One set of tapestries, for example, depicts Pompey taking sad leave of his wife Cornelia, before going off to join battle with Caesar, a rare moment of tenderness in an otherwise brutal poem. Most modern critics, and early modern caption writers, have misinterpreted this as Caesar saying goodbye to his wife, but one woven caption correctly identifies it: ‘Pompey the Great makes for his camp; Cornelia sadly sails to the island of Lesbos …’ (and in another version of the scene, where the caption misidentifies the main figure as Caesar, in the image itself the logo of Pompey’s side, ‘Spqr’—‘the
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