shock she miscarried.

Hence not even those who most blamed Pompey's friendship with Caesar found fault with his love for his wife. But afterward, having conceived again and borne a female child, she died of the pains of labor, and the child did not survive many days. And though Pompey had prepared to bury the body at Alba, the people, forcing the matter, brought it down to the Field of Mars, showing favor more out of pity for the girl than as a courtesy to Pompey and Caesar.

Of these very honors the people seemed to grant the greater share to Caesar, absent, than to Pompey, present, for at once the city was in ferment, and all affairs were in turmoil and full of divisive talk, on the ground that the family bond, which had before rather veiled than restrained the two men's love of power, had now been removed.

Not long after, news came that Crassus too had perished among the Parthians; and this, being a great hindrance to civil war breaking out, was now removed from the way; for fearing him, both men had somehow kept to their mutual just dealings. But when fortune took away the one who sat as umpire of the contest, at once one could apply the comic line, that each one anoints himself against the other and dusts his hands.

So small a thing is fortune compared to nature. For it does not satisfy its desire, when so great a depth of dominion and such vastness of scope did not content two men; but though they heard and read that "all things are divided threefold" among the gods, and "each has his portion of honor," they did not think the empire of the Romans sufficient for themselves, being two.

And yet Pompey once told the people that every magistracy had come to him sooner than he had anticipated, and that he had relinquished each one earlier than others had expected. And indeed the disbandings of his armies always bore witness to this, by Zeus. But now, thinking that Caesar would not give up his forces, he sought to make himself secure against him by means of civic offices, but attempted no other innovation, nor did he wish to seem to distrust him, but rather to look down on him and hold him in contempt.

But when he saw that offices were not being decided according to his judgment, the citizens being bribed, he allowed anarchy to arise in the city, and at once much talk went round concerning a dictator, which Lucilius the tribune was the first to dare bring forward publicly, urging the people to choose Pompey dictator. When Cato took hold of the matter, Lucilius ran the risk of losing his tribuneship, but many of Pompey's friends came forward and pleaded on his behalf that he neither needed nor wanted that office.

When Cato praised Pompey and urged him to take care for good order, he then, out of shame, took care of it, and Domitius and Messala were established as consuls. But later, when anarchy again arose and more men were now raising the talk of a dictator more boldly, Cato's party, fearing they would be forced to yield, resolved to grant Pompey some legal office themselves, to divert him from that unmixed and tyrannical one,

and Bibulus, though an enemy of Pompey, was the first to declare his opinion in the senate: that Pompey should be made consul with no colleague; for either the city would be delivered from its present disorder, or it would find itself enslaved to the strongest man. And when the proposal seemed paradoxical because of the man who made it, Cato stood up, and having given the impression that he would speak against it, when silence fell he said that he himself would not have brought forward the proposal now before them, but that, once brought forward by another, he urged that it be adopted, choosing any government whatsoever rather than anarchy, and believing that no man could govern more capably than Pompey amid such great disturbances.

When the senate accepted this, and voted that Pompey, once elected consul, should rule alone, but that if he himself should want a colleague, he might, after two months had passed, choose one on approval, Pompey, having been thus established and declared consul through Sulpicius as interrex, greeted Cato warmly, acknowledging much gratitude and urging him to become his private counselor in the exercise of office.

But Cato said Pompey owed him no gratitude, for it was not for Pompey's sake that he had said anything of what he had said, but for the city's; and he would be his private counselor if called on privately, but if not called on, he would declare his opinion publicly. Such, then, was Cato in all things.

Pompey, having entered the city, married Cornelia, daughter of Metellus Scipio, not a virgin, but a widow lately left by Publius, the son of Crassus, to whom she had been joined from her maidenhood, he having died among the Parthians. The girl possessed many charms apart from those of youth. For she was well trained in letters and in the lyre and in geometry, and was accustomed to listen to the discourses of philosophers to good purpose.

And along with these there was in her a character free of unpleasantness and pedantry, faults which such learning tends to fasten on young women; and her father was blameless both in birth and reputation. Yet the marriage did not please some, on the ground that it was not suited to their ages; for Cornelia was of an age fit to be married to his son, rather than to him.

while the more refined thought that Pompey had overlooked the state of the city, which was in such troubles that it had chosen him alone as its physician and entrusted itself to him alone: yet he crowns himself and celebrates a wedding, when he ought to have considered his very consulship a calamity, one that would not have been given him so unlawfully had his country been prospering,

But when he took charge of the trials for bribery and corruption, and having written laws according to which the trials were conducted, he in other respects presided with dignity and integrity, providing security and order and quiet by sitting personally at the courts with armed men — yet when Scipio his father-in-law was on trial, he sent home and solicited help from the three hundred and sixty jurors, and the prosecutor gave up the case on seeing Scipio being escorted from the forum by the jurors themselves; so he was again spoken ill of,

and still more because, having by law abolished the practice of testimonials of praise being given for men on trial, he himself came in to praise Plancus. And Cato — for he happened to be sitting as a juror — covering his ears with his hands, said that it was unlawful for him to hear praises spoken in violation of the statute.

For this reason Cato was rejected before the vote was taken, but Plancus was convicted by the other jurors, to Pompey's shame. And indeed a few days later Hypsaeus, a man of consular rank, being a defendant in a suit, watched for Pompey as he was returning from the bath to dinner, and, seizing his knees, begged him as a suppliant. But Pompey passed by scornfully, saying that he was spoiling his dinner and accomplishing nothing else. So, seeming thus to be unequal in his dealings, he incurred blame.

