Pompey o gnaeus pompeius magnus

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Roman senator and general. This article is about the son of Pompey. Biography [ edit ]. Marriage [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Wanting to make a big splash in Rome, he attached his triumph chariot to the four elephants that he had brought from Africa.

Pompey was then forced to use his horses, much to his disappointment. Led by Roman general and statesman Quintus Sertorius, the rebels resorted to guerrilla warfare. With the help of troops from the Celtiberians and the Lusitanians, Pompey was moved in with his troops to give support to the proconsul Metellus Pius of the province of Hispania Ulterior.

Pompey had Perpena executed. In the end, the rebellion was put down. Upon his return to Rome, the Senate honored Pompey with a triumph, his second in the space of a decade. The war, which spanned from 73 to 71 BC, was the last and most devastating of the three slave rebellions. It began at a gladiator school in Capua in 73 BC, when almost 80 slave gladiators made a break for it.

In the two years that followed their numbers had increased to over , forces.

Pompey o gnaeus pompeius magnus

For a time, there was nothing that Rome could do to stop the rebels from rampaging across Italia with freedom. With Rome struggling to quell the rebellion, Pompey was called by the Roman Senate. Before Pompey could face them, Roman general and statesman Marcus Licinius Crassus had successfully decimated the Spartacus and his army of slaves in 71 BC.

Although Crassus was in fact the general who did most of the heavy lifting, Pompey still got a bit of credit for the victory during the Gladiator War. The two men used the military victory to boost their political careers in Rome. Pompey and Crassus, who was the richest man in Rome at the time, were elected to the consulship positions in 70 BC. Owing to the bit of bad blood between Pompey and Crassus, their time as consuls was an uneventful one as they disagreed on almost every issue.

Some historians state that the two men fought over honors. Out of suspicion for each other, Pompey and Crassus did not disband their armies, leaving them on the outskirts of Rome. The two rivals ultimately shook hands in public, sending a message to the public of their readiness to put aside their differences. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey the Great, ranks among the greatest generals and politicians of the Roman Republic era.

Image: A denarius of Pompey minted in 49—48 BC. His military prowess and generalship were described as very brilliant. This explains why he chalked so many feats. For more than two decades, he was the most leading and powerful general in the Roman Republic. He may have not had the visionary mind like Caesar, but Pompey was very efficient in majority of his military campaigns.

He was praised for being an exceptional military strategist and organizer. These skills were some of the reasons why he was so successful in his campaigns in the east. The historian also bemoans how the politicians in Rome maligned Pompey and orchestrated the downfall of the general. Beginning around the first century BC, the activities of pirates in the Mediterranean had become a thorn in the flesh of Rome.

The Republic was losing big due to pirates operating with impunity, especially in the eastern Mediterranean. Prior to Pompey coming into the fray Roman generals like Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus and Marcus Antonius Orator had all campaigned against the pirates, especially those off the coast of Cilicia modern-day southern Turkey. With support from the tribune Aulus Gabinius, Pompey received enough power and resources and ships from the Republic to go after the pirates.

Pompey divided the Mediterranean into areas, with each area given to a lieutenant to handle. In less than two months, Pompey had successfully brought a bit of order to the western Mediterranean coast lines. This was then followed by removal of pirates in the eastern Mediterranean. He also attacked the pirates that had fled to Cilicia. Uncharacteristic of him, he did not execute the pirates that he had surrendered to him; instead he resettled many of them in cities such as Soli, Dyme and the inner parts of Cilicia.

He was wise enough to know that the pirates were engaged in the nefarious work that they did because of the high level of poverty in their respective countries, which in turn was caused by the years of civil wars and strife of the era. All in all, Pompey showed extraordinary generalship and seized several hundreds of ships from the pirates; he also destroyed many of their weapons and ship making materials.

Read Change Change source View history. Tools Tools. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Pompey Pompey on a coin by his son Sextus Pompeius. Civil war and murder [ change change source ]. References [ change change source ]. A history of Rome to A. Loeb Classical Library, Hornum, Nemesis, the Roman state and the games , Brill, , p.

From there, he transported his troops across the Adriatic to Dyrrhachium in Thessaly , an operation performed with almost complete success. This gave Pompey time to build an army nearly twice the size of his opponents, while his navy destroyed two fleets being built for Caesar, ensuring the Pompeians retained control of the sea lanes. The latter arrived in time to block the attempt, and establish a fortified camp on the other side of the River Apus , where the two armies remained until spring.

In late March the stalemate was broken when Mark Antony finally managed to cross the Adriatic with four more legions and land at Nymphaeum , some 57 kilometres north of Dyrrachium. Pompey tried to prevent the two Caesarian armies from linking up, by marching north-east and laying an ambush for Antony. The ambush, however, was revealed to Antony by some local Caesarian sympathisers, and he stayed in camp until Caesar approached.

Pompey not willing to be caught between the two Caesarian forces withdrew. Caesar, his army now united with Antony's force, redeployed his forces by sending one-and-a-half legion to win support and gather supplies in Aetolia and Thessaly , and a further two legions under Domitius Calvinus to intercept Metellus Scipio in Macedonia. Meanwhile, Gnaeus , Pompey's oldest son, managed to destroy Caesar's fleet at Oricum and Lissus , making sure no more reinforcements and supplies would reach Caesar from Italy.

Caesar tried to lure Pompey into a pitched battle at Asparagium, but the latter refused. The next day Caesar outmaneuvred Pompey and marched for Dyrrachium again. When Pompey arrived at the city Caesar had already set up camp. Caesar lacked the siege equipment needed to take Dyrrhachium, and could not risk leaving Pompey to threaten his rear.

