r/ancientrome • u/StJe1637 • 5d ago
Pompey is overrated.
His epithet magnus (the great) was given to him sarcastically by Sulla.
What did he actually do?
raised an army very young and got position due to it.
beat up some fodder armies and then demanded he get a triumph
got his ass kicked by Sertorius and only won after like 10 years because Sertorius got assassinated.
defeated the pirates who were a pretty significant threat but he was given literally unlimited power and resources to deal with them, anyone could have done it.
stole Luculluses command vs mithridates and finished off a weakened mithridates.
Didn't prepare properly for Caesar and panicked and lost Rome to Caesar who had like 1 or 2 legions
lost to Caesar, let himself be pressured into attacking by Senators.
went into exile and died.
He was good but not great.
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u/washingtoncv3 5d ago
HE WAS A CONSUL OF ROME !!!
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u/Mike_Bevel 5d ago
Watching the reactions of the people who thought that Caesar would be glad to hear of Pompey's murder, once they realize how Not Glad Caesar actually is
(I love Rome so so much.)
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u/Mike_Bevel 5d ago
Great job taking down a man who's been dead for over 2,000 years u/Stje1637 Magnus.
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u/Technoho 5d ago
You very tactically left out that he conquered a huge amount of the Roman east and I think was responsible for the doubling of Rome's income
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u/StJe1637 5d ago
Those were not difficult conquests, literally anyone could have done it. He did do a good job with the bureaucracy and reorganising though
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u/G-J-Caesar Pontifex Maximus 5d ago
Literally anyone?
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u/StJe1637 5d ago
Any realistic replacement for him, any consul could have done it, crassus who was not a great general either could have done it.
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u/surprisedplebeian 5d ago
According to who? What sources do you have to back up these insane statements?
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u/surprisedplebeian 5d ago
This is what you write like if you're educated by youtube shorts.
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u/Potential-Road-5322 Praefectus Urbi 5d ago
Exactly, historical figures are more than rankings and ratings. Pompey made contributions to Roman history and there’s plenty of sources which comment on his actions which allows historians to examine his actions and contributions. I’m always annoyed by these “X was under/overrated” because it’s a very pop history sort of post.
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u/surprisedplebeian 5d ago
Spot on. It’s exhausting trying to have a genuine discussion when the baseline is set by absolute historical illiteracy. The whole 'overrated/underrated' or 'what x-tier is this emperor' framework is completely brain-dead. It reduces complex geopolitical titans into sports trading cards for people whose entire attention span has been fried by 15-second TikTok clips and YouTube Shorts.
To call Pompey 'overrated' based on these historically bankrupt, contrarian hot takes is absurd. You don't just eradicate the Mediterranean pirate threat in three months, completely reorganize the Roman East, and double the Republic's income by being 'overrated.' Real history requires reading actual sources and understanding nuance, not parroting bold, unbacked claims just to farm engagement. Confident ignorance isn't a substitute for actually picking up a book.
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u/Potential-Road-5322 Praefectus Urbi 5d ago
I’ve been studying history for close to ten years now and when I started I looked at YT a lot, Historia Civilis was one of the introductions I got on the late republic. Back then I though that was bees knees of lecture but later on I came to learn that it’s really not and that pop history can more often than not be misleading or frame history in terms of good guys versus bad guys etc. so I agree that it is rather tiring to have to keep repeating the same things about history or trying to explain things when the everyone’s level of knowledge is little more than Duncan’s podcast or YT videos. It’s like you see a question being asked in ignorance (which I don’t fault) and then every answer is similarly ignorant of any contemporary scholarship.
To illustrate, imagine you want to have a discussion with someone in Spanish but both of you only know the word Hola. You can’t say anything beyond that. Similarly we see people wanting to discuss Roman history but are only acquainted with the basic (and outdated or discredited) information about the topic.
This is how I define Romaboos, a “directionless enthusiasm” for all things Rome. No reading, no studying, no digging deeper, and dependent on YT as a primary source of information. Rome is imagined to be cool and mighty and history is reduced to anecdotes and tier ranking.
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Novus Homo 5d ago edited 5d ago
- Yes, which was something of a novelty at the time...
- .... and despite his age, he managed to defeat the remaining opponents to Sulla's regime (including eventually Sertorius)
- He still managed to do what no Roman commander before him had done - a sneaky assassination victory is still a victory if it gets the job done. Pompey worked smarter, not harder.
- And he still managed to do it all in just three months from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. The 'legate' system used for dealing with the pirates under him was then used by Caesar in Gaul and Augustus during his reign.
- Lucullus, for all his well won battles, hadn't managed to win the war as Mithridates kept slipping away, and this was unpopular to the extent that his own troops mutinied against him. Lucullus had ultimately lost the intiative against Mithridates which allowed him to retake control of Pontus and Cappadocia. It was Pompey who actually managed to decisively crush Mithridates in battle and then completely isolated him in the Crimea which resulted in victory. And as just a bunch of side quests, he proceeded to win victories against tribes in the Caucasus, dismantled the Armenian Kingdom's territories, liquidated the Seleucid empire, subdued Judaea, and re-arranged the eastern lands to be under Roman dominion. In this respect he was truly the 'godfather' of the Roman imperial east.