In all other respects he set everything in good order, and he chose his father-in-law as colleague for the remaining five months. It was voted that his provincial commands be extended four more years, and that he draw a thousand talents annually, from which he would feed and administer the army.

Caesar's friends, taking this as a starting point, thought some consideration ought to be given to Caesar as well, since he was contending in so many struggles on behalf of the empire: either he ought to obtain another consulship, or an extension of time added to his command, in which no one else, coming upon what he had labored for, would take away his glory, but he himself who had accomplished it would hold office and be honored in quiet.

There being a contest over these matters, Pompey, as though pleading on Caesar's behalf out of goodwill toward turning aside envy, said he had letters from Caesar wishing to receive a successor and to be released from his command; yet he said it would be well for him to be granted the right to seek the consulship even in his absence.

Since Cato and his followers objected to this and urged that Pompey, becoming a private citizen and laying down his arms, should seek some good from his fellow citizens, Pompey did not dispute the point, but as though bested, he became more suspicious than ever of his real feelings toward Caesar, and he sent word demanding the return of the troops he had loaned him, using the war against the Parthians as his stated reason. Caesar, though he knew for what purpose his soldiers were being demanded back, sent them off handsomely rewarded.

After this, Pompey, having fallen dangerously ill at Naples, recovered, and when Praxagoras persuaded the Neapolitans to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving on his behalf, the neighboring peoples imitated them, and in this fashion the custom spread across all of Italy, with cities both large and small keeping festival over many days.

No place could hold those who came from every side to meet him, but roads and villages and harbors were filled with people feasting and sacrificing. Many, wearing garlands and carrying torches, received him and escorted him on his way pelted with flowers, so that the progress and journey of his return was a most beautiful and splendid spectacle.

Yet it is said that this became no lesser cause of the war than any of those who actually brought it about. For a spirit of overreaching pride entered in along with the greatness of his joy, overturning his sober calculations about affairs; and abandoning the caution that had always kept his good fortunes and his actions secure, he fell into unmixed rashness and contempt for Caesar's power, thinking he would need neither arms nor any laborious effort against him, but would bring him down far more easily than he had built him up before.

Besides this, Appius arrived bringing back from Gaul the army that Pompey had lent to Caesar; and he disparaged much of what had been accomplished there and spread slanderous talk about Caesar, and said that Pompey himself was unaware of his own power and reputation, since he was arming himself against Caesar with other men's soldiers, when he could crush Caesar with Caesar's own troops the moment he appeared before them: so much hatred toward Caesar and longing for Pompey existed in them.

So Pompey was puffed up in this way, and became so full of such great contempt through his confidence that he laughed even at those who feared the war, and to those who said that if Caesar marched on the city, they could see no forces with which to defend against him, he told them, smiling and relaxed, to have no worries: "for wherever in Italy," he said, "I stamp my foot on the ground, there will spring up forces both of infantry and of cavalry."

By now Caesar too was pressing his affairs more vigorously, himself no longer withdrawing far from Italy, but constantly sending soldiers into the city to stand for office, and secretly undermining and corrupting many magistrates with money: among them the consul Paulus, whose support was bought for fifteen hundred talents, and Curio the tribune, who was freed by him from an unmanageable multitude of debts, and Marcus Antonius, who shared in the benefits through his friendship with Curio.

It was said that one of the officers who had come from Caesar, standing near the senate-house, on learning that the senate would not grant Caesar an extension of his command, struck his sword with his hand and said, "But this will grant it." And indeed the things being done and prepared held to this same purpose.

Curio's demands and appeals on Caesar's behalf, however, appeared more in the people's interest. For he thought it right that one of two things be done: either Pompey too should be required to give up his forces, or Caesar should not be deprived of his soldiers either; for either, becoming private citizens on equal and just terms, they would keep quiet, or, remaining rivals with what they each already held, they would likewise keep still; but whoever weakens the one side he fears doubles the very power he fears.

In response to this, Marcellus the consul called Caesar a bandit and urged that a decree be passed declaring him a public enemy unless he laid down his arms; yet Curio, together with Antonius and Piso, prevailed to expose the senate's true mind, for he called for those who demanded that Caesar alone lay down his arms while Pompey retained command to move to one side: and the majority moved.

Again, when he asked those in favor of both parties disarming and neither man retaining command to step to one side, only twenty-two stood with Pompey, while all the rest went over to Curio. And Curio, as though he had won a victory, leapt out to the people in a blaze of joy, welcomed with applause and showers of garlands and flowers, while Pompey was not present in the senate; for commanders of armies do not enter the city.

But Marcellus rose and declared that he had no patience left for debate; since he could already see ten legions crossing the Alps on the march, he himself would dispatch the man to stand against them for the sake of the fatherland.

After this they changed their clothing as though for mourning. Marcellus went through the forum to Pompey with the senate following him, and standing before him said, "I bid you, Pompey, to help the fatherland, and to use the forces already prepared, and to levy others." Lentulus, one of the consuls designate for the coming year, said the same things.

When Pompey began to levy troops, some would not obey, a few gathered reluctantly and grudgingly, but the majority cried out for reconciliation. For indeed Antonius, having overpowered the senate, read out in the assembly a certain letter of Caesar's containing proposals attractive to the crowd; for he demanded that both men leave their provinces and dismiss their military forces and place themselves at the people's disposal and submit an accounting of their acts.

Lentulus and his fellow consuls now would not convene the senate; but Cicero, just arrived from Cilicia, was working for a reconciliation, so that Caesar, giving up Gaul and dismissing all his other forces, might await his second consulship with only two legions and Illyricum.

