Pompey

Here we have Pompey who pardoned everyone in the city of the Mamertines, though it had given him a lot of trouble, after he took into account the virtue and magnanimity of one citizen, Zenon, who alone took responsibility for the common offense and asked for no other favor than to be the only one punished for it.

Is there a harsher and more appropriate feeling for what Pompey’s allies felt aboard his ship when they witnessed that horrible massacre?

a conqueror of half the world, a commander of so many armies, becoming a sad figure at the mercy of an Egyptian king’s wretched officers — this is what five or six more months of life cost the great Pompey.

Scipio, Pompey’s father-in-law, died well and so redressed the poor opinion all had of him until then.

But the night between he passed in great unquietness of mind, considering that he was about to put to death a young man, of an illustrious family, and nephew to the great Pompey, and this made him break out into several passionate complainings.

And the third, speaking of the civil wars betwixt Caesar and Pompey,Victrix causa diis placuit, set victa Catoni.

When Pompey’s head was presented to Caesar, the histories tell us that he turned away his face, as from a sad and unpleasing object.

Pompey once paid a visit to Posidonius who was terribly afflicted by a serious and painful disease.

We may here further compare him with Alexander in the great and dangerous storm that threatened him by the sedition of the tribune Metellus, who, attempting to publish a decree for the calling in of Pompey with his army into the city at the time of Catiline’s conspiracy, was only and that stoutly opposed by Cato, so that very sharp language and bitter menaces passed betwixt them in the senate about that affair;

But after all, what virtue, what authority, or what secret springs are there that fix upon my deceased groom, or the other Pompey, who had his head cut off in Egypt, this glorious renown, and these so much honored flourishes of the pen, so as to be of any advantage to them?

In the encounter where Caesar had the worst, near the city of Oricum, he reproached Pompey’s soldiers that he had been lost had their general known how to overcome;

Among other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the battle of Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand still to receive the enemy’s charge;

’Tis said, both of Caesar and Pompey, that among their other excellent qualities they were both very good horsemen, and particularly of Caesar, that in his youth, being mounted on the bare back, without saddle or bridle, he could make the horse run, stop, and turn, and perform all its airs, with his hands behind him.

Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, Lucullus, Lentulus, Metellus, thence took their chiefest spring, to mount to that degree of authority at which they at last arrived, making it of greater use to them than arms, contrary to the opinion of better times;

and who, afterward, siding with Pompey the great, so valiantly maintained his cause, till he was by Caesar defeated in Spain.

Blow but a little dust in his eyes, as our poet says of the bees, and all our ensigns and legions, with the great Pompey himself at the head of them, are routed and crushed to pieces;

The courtesan Flora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the prints of her teeth.

Caesar says, that Lucius Vibullius Rufus, being in great haste to carry intelligence to Pompey, rode night and day, still taking fresh horses for the greater diligence and speed;

And besides the example of Caesar, who commanded his men to shoot chiefly at the face of Pompey’s soldiers in the battle of Pharsalia, a thousand other commanders have also bethought them to invent new forms of weapons and new ways of striking and defending, according as occasion should require.

and I will allege no other reproach against Dion’s report but this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so weak a judgment in the Roman affairs, that he dares to maintain Julius Caesar’s cause against Pompey, and that of Antony against Cicero.

witness, says he, Demosthenes and Cicero, Cato and Aristides, Sylla and Lysander, Marcellus and Pelopidas, Pompey and Agesilaus, holding that he has favored the Greeks in giving them so unequal companions.

As to Marcellus, Sylla, and Pompey, I very well discern that their exploits of war are greater and more full of pomp and glory than those of the Greeks, whom Plutarch compares with them;

Does he parallel the victories, feats of arms, the force of the armies conducted by Pompey, and his triumphs, with those of Agesilaus?

to Lollia, the wife of Gabinius to Tertulla, the wife of Crassus, and even to Mutia, wife to the great Pompey:

and the Curios, both father and son, afterwards reproached Pompey, when he married Caesar’s daughter, that he had made himself son-in-law to a man who had made him cuckold, and one whom he himself was wont to call Aegisthus.

he has three or four times taken some of Pompey’s captains prisoners, and as often set them at liberty.

Pompey declared all those to be enemies who did not follow him to the war;

the ninth legion having mutinied near Placentia, he ignominiously cashiered them, though Pompey was then yet on foot, and received them not again to grace till after many supplications;

And certainly, though a man did nothing but go on, he could hardly attain that promptitude with which, having been everywhere victorious in Gaul, he left it, and, following Pompey to Brundusium, in eighteen days’time he subdued all Italy;

thence he returned into Macedonia, beat the Roman army at Pharsalia, passed thence in pursuit of Pompey into Egypt, which he also subdued;

again returned through Italy, where he defeated Pompey’s sons,Ocior et cœli fiammis, et tigride fœta.

Having crossed over to Dyrrachium with very slender forces, and seeing the remainder of his army which he had left to Antony’s conduct slow in following him, he undertook alone to repass the sea in a very great storms and privately stole away to fetch the rest of his forces, the ports on the other side being seized by Pompey, and the whole sea being in his possession.

One single cohort of his withstood four of Pompey’s legions above four hours together, till they were almost all killed with arrows, so that there were a hundred and thirty thousand shafts found in the trenches.

Of their fidelity there are infinite examples among them, that which was done by those who were besieged in Salona, a city that stood for Caesar against Pompey, is not, for the rarity of an accident that there happened, to be forgotten.

After having drawn the siege to a great length, by which Octavius was grown more negligent and less attentive to his enterprise, they made choice of one day about noon, and having first placed the women and children upon the walls to make a show, sallied upon the besiegers with such fury, that having routed the first, second, and third body, and afterwards the fourth, and the rest, and beaten them all out of their trenches, they pursued them even to their ships, and Octavius himself was fain to fly to Dyrrachium, where Pompey lay.

In an encounter of the civil war against Cinna, one of Pompey’s soldiers having unawares killed his brother, who was of the contrary party, he immediately for shame and sorrow killed himself:

Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it;

And yet I am angry at him for judging more severely of Pompey than consists with the opinion of those worthy men who lived in the same time, and had dealings with him;

Betwixt Caesar and Pompey, I should frankly have declared myself;

I have had a hundred quarrels in defending Pompey and for the cause of Brutus;

Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey, nor ever shall;

for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of the two others:

The pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honored the entry of Pompey into their city, is conformable to my sense: