Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

Gnaeus Pompey was loved by the Romans as much as his father was hated. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. i. (619 B).) In his youth he was heart and soul for Sulla’s party, and without holding public office or being in the Senate, he enlisted many men in Italy for the army. [*](Ibid. chap. vi. (621 D).) When Sulla summoned him, he refused to present his troops before the commander-in-chief without spoils and without their having been through bloodshed. And he did not come until after he had vanquished the generals of the enemy in many battles. [*](Ibid. 621 F.)

When he was sent by Sulla to Sicily [*](In 82 B.C.) in the capacity of general, he perceived that the soldiers on the marches kept dropping out of the ranks to do violence and to plunder, and so he punished those who were straggling and running about, and placed seals upon the swords of those who were officially sent by him. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. x. (624 A).)

The Mamertines, who had joined the other party, he was like to put to death to a man. But Sthennius, their popular leader, said that Pompey

He crossed over to Africa against Domitius [*](In 81 B.C.) and overcame him in a mighty battle; then, when the soldiers were hailing him as commander-in-chief, he said he could not accept the honour while the enemy’s palisade still stood upright. And they, in spite of a heavy rain that enveloped them, swept on and plundered the camp. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chaps. xi.-xii. (624 C-E).)

When he returned, Sulla received him graciously with many honours, and was the first to call him Magnus (The Great). He desired to celebrate a triumph, but Sulla would not allow him to do so, since he was not as yet a member of the Senate. When Pompey remarked to those present that Sulla did not realize that more people worship the rising than the setting sun, Sulla cried out, Let him have his triumph ! Servilius, a man of noble family, was indignant, and many of the soldiers stood in his way with their demands of largess before his triumph. But when Pompey said that he would rather give up his triumph than curry favour with them, Servilius said that now he saw that Pompey was truly great, and deserved his triumph. [*](Ibid. chaps. xiii.-xiv. (625-626 B); Moralia, 804 F.)

It is a custom in Rome for the knights, when

On gaining possession of the papers of Sertorius in Spain, among which were letters from many leading men inviting Sertorius to come to Rome with a view to fomenting a revolution and changing the government, he burned them all, thus offering an opportunity for the miscreants to repent and become better men. [*](Ibid. chap. xx. (p. 629); similar stories are told of others, as, for example, of William III. of England.)

When Phraates, king of the Parthians, sent to him, claiming the right to set his boundary at the river Euphrates, he said that the Romans set justice as their boundary towards the Parthians. [*](Ibid. chap. xxxiii. (637 C).)

Lucius Lucullus, after his campaigns, gave himself up to pleasures and lived very expensively, and strongly disapproved of Pompey’s yearning for the strenuous life as something out of keeping with his years. But Pompey said that for an old man it was more out of keeping with his years to be a voluptuary than to hold office. [*](Ibid. chap. xlviii. (644 E); Life of Lucullus, chap. xxxviii. (518 B); Moralia, 785 E.)

When he was ill his physician prescribed a thrush as diet, but those who tried to get one did not find any, for thrushes were out of season; however, somebody said that they would be found at the house of Lucullus, where they were kept the year round. So then, said Pompey, if Lucullus were not a voluptuary, Pompey could not live ! and letting his physician go, he made his diet of things not so hard to procure. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. ii. (620 B); Life of Lucullus, chap. xl. (518 F); Moralia, 786 A. Stobaeus, Florilegium, xvii. 43, quotes from Musonius a similar story about Zeno the philosopher.)

At a time when there was a serious scarcity of grain in Rome [*](In 57 B.C.) he was appointed nominally overseer of the market, [*](He was appointed praefectus annonae, for five years.) but actually supreme master on land and sea, and sailed to Africa, Sardinia, and Sicily. Having got together a great quantity of grain, he was eager to get to Rome. A great storm arose and the pilots were hesitating, when he, going on board first himself, gave orders to weigh anchor, crying out, To sail is a necessity; to live is not a necessity. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. xlix. and l. (645 C-676 A); Dio Cassius, xxxix. 9; Zonaras, x. 5; Cicero, Letters to Atticus, iv. 1. 7.)

When his falling-out with Caesar came to light, one Mareellinus, who was among those reputed to have been advanced by Pompey but had gone over to Caesar, inveighed against him at great length in the Senate. Mareellinus, said Pompey, are you not ashamed to revile me, when it is all owing to me that you, from being inarticulate, have become so fluent, and from being a starveling, are now able to eat and disgorge and eat again ? [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. li. (646 E).)

Cato assailed him bitterly, because when he himself had often foretold that Caesar’s power and his

Speaking frankly about himself, he said that he had attained every office sooner than he had expected, and laid it down sooner than had been expected. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. liv. (647 F).) 15. After the battle of Pharsalus [*](In 48 B.C.) he fled to Egypt, and as he was about to transfer from the trireme to a fishing-boat which the king had sent for him, he turned to his wife and son, and said never a word except the lines of Sophocles:

Whoever comes to traffic with a king Is slave to him, however free he come.[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Sophocles, no. 789; quoted by Plutarch also in Moralia, 33 D and the Life of Pompey, chap. lxxviii. (661 A). Appian, Civil Wars, ii. 84, and Dio Cassius, xlii. 4, also state that Pompey quoted these verses shortly before his death when he was slain by order of the king’s counselors.)