Pompey being displeased, Caesar's friends were persuaded to give up one of the two; but when Lentulus opposed it and Cato again cried out that Pompey was making a mistake by being deceived, the negotiations for reconciliation came to no conclusion.

Meanwhile it was reported that Caesar had seized Ariminum, a great city of Italy, and was marching straight upon Rome with his whole force; but the report was untrue, since his column numbered only three hundred cavalry and five thousand infantry, and he had not waited for the remainder of his troops, which was still beyond the Alps, wishing to fall suddenly upon men who were confused and unprepared rather than give them time to fight after full preparation.

For indeed, upon reaching the Rubicon, the river that formed the border of the province assigned to him, he stood in silence and hesitated, reckoning within himself the magnitude of the daring deed; then, like those who fling themselves down from some cliff into a vast depth, closing his reasoning's eyes and veiling himself against the terror, and crying out only these words in Greek to those present, "Let the die be cast," he led the army across.

As soon as the report reached and seized hold of Rome, there came confusion and fear with amazement such as had never been before; the senate at once rushed together, hurrying toward Pompey, and the magistrates were present; when Tullus asked about the army and its strength, and Pompey, with some hesitation, said timidly that he had ready those who had come from Caesar,

and that he thought he could soon also gather together those previously enrolled, thirty thousand in number, Tullus exclaimed, "Pompey, you have misled us," and urged that envoys be sent to Caesar. And one Favonius, otherwise not a bad man, though often through arrogance and insolence thought he was imitating Cato's frankness, told Pompey to stamp the ground with his foot and call up the forces he had promised.

Pompey bore this ill-timed jest with mildness; but when Cato recalled the warning he had once given him about Caesar, back at the very beginning, Pompey replied that Cato's words had proved the truer prediction, while his own conduct had shown the greater loyalty.

Cato advised that Pompey be chosen commander with full powers, adding that it belongs to the same men both to create great evils and to end them. Cato himself then at once set out for Sicily, for that province had fallen to him by lot, as each of the others had been allotted his own. But since almost the whole of Italy was rising up, what was happening was a source of confusion.

For those coming from outside were carried by flight from every direction into Rome, while those who dwelt in Rome themselves were fleeing out and abandoning the city, which, in so great a storm and confusion, had what was useful in it weak, and what was disobedient strong and hard for its leaders to manage. For no one could put a stop to the fear, nor did anyone allow Pompey to make use of his own judgment, but whatever emotion each man he met with felt—fear, or grief, or perplexity—he would come bearing it and fill Pompey up with it in turn:

and opposite decisions won out within a single day, and he found it impossible to discover anything accurate about the enemy, because many reported whatever they happened to hear, and then grew angry with him if he disbelieved them. So then, having decided that he saw only confusion, and having ordered all the men of senatorial rank to follow him, and having declared beforehand that he would regard as belonging to Caesar's side whoever was left behind, toward late evening he abandoned the city.

The consuls fled without even performing the sacrifices customary before wars. Yet even in the midst of these terrors he was a man envied for the goodwill men bore him, because, although many criticized how he conducted the campaign, not a single person felt hatred toward the commander himself; rather, one could find more of those who, though fleeing for the sake of their freedom, were unable to abandon Pompey.

A few days later Caesar rode in and took possession of Rome, and dealt gently and calmly with everyone else, but when the tribune Metellus attempted to stop him from removing funds from the public treasury, he threatened him with death, and added to the threat a harsher remark still, saying that it was harder for him to say this than to do it.

Having thus turned Metellus aside, and having taken what he needed, he pursued Pompey, eager to drive him out of Italy before the force from Spain could reach him. Pompey, having seized Brundisium and having an ample supply of ships, at once put the consuls aboard and sent them ahead with thirty cohorts to Dyrrachium, and sent Scipio his father-in-law and Gnaeus his son to Syria to prepare a fleet.

He himself, having barricaded the gates and stationed his lightest-armed soldiers on the walls, and having ordered the people of Brundisium to stay quietly in their houses, dug up and trenched the whole city within, and filled the narrow streets with stakes except for two, through which he himself went down to the sea.

On the third day, having already quietly embarked the rest of the crowd on the ships, he suddenly raised a signal to those guarding the walls, and taking them up as they ran down swiftly, he crossed over the sea. Caesar, when he saw the walls abandoned, perceiving the flight, in pursuing them very nearly ran into the stakes and the trenches, but when the people of Brundisium told him of them, he avoided the danger, and going around the city in a circle found that all had put out to sea except two ships, which had only a few soldiers aboard.

Now others reckon Pompey's departure by sea among his best strategic feats, but Caesar himself marveled that, though holding a strong city and expecting the forces from Spain and master of the sea, he abandoned and gave up Italy. Cicero too finds fault, saying that he had followed the strategic model of Themistocles instead of that of Pericles, even though his situation matched Pericles's case rather than the other man's.

Caesar showed by his deed that he greatly feared the passage of time: for having Numerius, a friend of Pompey's, he sent him to Brundisium asking for reconciliation on equal terms; but Numerius sailed off together with Pompey. From this point Caesar, having in sixty days become master of the whole of Italy without bloodshed, wished at once to pursue Pompey, but since no ships were at hand, he turned aside and marched into Spain, wishing to bring over the forces there.