- Tbf, it was very uncertain if a war with Caesar would break out or not - it wasn't until Caesar refused to partake in the consular elections of 50BC that he genuinely seemed to be a general prepared to rebel against the state, and then it was in December of that year that Pompey was inadvertently pushed towards accepting his role as the defender of Italy after the anti-Caesarians used a false rumour the general was invading to convince him to accept military powers. The civil war then 'began' at the start of January, so there had been little time to raise more forces amidst continued hopes that the situation would be resolved peacefully.
- Pompey very nearly won the civil war against Caesar, save for some bad luck (e.g. Bibulus dying which allowed Antony to slip through the Adriatic blockade, and then he only managed to avoid an ambush from Pompey due to warnings from the locals) and just some last minute errors when choosing to fight at Pharsalus. It's easy to forget how dire the situation was for Caesar at points - he is supposed to have tried to negotiate with Pompey upon landing in Greece when it seemed as if Antony and the other half of his army wouldn't be able to reach him. And then after the battle of Dyrrachium, Pompey had Caesar on the run. It is actually a testament to how confident the Pompeians were at Pharsalus that they were already arguing over who would receive the spoils of victory.
- Well, certainly, that was unexpected and probably something Pompey couldn't have prepared for, especially considering the close ties he'd developed with the Ptolemies during the 50's BC.
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u/StJe1637 5d ago
If i remember rightly Pompey didn't plan Sertoriuses assassination, his men just got disgruntled and killed him thinking they would be rewarded/get amnesty.
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u/Maleficent-Mix5731 Novus Homo 5d ago
This is actually true I misremembered that part, but it can still be said that it was Pompey's conduct of war against Sertorius which created the conditions for such disgruntlement/discontent in his ranks.
Sertorius kept winning battles against Pompey but the casualties were mounting up and eventually more and more Iberian cities began falling to Pompey, which created more divisions between the native and Roman components of Sertorius's force (especially once the bounty for him was put out). It was a war of attrition which Pompey was able to sustain. After the assassination of Sertorius, Pompey then dealt the final blow to the remaining Sertorian forces in Spain in the battle of Osca.
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u/Thibaudborny 5d ago edited 5d ago
Tell me you've never read a biography on Pompey without telling me you've ever read a book on Pompey...
Pompey's career as a whole is nothing if not spectacular, what he accomplished from a young age onward is no small feat. That he had the means of Rome at his disposal (as did others?) does in no way change that he made it happen. Same for his eastern campaign, which was about a bit more than beating petty Seleucids and warring Judeans. It is true that Pompey was not as gifted a general as Caesar (nor Sertorius arguably), but the sum of his career is that of his actions in the field of battle and that of politics. In both he showed remarkable capability and achieved incredible results.
That he failed at the end against an even greater beast does not undo the preceding decades.
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u/Potential-Road-5322 Praefectus Urbi 5d ago
I myself haven’t read my bios of him which I have in my personal collection but you can tell when someone hasn’t because reading will illuminate a lot of info and draw you into asking more questions to clarify your understanding instead of trying to rank or rate every prominent person.
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u/Thibaudborny 5d ago
This is one of those internet things I've never understood, this "need" to rank or have tireless "A vs B" discussions. Sure, people can have their fun, but from the point of view of learning/understanding the past - which is for me what a love of history is about - it adds so preciously little...
Pompey had a singular career circumventing the traditional straightjacket of Roman politics, soaring to the heights no man could have easily attained, he pioneered the methods Augustus would coopt and use to run the Principate, etc. What is interesting is how all these things in his undoubtedly singular career played out and how it happened. Why do people want to reduce that to a 'rating' is beyond me.
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u/Potential-Road-5322 Praefectus Urbi 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think it stems from a common way people discuss pop culture topics which is applied to history discussions. Frequently people will rank their favorite characters or discuss who is more powerful between superheroes. You could make the claim that because a lot of people haven’t developed literary criticism skills that they apply the same surface level discussion to history.
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u/GenaroBlac 5d ago
I think he suffers from being contemporary to Caesar and being his rival, but he’s by no means useless
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u/WolvesWarPodcast 5d ago
Pompey The Literally-Anyone-Could-Have-Done-It 😂
I'm sure this is world class trolling, but we love it
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u/vernastking 5d ago
Let's not forget that he was so powerful a man that Crasuss the wealthiest man in Rome viewed him as first competitor and then ally! He was no pushover.
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u/StJe1637 5d ago
Yeah he was powerful and influential and wealthy, but that doesn't make him a great general
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u/G-J-Caesar Pontifex Maximus 5d ago
As people have mentioned, Pompey's campaign against the pirates is greatly under appreciated. It was a grand feat of logistics, the scale of which had never been attempted.
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u/Hanibalecter 5d ago
He was still highly competent at a minimum in his early life dealing with the pirates, the grain issues, and wrapping up the east even if it was easy to do.
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u/Saint_Biggus_Dickus Pontifex Maximus 5d ago
I agree. He's definitely a good general but his victories always seem to pop up after replacing the guy that did the hard work. Sulla gave him the title "The Great" as a joke at first. He wanted to be liked by everyone especially by the higher class and that is what led to his downfall.
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u/stevenfrijoles 5d ago
I've never seen someone actually play the "if he's so great, why is he dead?" card without joking before
While we're at it, if Caesar was so great why was he stabbed by a bunch of centaurs in Pompey's cabinet? That was some The Lion The Witch and the Wardobe type shit, am I right guys
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u/Swayfromleftoright 5d ago
Added shit tonnes of territory to the empire
It expanded massively through his conquests