He solved this by besieging Pompey in his camp. Ending the stalemate became a matter of urgency, and in late July Pompey finally managed to break through part of Caesar's defensive lines. Since this made the blockade pointless, Caesar cut his losses and withdrew to Apollonia. At this point Metellus Scipio arrived in Thessaly. Caesar moved south to confront this threat and link up with Domitius Calvinus, allowing his men to sack Gomphi en route.

Pursued by Pompey, he then withdrew to the area near Pharsalus , but failed to tempt Pompey into giving battle. Regardless, Pompey's army of around 38, outnumbered the 22, men commanded by Caesar, [ l ] with 7, cavalry to 1, Caesar had anticipated this, and repulsed the cavalry which fled in confusion, exposing the infantry behind them. Under pressure from the left and in front, the Pompeian army collapsed.

Pompey escaped from the battlefield and made his way to Mytilene , where he was reunited with his wife Cornelia. Most of his Eastern allies were present at Pharsalus and had either been killed or captured. The main absentee was year-old Ptolemy XIII , ruler of the wealthy and strategically important kingdom of Egypt , making it an obvious destination.

Cato announced his intention to continue the war from Africa, although most of his senatorial colleagues, including Cicero and Marcus Junius Brutus , made their peace with Caesar and returned to Rome. When he went ashore to greet an official delegation, Pompey was killed by Lucius Septimius , a Roman officer and former colleague serving in the Egyptian army.

His body was cremated by two servants, while the head was kept as evidence. One suggestion is that Ptolemy and his advisors feared Pompey planned to seize control of Egypt, especially since many Egyptian army officers were Roman mercenaries like Septimius who had previously served with him. At the same time, it seemed an easy way to win Caesar's support against Cleopatra, although ultimately this proved not to be the case.

Pompey had five wives: [ ] [ ]. Pompey's military glory was second to none for two decades, yet his skills were occasionally criticized by some of his contemporaries. Sertorius or Lucullus, for instance, were especially critical. However, Pharsalus was his only decisive defeat. While not extremely charismatic, Pompey could display tremendous bravery and fighting skills on the battlefield, which inspired his men.

On the other hand, Pompey is usually considered an outstanding strategist and organizer, who could win campaigns without displaying genius on the battlefield, but simply by constantly outmaneuvering his opponents and gradually pushing them into a desperate situation. Above all, he was often able to adapt to his enemies and showed determination.

On many occasions, he acted very swiftly and decisively, as he did during his campaigns in Sicily and Africa, or against the Cilician pirates. During the Sertorian war, on the other hand, Pompey was beaten several times by Sertorius. Despite an abysmal first year of the war for Pompey in 76 BC, he continued to campaign vigorously and as a result defeated many of Sertorius' subordinates.

After Sertorius' army was greatly diminished, Pompey then decided to conduct a war of attrition , in which he would avoid open battles against his chief opponent but instead tried to gradually regain the strategic advantage by capturing his fortresses and cities and defeating his junior officers. By 73 or 72 BC, when he was assassinated, Sertorius was already in a desperate situation and his troops were deserting.

Against Perperna, a tactician far inferior to his former commander-in-chief, Pompey decided to revert to a more aggressive strategy and he scored a decisive victory that effectively ended the war. Against Caesar too, his strategy was sound. During the campaign in Greece, he managed to regain the initiative, join his forces to that of Metellus Scipio something that Caesar wanted to avoid and trap his enemy.

His strategic position was hence much better than that of Caesar and he could have starved Caesar's army to death. Pompey was so striking a figure, and his fall so dramatic, that his story became the subject of frequent literary treatment. In the century after his death, the civil war between himself and Caesar was retold in Lucan 's epic De Bello Civili , now known as the Pharsalia after the culminating battle.

In the poem's final sections, however, Pompey's vengeful ghost returns to possess those responsible for his murder in Egypt and bring about their death. Later in the 18th century, Pompey is made the recipient of a 'heroical epistle' in rhyming couplets from a supposed former lover in John Hervey 's "Flora to Pompey". John Edmund Reade 's "The Vale of Tempe" records the fugitive's desperate appearance as glimpsed by a bystander in the Greek valley; [ ] his arrival in Egypt is related by Alaric Watts in "The Death of Pompey the Great", [ ] and the ruined column raised to mark the site of his killing outside Alexandria is described by Nicholas Michell in Ruins of Many Lands.

Pompey's career is recapitulated a century later in series of historical novels. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. Roman general and statesman —48 BC. For other uses, see Pompey disambiguation and Gnaeus Pompeius disambiguation.

Not to be confused with Pompeii or Pompei. Picenum , Italy. Pelusium , Egypt. Gnaeus Pompeia Sextus. Early life and career [ edit ]. Pompey during Sulla's civil war [ edit ]. Main article: Sulla's civil war. Sicily, Africa and Lepidus' rebellion [ edit ]. Sertorian War [ edit ]. Main article: Sertorian War. First Consulship [ edit ].

Campaign against the pirates [ edit ]. Main article: Pompey's campaign against the pirates. Third Mithridatic War and re-organisation of the east [ edit ]. Third Mithridatic War [ edit ]. Main article: Third Mithridatic War. Re-organisation of the East [ edit ]. Further information: Pompey's eastern settlement. Return to Rome and the First Triumvirate [ edit ].

From confrontation to civil war [ edit ]. The Road to Pharsalus [ edit ]. Main article: Caesar's civil war. Death [ edit ]. Marriages and issue [ edit ]. Main article: Wives of Pompey the Great. Generalship [ edit ]. Literary heritage [ edit ].