In this time a great force gathered around Pompey — his naval strength was entirely unmatched (for he had five hundred warships, and a surpassing number of light Liburnian craft and scouting vessels), and his cavalry, the flower of the Romans and Italians, numbered seven thousand, outstanding in birth, wealth, and spirit. His infantry, however, being a mixed force in need of drilling, he trained while encamped at Beroea, not idle but treating himself as though still in his prime for the exercises.

For it was a great inducement to confidence in those who watched, to see Pompey the Great, now fifty-eight years old, competing on foot among the men-at-arms, then again on horseback drawing his sword easily while his horse ran at full speed, and sheathing it again with ease, and in javelin-throwing displaying not only accuracy but strength of range that many of the younger men did not surpass.

Kings and rulers of nations came flocking to him too, and around him was a number of Roman commanders equal to a full senate. Labienus also came, deserting Caesar despite their long friendship and shared campaigns together in Gaul; and Brutus came, son of the Brutus who had been slaughtered in Gaul—a proud-spirited man who up to now had never once spoken to or greeted Pompey, holding him responsible for his father's death, but who now gave himself over to Pompey as Rome's liberator.

Cicero too, although he had written and resolved otherwise, was nonetheless ashamed not to be counted among those risking themselves first for their country. And Tidius Sextius came as well, an extremely old man, crippled in one leg, arriving in Macedonia; and while the others laughed and mocked him, Pompey, seeing him, rose up and ran to meet him, considering it a great proof when men beyond their years and beyond their strength chose to share the danger with him rather than safety.

When the senate had convened and, on Cato's motion, voted that no Roman should be killed except in battle nor any city subject to Rome be plundered, Pompey's party was loved all the more; for even those who had no stake in the war, living far off or neglected through weakness, sided with it in wish and fought for it in word on behalf of justice, holding that whoever did not delight in Pompey's victory was an enemy to gods and men alike.

Nevertheless Caesar too showed himself gracious in his successes: having captured and defeated Pompey's forces in Iberia, he released the generals and made use of the soldiers. And crossing the Alps again and hastening through Italy, he arrived at Brundisium when winter was already turning.

Crossing the sea, he himself put in at Oricum, and sending back Vibullius, Pompey's friend whom he held captive, to Pompey, he proposed that the two of them meet together and, within three days, disband all their armies, become friends, and return to Italy after taking oaths.

Pompey again took this for a trap, and hurrying swiftly down to the sea, seized positions and places that gave his infantry camps commanding ground, and harbors and landing-places favorable to those coming by sea, so that whichever way the wind blew, it carried grain, troops, or money to Pompey, whereas Caesar, hemmed in by difficulties on both land and sea, was forced by necessity to seek battle,

and in attacking the fortifications and challenging repeatedly, for the most part he won and prevailed in the skirmishes, but once he came close to being crushed and losing his army, when Pompey fought brilliantly until he had routed the whole force and killed two thousand men, but was unable — or afraid — to press the attack and burst in with them, so that Caesar said to his friends: "Today the victory would have belonged to the enemy, if they had had a commander who knew how to win."

Emboldened by this, Pompey's men were eager to have the matter decided by battle. Pompey himself wrote to the kings, generals, and cities abroad as though he had already won, but he dreaded the risk of battle, thinking that time and shortage of supplies would defeat men who were unbeatable under arms and long accustomed to winning together,

but who, worn down by age, gave out at the rest of a campaign's demands — marches and shifts of position, the digging of trenches, the building of walls — and who therefore were eager to come to grips and grapple hand to hand as quickly as possible. Still, Pompey managed for a while, somehow, to persuade those around him to remain calm; but when, after the battle, Caesar rose up because of his shortages and marched through Athamania into Thessaly, the spirit of his men could no longer be restrained,

but shouting that Caesar was fleeing, some urged that he be followed and pursued, others that they cross into Italy, and others sent servants and friends ahead to Rome to seize houses near the forum, as though they would immediately be standing for office; and many, of their own will, sailed to Cornelia at Lesbos bringing the good news that the war was over — for there Pompey had sent her away for safety.

When the senate had gathered, Afranius declared his opinion that they should hold to Italy, since this represented the war's greatest prize, and that Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Iberia, and all Gaul would at once fall to the victors; and that of these, the country for which Pompey had the greatest concern, stretching out her hands nearby, it was not right to overlook while she was insulted and enslaved to the servants and flatterers of tyrants,

but Pompey himself thought it neither honorable for his reputation to flee from Caesar a second time and be pursued, when fortune offered him the chance to be the pursuer, nor was it pious to abandon Scipio and the consular men in Greece and Thessaly, who would immediately fall under Caesar along with great money and forces; and that Rome was best served by the man who fought for her as far away as possible, so that she might remain untouched by evils and unhearing, awaiting whoever should prevail.

Having voted these measures, he pursued Caesar, resolved to avoid battle but to besiege and wear him down by want, following close behind — for he thought this course was advantageous in itself, and also a rumor had reached him, current among the cavalry, that as soon as Caesar was routed they ought at once to be rid of Pompey himself too,

and some say that this was the reason Pompey gave no serious task to Cato, but even as he marched against Caesar left him by the sea with the baggage train, fearing that if Caesar were destroyed, he might force him too to lay down his command at once. Because he thus followed the enemy quietly, he came under blame and outcry, as though he were maneuvering not against Caesar but against his own country and the senate, so that he might rule forever and never cease making use as servants and bodyguards of men who deserved to rule the world themselves.

