Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Pompey Magnus

Starting point is 00:00:00 Nias Pompeius was one of the most significant personalities during the late Roman Republic. He was considered a military Wunderkin, who at an early age was given great responsibilities and never failed to deliver victory. However, history remembers him not as the greatest Roman of his era, but rather as a side player in the events which brought down the Republic, and in the end, a loser on the battlefield. Learn more about the rise and fall of Pompey Magnus on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:51 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. If things had gone even slightly differently, the name Poppy might be as well known today as that of Julius Caesar. There have been several episodes of this podcast where the name Pompey has come up, and that's sort of how history views him. He was a significant player in the events which led up to the fall of the Roman Republic, but he was not the lead. However, there was a time, if you were to be transported back to ancient Rome and ask people on the street who the greatest Roman was, most of them would have said Pompey. Nias Pompeius, referred to from here on out simply as Pompey, was born in the year 106 BC.

Starting point is 00:01:41 He was born into his successful family, but not an illustrious family. His father, Nias Pompeius Strabo, was the first of his family to become a senator, eventually rising to the rank of consul in 89 BC. Pompey's public career began serving under his father during the Social War, which took place between 91 and 87 BC. The Social War was a rebellion by various Italian allies against Rome. During a brief civil war during this period, Pompey's father died, and Pompey took over his father's debts, his estate. One of the figures to come out of the social war was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who has also been mentioned in several episodes. After the war, Sulla was sent off to fight King Mithridates of Pontus in the first Mithridic War, which caused enormous controversy.

Starting point is 00:02:27 And when Sulla came back in 83 BC, it sparked the largest civil war that Rome had ever seen up to that point. Sulla landed his forces in Brudisium in the southern part of Italy. Poppy, who had raised his own army, decided to back Sulla and mark the war. south to link up with him. Pompy distinguished himself during the Civil War earning the respect of Sulla, who, in no small part, managed to win and get declared dictator due to Pompey. The forces of Sulla's opponent Marius fled to Sicily in North Africa, where Pompey followed. In Sicily in 82 BC, he captured one of the leaders of the Marine forces, Nias Papyrus Carbo and had him executed. This earned him the nickname Adulis Cantulus Carnivex, or the young butcher. In North Africa,

Starting point is 00:03:11 he defeated the Marian commander Nias Demisius Ahana Barbus and opposed the king of Numidia. And around this time, after this string of successes, his troops began to call him Pompeius Magnus, or Pompey the Great, the term previously used to describe Alexander the Great. He soon formally adopted Magnus as his cognomen. Upon his return to Rome, he demanded the greatest honor that could be bestowed upon a Roman, a triumph, and he refused to disband his army until he got it. The resistance to granting him a triumph was the fact that he was only 24 years old, incredibly young for such an honor.

Starting point is 00:03:48 But Pompey was just getting started. In 76 BC, he entered Hispania to put down a rebellion by a Roman general named Quintus Sertorius. His record in Hispania wasn't perfect. He did suffer one major defeat, but in the end, he won and managed to restore Roman rule to the region while at the same time building his own power base. While he was finishing up in Hispania, the third Servile War, broke out in the Italian peninsula. This was the slave revolt that was led by Spartacus, which I covered in a previous episode. The Romans were led by Marcus Likinius Krasis, the wealthiest

Starting point is 00:04:21 in Rome, but a man that had no military accomplishments. In 71 BC, Poppy managed to return to Italy at the very end of the campaign and was given much of the credit for ending the war, which angered Krasis to no end. His victories in Hispania resulted in him earning a second triumph, which now put him in very rare company. At this point, Pompey had become one of the senior men in Rome, and there was talk of electing him Consul. However, the minimum age to run for Consul was 42, and Pompey was only 36. The Senate passed a special resolution waiving the requirement for Pompey, and he was elected to Consul in 70 BC, alongside his nemesis Crassus.

Starting point is 00:05:00 The two men disagreed on pretty much everything, and as one consul could veto the other, almost nothing was done that year. After having served as consul, in 67 BC, Pompey was called upon to say, solve a problem that Rome had suffered for years. Pirates. Pirates had been active all over the Mediterranean, and they were hindering shipping and commerce. And they were getting worse and more organized. Pompey managed to solve the pirate problem in only 40 days. Many of the pirates gave up without a fight due to Pompey's reputation and the fact that he offered clemency to pirates who gave up. It was after this that he achieved what was arguably his greatest

Starting point is 00:05:36 accomplishment. Ever since Sulla had been sent to Pontus to fight King Mithridates, Rome had problems with him, something which I covered in a previous episode. Who did the Senate finally turn to to finish the job and defeat King Mithridates? Pompy, of course. In 66 BC, he's given control of the Roman armies in Asia Minor, and he goes on to finally and decisively beat Mithridates. However, he went much further than that. He added Pontus and the nearby region of Bithynia as Roman provinces. When the Seleucid Empire Colloquium, he was collapsed he annexed Syria as well in 64 BC. In the process, he also made Judea into a client kingdom of Rome as well. These regions were very wealthy and brought a lot of money to Roman coffers.

Starting point is 00:06:19 They also made Pompey quite wealthy as well, and grew his base of clients beyond what he had already established in Hispania and Italy. When he returned to Rome in 61 BC, he was given his third triumph, which was considered to be the greatest triumph in history, lasting a full two days, beginning on his 45th birthday. At this point, Pompey was riding high. He had more military glory than anyone else in the Republic. He had a network of clients around the Mediterranean. He was a former consul and had become incredibly wealthy.

