Pompey the Great (Routledge Revivals)

John Leach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317752509
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

To Romans of later generations the three decades between the dictatorships of Sulla and of Caesar were the age of Pompey the Great. In spite of the central role he played in Roman history, he remains a shadowy figure compared with the likes of Caesar and Cicero.

Pompey the Great, first published in 1978, traces the career of this enigmatic character from his first appearance in public life on the staff of his father Strabo during the Social War, through his early military campaigns as Sulla's lieutenant in the Civil War 83-82, as the Senate's general in Italy and Spain during the 70s, to his first consulship with Crassus in 70. The important commands against the pirates and Mithridates, the alliance with Caesar, its eventual collapse into civil war, and the significance of Pompey's constitutional position for an understanding of the later Augustan settlement war are all discussed with clarity and insight.

1	THE WAR-LORDS OF PICENUM: SOCIAL and CIVIL WAR 89–79

There is in the Capitoline Museum at Rome a bronze tablet (I)^*, which was once nailed to the wall of some public building in the city. It is dated 17 November 89 BC and records the grant on that date of Roman citizenship to a squadron of thirty Spanish cavalrymen by the consul, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. The grant was a reward for valour in the Social War, which was then coming slowly to an end. In this war a large number of the communities of central and southern Italy, who had long been allies of the Roman people, were fighting for the right to be not mere allies, but full members of the Roman state.

In November 89 Pompeius Strabo with his army was besieging the town of Asculum in Picenum, the stretch of country between the summit of the Apennines and the sea on the Adriatic coast of Italy north-east of Rome. This town was the focal point of Italian resistance in the northern theatre of the war. In an incident shortly before the outbreak of open hostilities a Roman praetor and all Roman citizens in the town had been massacred, and Asculum itself had been besieged since the early days of the war in 90 by Pompeius Strabo, first in his capacity as lieutenant of the consul of 90, P. Rutilius Lupus, and for the past year as consul himself. This high position he probably owed to his own successes in 90, a year marked otherwise mainly by a series of Roman disasters.

One of the most interesting features of the tablet is the fact that it contains a list of fifty-nine names of the members of the consilium or council which Strabo had consulted before making his grant of citizenship, and which added the weight of its authority to his decision. The names seem to be in descending order of rank, starting with five lieutenants (legati), who were all members of the Roman Senate. Next comes a quaestor, one of the annual magistrates assigned to the general’s staff by the Senate, and sixteen military tribunes or staff officers. There follows a list of thirty-three tirones. These were young men who were the sons of senators or knights. When they were slightly older they would expect to serve as officers themselves, and were now acquiring valuable military experience. The list is completed by four senior centurions.¹

Figure 1: Map of Italy and Sicily.

For the historian the importance of this inscription lies as much in its value as a political document as in its value for military history. At this period the Roman general was also a politician. As such he was a member of one of the groups of leading senators with their families and clients whose struggles for leadership in the Senate and control over the assemblies of the Roman people are one of the most fascinating and complex aspects of the history of the late Republic.

As consul Pompeius Strabo had reached the position which it was the ambition of every Roman politician to obtain. Not only did it admit him into the company of consulares, the men who had held the consulship and who formed the real governing council within the Senate, but it also gave him the opportunity to extend his patronage over less powerful families and communities in Rome, Italy and the provinces. Further, he could cement his alliances (amicitiae) with other leading senators. This he could do by appointing as legates men who were his friends and political allies, and by taking on his staff as military tribunes and tirones the sons of such men, and also clients whom he wanted to link to his own cause by the bonds of officium.²

Thus from a document like the Asculum inscription one might expect to discover information about Pompeius Strabo’s political affiliations and the families and areas over which he exercised his patronage. Moreover, one might hope to find among the members of the consilium men who in the next generation were themselves political allies, and perhaps traced the origins of those friendships to the time when they had served together. Of equal interest will be cases where colleagues on such a consilium are later found on opposite sides, in the political arena or even in civil war. It must always be remembered that amicitiae could be made and broken with bewildering rapidity as different issues and interests drew men in different directions. A broken marriage or damaged pride could cause political enmity as easily as irreconcilable principles or electoral rivalry.

For the purposes of this study the most important name on the Asculum tablet is the thirtieth, that of Strabo’s son, also called Gnaeus Pompeius, who thus makes his first appearance in the records of history. In November 89 he was just over seventeen years of age (he was born on 29 September 106), and had probably been with his father beneath the walls of Asculum since he officially came of age the previous March at the ceremony of the taking of the toga virilis.³

Like his father he would already be thoroughly familiar with the theatre of war in which he now found himself. His family held a position of very considerable power and influence in Picenum, where they owned large estates in the northern part of the region. The Pompeii were not a family to rank with the long-established aristocratic families such as the Caecilii Metelli, Claudii Pulchri, Cornelii, Calpurnii Pisones or Domitii, and Strabo was the first member of his branch of the family to reach the consulship and thus confer on himself and his descendants the coveted title of nobilis.

However, the history of the past fifty years had shown that even a new man, or novus homo, could match the noblest families in power and prestige if he could muster enough support in terms of organised manpower at the critical times. The man who had demonstrated this most dramatically was Gaius Marius, Rome’s victorious general in two major wars, already six times consul, and in 90 a fellow legate of Strabo in the army of Rutilius Lupus. Strabo will have known him well, even though he seems to have been too much of a ‘rogue’ in politics to have attached himself closely to the group which looked to Marius as its leader during the nineties. Strabo’s position depended not so much on his amicitiae as on his clientela. This consisted of the men from his estates and from the towns of northern Picenum, and the soldiers in his army, whose pay and prize money depended to a large extent on their loyal service to their general. In fact the bulk of his army probably came from Picenum in any case, and may well have been recruited there at the beginning of the war.

Two incidents in 89 illustrate the ways in which clientes could be acquired outside Italy as well. Early in the year Strabo had had a law passed (the lex Pompeia) in which the communities of Gaul between the Alps and the river Po had been granted Latin rights. This meant that magistrates of those communities would automatically obtain Roman citizenship for themselves and their families, and could be expected to exercise their right to vote at elections in Rome, especially if required to do so by the patron by whose action they had won the franchise. Secondly the grant of citizenship to the turma Salluitana recorded on the Asculum inscription was a way of extending patronage to the communities of Spain.

The inscription also casts light on Strabo’s relationship with the Picentines. Twelve of the tirones on the list are shown as belonging to the tribe Velina. It was in this tribe that the Roman citizens of Picenum were enrolled, largely for voting purposes, and these young men are clearly sons of the leading families of Picenum who joined the army led by the most important and powerful landowner of the district.

The inhabitants of northern Picenum had long enjoyed Roman citizenship. The region had been conquered by Rome in 268; a Latin colony had been founded at Firmum in 264; allotments of land had been made to Roman citizens by a law of C. Flaminius in 232, and full citizen colonies established at Potentia in 184, and Auximum probably in 157. We know that the Pompeii had not been among those early settlers, as their tribe was the Clustumina, which suggests that they came from one of the settlements in the east Tiber valley north of Rome, the region to which that tribe was originally allocated. The name Pompeius itself is of non-Latin origin, being the Umbro-Oscan form of Quintus (fifth), and exhibiting Etruscan influence in its ending.⁴

On his mother’s and grandmother’s side young Pompeius was related to another interesting family. His grandmother was the sister and his mother probably the niece of the poet Gaius Lucilius (cf. p. 22 below), who died in 102 and seems to have left considerable property near Tarentum in southern Italy to his niece’s new family. Other connections with large landowing families appear later, and it is clear that Picenum was not the only part of Italy which contained clients of the Pompeii (II).⁵

The exact details of the siege of Asculum and the reduction of the neighbouring tribes of the Vestini, Marrucini and Paeligni to the southeast, and the Marsi to the south, are now unrecoverable. A vain attempt by the confederate army to raise the siege resulted in a battle in which 75,000 Romans and 60,000 Italians are said to have taken part, and Strabo’s legates were no doubt busy mopping up pockets of resistance in the numerous glens of the Apennines. Of the part played by Gnaeus Pompeius the younger during this year we hear nothing, except the vague statement that he received his early military training in his father’s army in a great war and against the fiercest foes. The fall of the town itself followed the dramatic death by suicide of the Picentine leader Vidacilius and a desperate attempt by the inhabitants to break through the besieging forces.⁶

If Strabo was able to distribute rewards for valour on 17 November we may assume that by then Asculum had capitulated. Orosius preserves the story of the whipping and execution of the Picentine leaders, and the sale by auction of all the slaves and booty. The fact that the proceeds of this sale were kept by Strabo and not presented to the treasury, especially at a time of severe financial crisis, probably explains his reputation for greed which later made him so unpopular with the people at Rome.⁷

At all events he was back in the city with his army by 25 December, when he celebrated his triumph over the Picentines of Asculum. Although the Samnites and Lucanians continued sporadic resistance in the south for a considerable time, the serious part of the war was over and Strabo could be acclaimed the hero. Much, however, remained to be done by way of consolidating the victory and restoring the normal pattern of life to what must have been a shattered Italy, and after holding the elections for the magistrates of 88 Strabo returned with his army to Picenum. It is probable that his son accompanied him.

It is now time to consider briefly the main features of the history of the nineties. It is well known that this is a poorly documented period, and there is a serious danger of trying to read too much significance into the references which we have, mainly in the treatises of Cicero, to famous court cases and personal feuds between leading politicians. During the nineties there were few, if any, controversial political issues which might force men to take sides on grounds of principle or even mutual interest, and politicians were mainly concerned with furthering their own ambitions and those of their relatives and friends. Among several such groups, whose composition was probably changing constantly, were one led by the powerful Gaius Marius, and another centred on the noble and prolific family of the Caecilii Metelli. Marius enjoyed considerable support from the class of the equites, or knights. This class included such sections of the community as the publicani (partners in the tax-collecting companies), bankers, merchants, wealthy traders and the leading families of the citizen communities throughout Italy. The interests of the sections of this class will not always have coincided. The one characteristic which linked them was their wealth, later defined by a minimum qualification of 400,000 sesterces. The sons of senators who had not yet entered the Senate were also counted as equites and took part in the ceremonies connected with the order, but as a class they must be considered senatorial and to have shared the interests and prejudices of their fathers.⁸

The struggle for supremacy centred on the Forum and the comitia. The Forum was the scene of the numerous political trials in which, throughout the late Republic, the members of factiones attempted to bring disgrace and even exile on their opponents, and to win prestige, position and patronage for themselves. Illustrative of this is the fact that a successful prosecutor could attain the senatorial rank of his defeated opponent, and a successful counsel for defence would expect the political support of his grateful client. The comitia were the assemblies of the Roman people for the purposes of passing legislation and electing magistrates. Each year these saw the struggles of the politicians to win the magistracies which would take them step by step towards the charmed circle of the consulars. In normal circumstances these principes civitatis, as they were also called, controlled the policies of the Republic. The senior magistracies of praetorship and consulship could also lead to the governorship of one of Rome’s provinces, and the opportunity to win a personal fortune, and, if fighting proved necessary or possible, military glory.

The ambitious politician had all the time to be conscious of the need to amass support for himself. During the late Republic the areas from which support could be drawn were rapidly expanding, and new techniques for winning, maintaining and deploying that support were constantly being developed.

In 91 a tribune of the people, M. Livius Drusus, seems to have contemplated the possibility of winning the support of the Italians for the ‘Metellan’ faction with which he was connected. The Italians had for some time been agitating for Roman citizenship and had already made preparations to demand it by armed force. The failure of his attempt, which would have involved a grant of citizenship to the Italian allies, and his own murder were the sparks which ignited the Social War. His enemies saw an opportunity to attack Drusus’ supporters in the courts, and in 90 the tribune Q. Varius had a law passed setting up a court to try people who would be accused of having incited the Italians to revolt. We know of six senators who were prosecuted under this law in 90, all of whom appear to have had connections with the Metelli. The prosecutions met with only moderate success, however, and it appears that by 89 the ‘Metellan’ faction had reasserted its control. At a time of great crisis this is not surprising, since its members were noted for their traditionalist and aristocratic attitude towards politics and their belief that the dominant group in the Senate should maintain its control over the affairs of the Roman people.

In 90, the first year of the war, some form of compromise seems to have been arrived at in the interests of unity, for it is probably significant that of the two consuls for that year P. Rutulius Lupus was a ‘Marian’ and L. Julius Caesar a ‘Metellan’. Moreover the legates who accompanied the consuls to their military commands seem in all cases to have shared the political sympathies of their respective commanders.

In 89 Pompeius Strabo no doubt owed his consulship largely to his military ability, but his colleague, L. Porcius Cato, who was killed in action during the early part of the year, and the two consuls elected for 88, L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus, were prominent members of the ‘Metellans’. Sulla, as one of Rome’s most successful generals, was also an obvious choice irrespective of his political leanings. Pompeius Rufus, it may be added, was a distant cousin of Strabo’s.

Two main issues faced Rome in 88. One was the reorganisation necessitated by the upheavals of the Social War and the sudden admission under the lex Julia of 90 of large numbers of Italians to a share in the privileges of citizenship. The other was the very serious threat of a large-scale war in Asia Minor. For many years King Mithridates VI of Pontus had been extending his control over the surrounding kingdoms, and collecting and training a vast army, which numbered, according to our sources, well over a quarter of a million men. Several times Rome had intervened, attempting to replace Roman sympathisers on the various thrones by means of deputations and commissions, backed by the threat and sometimes the use of force. None of her efforts, however, had brought long-term success. In fact they probably stimulated Mithridates into using his army sooner than he had planned, and in 88 he finally invaded the wealthy Roman province of Asia, which had long been his ultimate goal. Not only did he appear to the Greeks and Asiatics of the province as the liberator from Roman rule and oppression, but on reaching the city of Ephesus he issued a decree that in thirty days’ time all Roman and Italian inhabitants of the cities of Asia should be murdered. The eventual death roll is given as 80,000 persons, but this must be a grossly inflated figure.⁹

This survey has been necessary in order to explain the situation which confronted the young Gnaeus Pompeius shortly after his introduction to public life in March 89.

During the early months of 88 he will have listened with interest and, no doubt, some confusion to the reports from Rome which reached his father’s camp in Picenum. One of the new tribunes, P. Sulpicius Rufus, whom he had known as a friend of Livius Drusus and a member of a leading aristocratic family, was planning to acquire a square deal for the new Italian citizens by giving them equal voting rights with the old citizens, instead of the inferior rights which had been suggested. The command of the war against Mithridates, of which Pompey’s father himself may have entertained hopes, had gone to Sulla, a tried and successful general with experience of negotiating with the king.

Then the news arrived that Rufus, in an attempt to win support for his unpopular legislative programme, had formed an alliance with Gaius Marius. With the aid of violence he had passed his citizenship law and procured for Marius the...