Domitius Ahenobarbus made him an object of envy by dubbing him Agamemnon, king of kings. And Favonius was no less unpleasant than the outspoken ones — shouting out of season in his mockery, "Men, will we not even this year get to taste the figs of Tusculum?" And Lucius Afranius, who had lost his forces in Iberia and was under suspicion of treachery, seeing Pompey now avoiding battle, said he wondered at his accusers, why they did not go out and fight against the merchant of the provinces.

Saying these things and many like them, they forced Pompey — a man too weak against reputation and too respectful of his friends — and dragged him along to follow their own hopes and impulses, abandoning the best of his calculations, a thing that would not have been fitting even for the helmsman of a ship, let alone for the supreme commander of so many nations and forces.

He, who had praised those physicians who never yield to their patients' cravings, himself gave way to the sickness of his army, fearing to become burdensome for the sake of their safety. For how could one say those men were sound of mind, when some of them, wandering about the camp, were already canvassing for consulships and praetorships, while Spinther and Domitius and Scipio quarreled and vied and paid court to one another over Caesar's office of high priest?

As if Tigranes the Armenian were encamped opposite them, or the Nabataean king—rather than Caesar himself and his forces, by which he had taken a thousand cities by storm, subdued more than three hundred nations, fought the Germans and the Gauls unbeaten in battles too many to count, taken a million prisoners, and killed a hundred thousand routed in pitched battle.

But still, pressing him and clamoring, when they came down onto the plain of Pharsalus, they forced Pompey to put the matter before a council, in which Labienus, who commanded the cavalry, was the first to rise and swear he would not withdraw from the fight until he had routed the enemy; and all the rest swore the same oath.

That night Pompey dreamed he was entering the theater and the people applauded him, while he himself was adorning a shrine of Venus Victrix with abundant spoils. Part of the dream gave him confidence, but part troubled him, for he feared that glory and splendor might come from himself to Caesar's family, which traced its descent to Venus; and certain panicked disturbances rushing through the camp startled him awake.

During the morning watch, while Caesar's camp lay in deep quiet, a great light blazed out, and from it a flame-shaped torch rose up and shot down upon Pompey's camp; and Caesar himself says he saw this while going about the watches. At daybreak, as he was about to move his camp toward Scotussa, and the soldiers were striking their tents and sending ahead the pack animals and servants, the scouts came reporting that they saw many weapons moving about in the enemy's camp, and that there was motion and the noise of men going out to battle.

After these, others arrived saying the enemy's front ranks were already forming into battle order. So Caesar, saying that the long-awaited day had arrived when they would do battle against men, not against hunger or poverty, ordered the scarlet tunic to be set out at once before his tent — for this is the Romans' signal for battle.

The soldiers, seeing it, abandoned their tents with shouting and joy and rushed to their weapons. And as the officers led them each to his assigned position, every man, like a member of a chorus, took his place in order without confusion, calmly and as though well rehearsed.

Pompey, holding the right wing himself, intended to face Antony; at the center he placed Scipio, his father-in-law, opposite Lucius Calvinus; the left wing was held by Lucius Domitius, and was strengthened by the great number of cavalry,

for there nearly all of them had streamed together, intending to overpower Caesar and cut through the tenth legion, which had the greatest reputation for being the most warlike, and in whose ranks Caesar himself was accustomed to be stationed when he fought. Seeing the enemy's left wing so fenced about with cavalry, and fearing the brilliance of their armor, Caesar sent for six cohorts from the reserve units and stationed them behind the tenth legion,

ordering them to keep quiet, unseen by the enemy; and when the cavalry rode up, to dash forward past the front lines rather than hurl their javelins, as the bravest men are accustomed to do when they hasten to draw swords, but to strike upward, wounding the eyes and faces of the enemy — for these fine, blossoming young dancers would flee rather than risk their beauty, nor would they look steadily at iron coming toward their eyes. In such matters Caesar occupied himself.

Pompey, surveying the battle line from horseback, when he saw that the enemy waited quietly and in order for the moment, whereas most of his own troops were far from steady, surging about in inexperience and confusion, feared that it would be utterly torn apart at the very start of the battle, and gave orders to those in the front ranks to stand fast with lowered spears and firmly hold their ground, receiving the enemy's charge,

a maneuver which Caesar faults: for it dulled the force of blows delivered at a run, and it also removed the counter-charging momentum that, above all, fills most men with enthusiasm and drive when they close with the enemy, a momentum that shouting and running together increase — taking this away, he says, it froze and chilled the men. Caesar's forces numbered twenty-two thousand, while Pompey's were somewhat more than double that number.

Now when the signal was given by both sides and the trumpet began to sound the call to engagement, most of the common soldiers each attended to his own affairs, but a few of the best Romans, and some Greeks present outside the fighting, as the terrible moment drew near, reflected on the greed and rivalry for power, and to what end it had brought supreme command.

For it was kindred arms and brother formations and common standards and the manpower of a single city, so great, and its own strength colliding with itself, that displayed how blind and maddened human nature becomes when it falls into passion. For it was possible for men who now wished to rule in quiet and enjoy the greatest and best part of what they had already won, land and sea obedient to their valor; and it was still possible, if they wished to gratify a love of trophies and triumphs and to slake a thirst for more, to glut themselves with Parthian or Germanic wars.

Much work was still left undone in Scythia and among the Indians, and there was a pretext not without honor for taming the barbarian world through this same greed for gain: no horsemen of Scythia, no bowmen of Parthia, no riches of India could have stood firm against seventy myriads of Romans advancing under arms, led by Pompey and Caesar, whose names those peoples had heard long before the name of Rome? So intermixed, so varied, so bestial were the nations they overcame as they advanced.

But now they came together to fight one another, without pitying even their own glory, for whose sake they had spared not their fatherland, though up to that very day they were called unconquered. For the kinship that had come about, and the charms of Julia, and that marriage, were straightway deceptive and suspect pledges of a partnership formed for expediency's sake, and had no share in true friendship.

So then, once the plain of Pharsalus lay crowded with soldiers, horses, and weapons, and both armies had raised their signals for the onset, the first to dash out from Caesar's line was Gaius Crassinius, leading a hundred and twenty men, thereby fulfilling a bold pledge he had made to Caesar.

For Caesar, going out first from the camp, had seen him, and greeting him had asked how he felt about the coming battle; and he, stretching out his right hand, cried aloud: "You will win gloriously, Caesar; and you will praise me today, whether I am alive or dead." Remembering these words, he rushed forward and drew many with him, and charged into the middle of the enemy,

and when the struggle at once came to swords and many were being slain, as he pressed forward and cut through the foremost ranks, someone standing his ground drove a sword through his mouth, so that the blade came clean through and emerged behind his neck. When Crassinius fell, the battle at that point was evenly balanced, but Pompey did not quickly bring up his right wing, but kept glancing at the other side and lingered, waiting for the work of his cavalry.

By now those horsemen were leading their squadrons up as if to encircle Caesar, and to throw the small body of cavalry posted in front of his line back upon his infantry. But when Caesar gave the signal, his horsemen withdrew, and the cohorts that had been posted for this very purpose against the encircling movement, three thousand men, ran out to meet the enemy, and standing close beside the horses, as they had been taught, used their javelins held high, aiming at the faces; and those men,

utterly inexperienced in any kind of fighting, and expecting nothing of this sort nor having learned of it beforehand, could not endure or bear the blows falling upon their eyes and mouths, but turned away, shielding their faces with their hands, and fled in disgraceful rout. Caesar's men, paying no attention to these fleeing horsemen, advanced against the infantry at the point where the cavalry wing, now stripped bare, gave them a chance to run round and encircle it.

And at the same moment that these troops fell upon the flank, and the tenth legion engaged them frontally, they could not stand their ground nor hold together, seeing themselves suffering the very thing which they had hoped to inflict on the enemy by encirclement.

When these had been routed, Pompey, seeing the dust cloud, and guessing the fate that had befallen his cavalry, it is hard to say what reasoning he used; but he seemed most like a man out of his mind and deranged in judgment, and, without even remembering that he was Pompey the Great, without a word to anyone, went off on foot at a walk to his camp, altogether fitting those verses:

"But father Zeus, throned on high, cast fear into Ajax: he stood dazed, flung down behind him the shield made of seven hides of ox, and shook with fear as he looked back upon the crowd." In just such a state he entered his tent and sat speechless, until many pursuers came rushing in together with the fleeing men. Then he uttered this one cry alone: "What, even to the camp?" And saying nothing else, he rose, and taking clothing fitting to his present fortune, slipped away.

The remainder of his legions likewise took flight, and a heavy massacre occurred among the servants and guards left behind at the tents; yet Asinius Pollio, who had taken part in that engagement on Caesar's side, reports that no more than six thousand soldiers were killed.

As Caesar's men took the camp they beheld the folly and frivolity of their enemies: for every tent was crowned with myrtle and decked with flowered couches, and tables laden with drinking cups, and mixing-bowls of wine stood set out; the arrangements and finery resembled men who had made sacrifice and were celebrating a feast, not soldiers girding themselves for combat. So corrupted were they by their hopes, and so full of senseless boldness, that they had gone forth to war.

Pompey, having gone a little way outside his camp, let his horse go, and with very few men about him, since no one pursued, went off quietly, wrapped in the kind of reflections likely to occupy a man who for thirty-four years had been accustomed to conquer and master everything, now for the first time in old age tasting defeat and flight, and considering from how many contests and wars he had built up a glory and power now cast away in a single hour,

he who but a little before had been escorted by so many arms and horses and fleets, went away now so diminished and shrunk that he escaped the notice of enemies searching for him; and passing by Larissa, when he came to Tempe, he threw himself down on his face, parched with thirst, and drank from the river, and rising again went on through Tempe, until he came down to the sea.

There he rested the remainder of the night in a fisherman's hut, and about dawn boarded a river boat, and taking with him those of his followers who were free men, and bidding his slaves go off to Caesar and have no fear, as he was carried along the coast he saw a large merchant ship about to put to sea, whose master was a Roman, not very familiar with Pompey, but who recognized his face; his name was Peticius.

It had happened that this man, in his sleep the previous night, had seen Pompey appear to him in a dream — unlike the Pompey he had often pictured before, but instead humbled and downcast — and speaking to him. And he happened to be telling this to his fellow sailors, as men at leisure are wont to talk about such great matters.

Suddenly one of the sailors, catching sight of it, reported that a river boat was being rowed out from the shore and that some men in it were waving their cloaks and stretching out their hands toward them. Peticius then halted and immediately recognized Pompey, exactly as he had appeared in his dream; and striking his own head, he commanded the crew to draw the boat up alongside, and he stretched out his right hand and called to Pompey, already understanding from the man's appearance his fortune and change of state.

Wherefore, waiting for neither invitation nor further words, but taking with him as many as he ordered — both were Lentuli, and Favonius — he was brought aboard; and a little later, seeing King Deiotarus hastening along from the shore, they took him up as well. And when supper time arrived, and the ship's master had made ready what provisions were on hand, Favonius noticed Pompey, lacking any attendant, starting to remove his own footwear; he hurried over, untied the sandals himself, and anointed him.

And from then on he continued attending and serving him in everything, just as slaves attend their masters, right down to washing his feet and getting his meal ready, so that anyone beholding the freedom and generosity of that service might have said, in its simplicity and unaffected sincerity: "Ah, how fair is everything the noble do!"

Sailing on in this manner past Amphipolis, he crossed over from there to Mytilene, intending to bring away Cornelia and his son. Having put in along the island's shore, he dispatched a messenger into the city — one who carried none of the welcome news Cornelia had been anticipating, given the cheerful reports and letters sent to her, for she believed that, with the war already settled at Dyrrhachium, all that remained for Pompey was chasing down Caesar.

The messenger, finding her still in this frame of mind, could not bring himself to greet her, but declared the greatest and worst of the misfortunes more by his tears than by his voice, and bade her hasten, if she wished somehow to see Pompey, aboard a single ship, and that not even his own. She, on hearing this, threw herself down to the ground and for a long time lay senseless and speechless; but at last, coming somewhat to herself and realizing that this was no time for lamenting and weeping, she ran through the city to the sea.

And when Pompey met her and received her into his arms as she stumbled and fell about him, she said, "I see you, husband, brought to this — not the work of your fortune, but of mine — reduced to a single small boat, you who before your marriage to Cornelia sailed round this very sea with five hundred ships. Why have you come to see me, and did not leave me, whom an evil deity has already filled with so great misfortune, to that same fate? How fortunate a woman I should have been had I died before hearing that Publius lay dead among the Parthians, my first young husband; and how prudent had I, after his death, as I once resolved, given up my own life; but instead I was preserved, it seems, to become a calamity to Pompey the Great as well."

They say that Cornelia spoke these words, and that Pompey answered, "You knew, then, Cornelia, only one fortune, the better one, which perhaps deceived you too, because it remained with me longer than is usual. But we, being born men, must bear even this, and must still make trial of fortune. For it is not beyond hope that a man who from such heights has fallen to this can rise again from this state to those former heights."

So then his wife sent for money and servants from the city; and when the Mytilenaeans greeted Pompey and urged him to enter their city, he was unwilling, but bade them too obey the conqueror and take courage, for Caesar was reasonable and kind.

He himself turned to the philosopher Cratippus — who had made the trip down from the city to visit him — and found fault with him, and joined briefly in questioning Providence, while Cratippus yielded ground and led him on toward better hopes, so as not to be distressing or ill-timed in arguing against him.

Yet it was Pompey who was asking about Providence, while Cratippus could have shown that affairs already required monarchy because of the bad state of public life, and could have asked in turn: "How, Pompey, and on what evidence should we believe that, had victory gone to you, you would have made better use of your success than did Caesar?" But these matters must be left as they stand — the affairs of the gods.

Taking up his wife and friends, he sailed on, putting in at such anchorages as he needed for water or provisions. The first city where he landed was Attaleia in Pamphylia; there several triremes out of Cilicia joined him, and soldiers began to assemble, and again some sixty senators were about him.

Hearing also that his navy remained intact, and that Cato had gathered up a large body of soldiers and was crossing to Libya, he complained to his friends and blamed himself for letting his infantry be drawn into battle, while never making use at all of his superior and unquestioned strength at sea, nor stationing his fleet nearby, so that if he had been defeated on land he would at once have had at hand a match for it — a force and strength so great from the sea.

For no error of Pompey's was greater, nor any stratagem of Caesar's more clever, than this drawing off of the battle so far from naval support. Yet still, being forced by circumstances to judge and act on what he had, he sent around to the cities, and himself sailing about asked for money and manned ships. But fearing the enemy's swiftness and speed, lest he come upon him and snatch away his preparations before they were complete, he considered for the present a refuge and a retreat.

No province, then, appeared to them, upon deliberation, a safe place of refuge; and of the kingdoms, he himself declared that of the Parthians most capable, both of receiving and protecting them for the present, weak as they were, and afterward of strengthening them and sending them forth again with the greatest

of the forces; of the rest, some turned their thoughts toward Libya and Juba, but to Theophanes of Lesbos it seemed madness that a man should abandon Egypt, only three days' sail away, and Ptolemy — who was little more than a boy in age but bound by the friendship and favor shown his father — and instead put himself into the hands of the Parthians, the most faithless of all peoples, and be unwilling even to try the moderation of that man — a Roman, and one who had become his kinsman by marriage — content to hold second place though he might be first of all the rest,

and make Arsaces his master — a man whom not even Crassus, while he lived, had been able to bring under his power — and carry among barbarians who gauge their own greatness through arrogance and unchecked license, a young woman of Scipio's household, for whom, even if she suffers no harm, it is a terrible thing merely to be thought to have suffered harm at the hands of men able to do it. This alone, they say, turned Pompey aside from the road to the Euphrates — if indeed it was still Pompey's own reasoning, and not some divine power, that was guiding him along that road.

So then, since the plan to flee to Egypt prevailed, he set sail from Cyprus on a Seleucid trireme, his wife beside him; as for the others, some accompanied him aboard warships, while still others traveled in merchant vessels. He crossed the open sea safely, but learning that Ptolemy was encamped at Pelusium with an army, at war with his sister, he put in there, sending ahead a man to announce himself to the king and to make his request.

Now Ptolemy himself was quite young; but Pothinus, who managed all affairs, gathered a council of the most powerful men — and those were most powerful whom he himself wished to be so — and bade each speak the opinion he held. It was a terrible thing, then, that Pothinus the eunuch and Theodotus of Chios, brought in as a paid rhetoric instructor, together with Achillas of Egypt, were the ones deciding Pompey the Great's fate — for these were the foremost counselors among the rest, who were mere bed-chamberlains and nursery attendants.

