To cement his alliance with the great conservative leader, Pompey married Sulla’s stepdaughter, Aemilia, a union for which he had to divorce Anistia. But his new wife Aemilia died soon afterwards, Pompey married Mucia, a relative of Sulla’s most prominent supporters. The marriage lasted 17 years, during which time Mucia became the mother of Pompey’s three surviving children: Pompey Junior, Sextus, and Pompeia.
In 79 B.C., Sulla retired due to illness and died the following year. Thus the way was open for Pompey to maneuver for the position of most powerful man in Rome. He first defeated Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Then Pompey reluctantly became embroiled in a long successful war in Spain in which he saved Sulla’s old ally Metellus Pius from destruction by the popular general, Sertorius. At the end of 71 B.C., Pompey was granted his second triumph and served as consul with Crassus as his colleague the following year.
Pompey was not a doctrinaire follower of Sulla’s conservative program, but an opportunist looking for the most expedient route to power. With new allies from the popular side, he worked to dismantle the Sullan constitution and reestablish the traditional constitution of the Roman Republic, with tribunes
Pompey’s most stunning series of military victories began in 67 B.C. with the extraordinary command granted to him against the pirates. He was given the power to requisition all of Rome’s naval power and all the resources of the coastlands, to rid the sea of them. It took him only three months to sweep the Mediterranean free of the troublesome raiders. The crucial battle was fought off the shores of Cilicia, where Pompey won at sea and pursued the pirates on land, taking 90 warships and taking more than 20,000 prisoners.
The army in the East was soon in good shape, and Pompey won brilliant victories in Asia Minor, Armenia, and the Caucasus region. Mithridates fled to the Black Sea, but Pompey captured his palace at Caenum and many secret documents, including love letters and a book in which the king had recorded his own dreams.
Pompey’s explorations added to Roman botanical, geographical, and medical knowledge. After Tigranes I of Armenia became a Roman vassal, Pompey turned his attention to Antioch in Syria, which he reached in 64 B.C. This area, the remnant of the kingdom of the Seleucids, he turned into a new Roman province of Syria. Pompey captured the city after a three-month siege and replaced Aristobulus II, the high priest and Maccabean king of Judaea, with his brother John Hyrcanus II. Pompey Lead his army toward another hostile center, the Nabataean citadel of Petra, but was interrupted by the welcome news that Mithridates had died. Settling matters in the East, he prepared to return to Rome.
The third triumph of Pompey was held on his 45th birthday in 61 B.C. It lasted more than two days and proved to be the most memorable in Rome’s history. He captured 1000 fortified places and established 39 new cities; even more than Alexander the Great. Scandal had surfaced in his absence, and he had to divorce his wife Mucia. This made enemies of her family, the powerful Metelli. Now Pompey had to look for new allies.
In 60 B.C., Pompey found the power he sought in a new coalition, the famous First Triumvirate, the Crassus and Julius Caesar. The division of responsibility between the three men, Pompey had authority over most of the empire. To cement the bond between the leading men, Pompey married Caesar’s daughter, Julia. But Pompey wanted to mend his fences in Rome while Caesar was out of the city, so he sought with the senate and its influential member, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The senate granted him supervision of Rome’s grain supply, and once again the markets were filled with inexpensive wheat and barley.
In April 56 B.C.,the three strong men met again, this time at Luca, and renewed the triumvirate. In the year 55 B.C., Caesar was to return to Gaul, and Crassus would receive Pompey’s old command in the East. Pompey was allotted Spain, but he never returned, preferring to send legates to administer the provinces on his behalf while he stayed at Rome and attempted to expand his power base. During this period, his great building project came to fruition
At the end of 50 B.C., Pompey was accepted from the senate the appointment as commander in chief of the Republic’s forces in Italy. This forced Caesar’s hand.
The boarder between Caesar’s Province of Gaul and Italy proper, which was in Pompey’s domain, was a small river called the Rubicon. When Caesar crossed it in 49 B.C., He placed himself outside Roman law and challenged both Pompey and the senate. Civil War had been declared. Instead of confronting Caesar in Italy, however, Pompey took his army across the Adriatic Sea to Macedonia. Many senators followed. In the clash of Caesar and Pompey, Pompey repelled Caesar at Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic coast. But Caesar was far from giving up. On August 9, 48 B.C., the armies met again at Pharsalus, on the edge of the plain of Thessaly in Greece. The night before, Pompey dreamed he was adorning the Temple of Venus in Rome; a weird vision because Venus was Caesar’s mythological ancestor. Although his forces outnumbered Caesar’s almost two to one, Pompey adopted defensive tactics in the battle; Caesar’s men seized the initiative, winning a decisive victory. As it turned out, Caesar had won the war as well as the battle.
Pompey fled to the Aegean shore and took a ship to Egypt, stopping on the way at Mytilene to pick up his wife Cornelia and son Gnaeus. Though he had hoped to find support in Egypt, civil war was raging there too between the young queen Cleopatra and her even younger brother, the boy-king Ptolemy XIII. Arriving off the coast of the Nile, Pompey was ferried ashore in a small boat. He was stabbed without warning by Septimius, a centurion who had once served under him, another officer named Salvius, and Achillas, one of the regents of Egypt for Ptolemy XIII.
The murderers hoped to gain favor with Caesar, who was horrified and put Achillas and his partner in crime, Pothinus to death. Caesar treated the head of his adversary with the greatest honor and gave it a proper Roman cremation with incense, spices, and prayers. The ashes of Pompey were taken to Cornelia for Burial.
