Pompey the Great: The 'Teenage Butcher' Who Swept the Seas in 3 Months

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Pompey was born in 106 BC in Picenum, son of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, a greedy general who reached the consulship in 89 BC and died in 87 BC, possibly killed by his own soldiers. Charged with his father's alleged embezzlement, the young Pompey won over the judge so completely that he was acquitted and married the judge's daughter, Antistia. In 83 BC, at 23 and holding no office, he raised a legion from his family's estates to join Sulla's march on Rome. His ruthless campaigns in Sicily and Africa earned him the nickname adulescentulus carnifex, the teenage butcher, yet Sulla called him Imperator and Magnus. Sulla then made him divorce Antistia and marry his pregnant stepdaughter Aemilia, who died in childbirth.

Pompey skipped the cursus honorum, ground down the rebel Sertorius in Spain after losing a third of his army at Lauron, and claimed credit for ending Spartacus' revolt after Crassus had done the fighting. Consul at 36 in 70 BC, he restored the tribunes' veto. In 67 BC the Lex Gabinia gave him power over the whole Mediterranean, and he cleared the pirates in three months. He annexed Syria, entered the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, and doubled Rome's income, then disbanded his army at Brundisium in 62 BC. Blocked by Cato's Senate, he joined Crassus and Caesar, married Julia, and later turned on Caesar. Beaten at Pharsalus in 48 BC, he fled to Egypt and was stabbed to death on landing.

• Against the pirates he split the sea into 13 patrol zones, each under its own commander, and offered land to those who surrendered.
• In Jerusalem's temple he took none of the treasure and ordered the sanctuary cleansed for worship the next day.
• Julia, Caesar's daughter, died in childbirth in 54 BC, and Crassus was killed in Parthia the next year.
• In 52 BC Pompey served as sole consul and backed laws aimed at stripping Caesar of his legal immunity.
• At Pharsalus, Caesar's hidden infantry thrust spears at the faces of Pompey's cavalry; Lucius Septimius, his former officer, killed him.