And it was for the verdict of such a court that Pompey waited, riding at anchor off the coast at some distance from the land — a verdict which it was not fitting he should owe his safety to, when he might have owed it to Caesar. Now the opinions of the rest were divided only so far as this: some urged that he be driven off, others that he be summoned and received.

But Theodotus, displaying his cleverness of speech and rhetorical skill, declared that neither course was safe: if they received him, they would have Caesar as an enemy and Pompey as a master; if they drove him away, they would be blamed by Pompey for the rejection and by Caesar for the pursuit. The best course, then, was to send for him and kill him; for in this way they would gratify the one and have nothing to fear from the other. And he added, smiling, so they say, that a dead man does not bite.

Having ratified this, they entrusted the deed to Achillas. Bringing along one Septimius, formerly an officer serving under Pompey, plus Salvius, a centurion, and three or four attendants, he set out toward the vessel where Pompey waited. It happened that all the most distinguished of those sailing with Pompey had gone aboard it, so that they might see what was being done.

When, then, they saw a reception that was neither royal nor splendid nor anything like what Theophanes had hoped for, but only a few men putting out toward them in a single fishing boat, they suspected the slight, and urged Pompey to have the ship pull back out to sea, so long as they were still out of range. But meanwhile, as the boat drew near, Septimius rose first and, in Latin, addressed Pompey as Imperator.

And Achillas, greeting him in Greek, invited him to come across into the fishing boat, saying that there was a great shoal there, and that the sea, being full of sand, was not deep enough for a trireme to sail through. Meanwhile several of the king's vessels could be seen taking on crews, and troops occupied the coastline, so that flight would have looked impossible even had they reconsidered; and moreover, their very distrust would give the murderers an excuse for the wrong they were about to do.

So then, having embraced Cornelia, who was already mourning his death before it came, and having ordered two centurions to go in first, along with one of his freedmen, Philip, and a servant named Scythes, and as the men around Achillas were already, from the fishing boat, holding out their hands to him in welcome, he turned to his wife and son and spoke the iambic lines of Sophocles: whoever goes to a tyrant becomes his slave, even though he comes a free man.

Having spoken these last words to his own people, he stepped aboard; and since there was a considerable distance to the shore from the trireme, and no kindly word came from any of those sailing with him, he looked toward Septimius and said, "Surely I do not mistake you — were you not once my fellow soldier?"

And the other only nodded his head, saying nothing and showing no friendliness. Since deep silence fell again, Pompey, holding a small book in which he had written out a speech in Greek, which he had prepared to use before Ptolemy, began to read it.

As they drew near the land, Cornelia, together with his friends, watched from the trireme in great anguish over what was to come, and began to take courage on seeing many of the king's men coming down to the landing as if to meet him with honor and welcome. But right then, just as Pompey gripped Philip's hand to help himself stand, Septimius came up behind and was the first to drive his blade through him; then Salvius after him; then Achillas drew their blades.

He, drawing his toga over his face with both hands, said nothing unworthy of himself and did nothing unworthy, but only groaned, and bore the blows steadfastly, having lived fifty-nine years, and dying one day after his birthday.

Those still aboard the ships, witnessing the murder, sent up a cry loud enough to reach the shore itself, then fled, weighing anchor in a rush; a favorable breeze carried them swiftly out onto open water, and so the Egyptians, despite wanting to give chase, were forced to give up. As for Pompey, they cut off his head, and the rest of his body, naked, they threw out from the fishing boat and left for those who desired such a sight.

Philip remained beside it until they had had their fill of the sight; then, washing the body in the sea and wrapping it in one of his own tunics, since he had nothing else, and looking about the shore, he found the remains of a small fishing boat, old, but enough to provide a naked and not even whole corpse with a necessary funeral pyre.

While he was gathering and putting these together, a Roman, already an old man, who as a young man had served in Pompey's first campaigns, came up and said, "Who are you, friend, who intend to bury Pompey the Great?" And when Philip said he was a freedman of his, "But this honor," he said, "shall not be yours alone: let me too be received as a partner in this pious find, so that I may not entirely resent my exile, having gained this at least in place of many griefs — to touch and to wrap with my own hands the greatest commander of the Romans."

So Pompey was given his funeral rites. The following day, Lucius Lentulus, unaware of these events, was sailing over from Cyprus and hugging the coastline, when he saw a pyre for a dead man and Philip standing beside it, and, not yet himself observed, said, "Who, I wonder, has finished his fate here and found his rest?" And after a short pause, sighing, he said, "Perhaps it is you, Pompey the Great." And a little later, having gone ashore, he was seized and put to death.

That was how Pompey's life came to a close. Before much time passed, Caesar, coming to Egypt, so polluted by so great a crime, turned away from the man who brought him the head, as from a murderer; but on receiving Pompey's signet ring, he wept — the engraving on it was a lion holding a sword. Achillas and Pothinus he had put to death; and the king himself, defeated in battle, disappeared near the river.

As for Theodotus the sophist, justice from Caesar's hand passed him by: for he fled Egypt and wandered about, living in low circumstances and hated by all. But Marcus Brutus, when, after killing Caesar, he came to power, discovered him in Asia and, after inflicting every kind of torture upon him, put him to death. As for Pompey's remains, Cornelia received them when they were brought to her, and laid them to rest near Alba.

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