SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

Pompey was a radical and ambitious rule breaker who had already flouted most of the conventions of Roman politics that traditionalists were increasingly trying to insist on. The son of a ‘new man’, he had risen to military prominence by exploiting the disruption of the 80s BCE. When still in his twenties, he had put together three legions from among his clients and henchmen to fight on behalf of Sulla and was soon awarded a triumph for chasing down Sulla’s rivals and assorted enemy princelings in Africa. It was then that he gained the nickname adulescentulus carnifex: ‘kid butcher’ rather than enfant terrible. He had held no elected office whatsoever when he was given, by the senate, a long-term command in Spain to deal with a Roman general who had ‘gone native’ with a large army, another hazard of a far-flung empire. Successful again, he ended up a consul for 70 BCE, at the age of just thirty-five and bypassing all the junior posts, flagrantly at odds with Sulla’s recent rulings on office holding.