Starting point is 00:06:50 And he was unquestionably the most popular Roman with the masses. However, Pompey was not necessarily popular with many of the senators. The Senate refused to ratify the treaties he signed while he was in the east, and they refused to distribute land to his veterans and to other land. Romans. It was at this point that he was approached by a very ambitious senator, six years his junior, named Gaius Julius Caesar. Caesar suggested that he, Pompey, and his nemesis Krasis get together and run everything. Together, they could get all of their pet projects passed, which didn't necessarily even conflict with each other. Pompy had popularity, Krasis had the

Starting point is 00:07:28 money, and Caesar was the balancing force between them. Today, we know it as the first triumvirate. To seal the deal, Pompey married the daughter of Julius Caesar, Julia. Caesar was elected consul in 59 BC and managed to ram all of their pet projects through the Senate. After his term as consul was complete, Caesar left Rome to become the pro-consul in the provinces of Trans-Alpine Gaul, Sissalpine Gaul, and Illyricum. While Caesar was up in Gaul, basically becoming the Julius Caesar that everyone knows, he engaged in a series of conquest that were totally unapproved by the Senate, but which were very popular with them. the people. Back in Rome, Pompey focused on domestic matters, not military ones. In 57 BC, he was put in charge of the Roman grain supply, which gave him imperium powers normally granted to a consul or a pro-consul.

Starting point is 00:08:17 In 55 BC, the three men of the triumvert renewed their agreement, and Pompey, alongside Krasis, were elected to their second term as consul. As part of the deal, Caesar's term as pro-consul of Gaul was extended another five years. Krasus was given control of Syria, and Pompey was given control of hispania. However, he actually never left Rome and governed it by proxy. It was around this time that Pompey built the theater of Pompey in Rome, which was the first permanent theater that was ever built in Rome. Things, however, soon fell apart. Pompey's wife and Caesar's daughter, Julia, died in childbirth in 54 BC, and Crassus died while trying to achieve his military glory in Parthia in 53 BC. With Crassus dead and the bond between Pompey and Caesar that

Starting point is 00:09:03 Julia provided gone, tensions between them began to rise. Pompy saw Caesar's conquest and Gaul as taken away from his status in Rome. Pompy was elected as consul for the third time in 52 BC, and in a highly unusual move, supported by most of the Senate, he was elected consul by himself. He helped usher through a series of laws that would make Caesar retroactively liable for laws that he broke. So long as Caesar had imperium, he was immune from being tried. However, his Imperium was going to expire with his term as Pro Consul in 49 BC. Caesar's plan was to run for consul again, which would extend his immunity. However, to do that, he had to appear in person in Rome to declare his candidacy. The moment he crossed the Pomerium, the traditional boundary of Rome, he would lose

Starting point is 00:09:50 the Imperium that he had in Gaul. Pompey and the Senate thought that they had Caesar in a legal trap. Caesar, however, did what no one expected and marched to Rome with his army. This was the crossing of the Rubicon and the saying that the dais cast. Pompey was given command of a consular army, but he wasn't really in control. He was no longer consul by this time, and everything had to be approved by the Senate. Moreover, Caesar had veteran troops, and Pompey had to raise an army from scratch. The Senate wasn't prepared for a military confrontation, so when Caesar headed towards Rome, Pompey realizing that he was outnumbered, advised the Senate to fall back, first to Brundizium

Starting point is 00:10:29 in the south, and then all the way to mass. Macedonia. Pompy claimed that they could regroup and raise legions in the East, where he still had a large number of clients from the time he had spent there. And that's exactly what he did. He still controlled the Roman Navy, and the army he assembled ended up being twice the size of the one that Caesar commanded. Pompy managed to destroy a fleet that Caesar was building to transport his troops across the Adriatic. But Caesar and his forces did manage to cross the Adriatic. After four years of Cat and Mouse, with Pompey and most of the senators in exile, things came to a head in the year 48 BC at the Battle of Farsalis. It had been years since Pompey had

Starting point is 00:11:09 actually led troops in battle, and Caesar had been leading his legions in combat almost non-stop for over a decade. On paper, Pompey's forces outnumbered Caesar's 38,000 to 22,000, and moreover, Pompey had 7,000 cavalry against Caesar's 1,000. But when push came to shove, Caesar decisively defeated Pompey on the battlefield, leaving many of the leaders of the anti-Cesarian faction either dead or in flight. As for Pompey, he survived the battle and fled to Egypt dressed as a civilian. Many of the clients he had established in the East were now dead or captured. So he went to the one place where he thought he would be welcome and find support, Egypt.

Starting point is 00:11:50 However, when he walked ashore, he was killed and beheaded by a Roman mercenary who was serving in the Egyptian army, Lucius Septimius. Pompey was killed because the Pharaoh at the time, Ptolemy the 13th, thought that he could curry favor with Caesar in the civil war that he was having with his sister, Cleopatra. And clearly, his plans didn't work. History mostly remembers Pompey for what happened at the end of his life, not for what he did during it. when he fought the biggest battle of his career, and indeed the most important battle in the history of the Roman Republic, he lost. That loss resulted in him losing his life in a most ignoble way for a Roman of his stature. But it's interesting to think that if the Battle of Farsalis had gone another way, if his cavalry charge had been successful, then Poppy would have gone down as the greatest Roman general in history and as the savior of the Roman Republic.

Starting point is 00:12:43 Instead, he's considered by many to be the man that lost the Roman Republic. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Pompey Magnus

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