Episode 42. Pompey the Great, Part Two: The World in His Hands

Sources and Historiography

The primary source for Pompey's life is Plutarch's Life of Pompey, paired with Agesilaus of Sparta. For the period covered in this episode, the Life is at its most careful and most literary: the grain-price scene, the description of the triumph, the Cornelia passages, and above all the death sequence are among the most carefully constructed passages in the Parallel Lives. Plutarch's sympathy for Pompey is real and shapes the portrait—he presents him as a man of genuine virtues undone by impossible circumstances—but it does not prevent him from recording the structural failure clearly or from noting, with characteristic precision, the moment when Pompey's silence in the tent told the story more completely than any analysis could.

Appian's Civil Wars is the other major continuous narrative, and his account of the Pharsalus campaign and its aftermath is valuable as a check on Plutarch's tendencies. Cassius Dio covers the period in his Roman History, written in the third century CE—further removed from the events but incorporating sources that Plutarch and Appian also used. For the Egyptian death specifically, Plutarch and Appian are in substantial agreement on the facts while differing on emphasis, which suggests they are drawing on common earlier sources now lost.

Cicero's letters are invaluable for the period from the Triumvirate through Pharsalus. Cicero was present in the Pompeian camp in Greece and documented his own misery and the camp's prevailing mood in letters to Atticus that he never intended to be read by anyone else. His portrait of the Pompeian leadership—confident to the point of delusion before the battle, discussing their property arrangements in Rome, drawing up lists of who would get what in Caesar's houses after the victory—is one of the most damning contemporary documents in the late Republican record.

The modern historiography on this period is led by Robin Seager's Pompey the Great for the biographical account and Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar for the military and political narrative of the civil war. For the eastern campaigns specifically, Duane Roller's work on the Pompeian settlement is the most thorough recent treatment. For Pharsalus, Adrian Goldsworthy's reconstruction of the battle in Caesar remains the clearest available account.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Books I and II. The most systematic political account of the Triumvirate period and the civil war.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 36–41. A later but systematically useful perspective on the piracy command, Mithridatic war, Triumvirate, and civil war.
• Cicero. Letters to Atticus, Books 9–11. Real-time documentation of the Pompeian camp before and after Pharsalus; one of the most damning contemporary portraits of military overconfidence in the ancient record.
• Cicero. Pro lege Manilia. The speech in favour of Pompey's Mithridatic command; the most complete surviving statement of the public case for extraordinary commands as a solution to the Republic's crises.
• Josephus. Jewish Antiquities, Book XIV. The account of the siege of Jerusalem and Pompey's entry into the Holy of Holies; near-contemporary for the tradition it records, and confirms Plutarch's account of Pompey's restraint.
• Plutarch. “Life of Pompey,” in the Parallel Lives (Loeb Classical Library, translated by Bernadotte Perrin, 1917). The grain price scene (chapter 26), the triumph description (chapters 45–46), the Julia death and funeral (chapter 53), and the death at Pelusium (chapters 77–80) are among the most carefully constructed passages in the collection.

Secondary Sources

• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006. The best modern account of the civil war campaigns including Pharsalus; the tactical reconstruction is particularly strong.
• Greenhalgh, Peter. Pompey: The Republican Prince. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. The second volume of Greenhalgh's biography; more narrative than analytical but useful on the eastern campaigns.
• Gruen, Erich. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. University of California Press, 1974. Essential for the political structure of the late Republic and the debate about the nature of the Triumvirate.
• Holland, Tom. Rubicon. Little, Brown, 2003. The most readable popular account of the whole period; the Pompeian material is handled with appropriate attention to the human dimension.
• Seager, Robin. Pompey the Great: A Political Biography. Second edition, Blackwell, 2002. The standard modern biography; particularly strong on the eastern settlement and the political crisis of 50–49 BCE.

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