The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

A wild card in all of this was Gnaeus Pompeius, the twenty-one-year-old son of the late Pompey Strabo. The man known to history as Pompey the Great was still too young to hold a magistracy, but had become the head of the Pompeius household when his father died over the winter of 87–86. This assumption of authority gave Pompey control over the impressive client network his father had built up in northern Italy. Far more popular than his father, Pompey consolidated personal control over the family network thanks to his ambitious charisma. Cicero says Pompey was “a man who was born to excel in every thing, would have acquired a more distinguished reputation for his eloquence, if he had not been diverted from the pursuit of it by the more dazzling charms of military fame.” Though he had barely emerged into adulthood, Pompey already commanded attention—and securing his loyalty would be a key objective of both sides in the coming civil war.6