Julius Caesar by Ernle Bradford

Sertorius in Spain and next in his sweeping command of the sea against the pirates, which gave this impression. In all other respects he had shown himself as unrepresentative of the old conception of republican virtues as any other who wished to overturn Cicero’s dream of the republic. As Sir Ronald Syme puts it: “The career of Pompeius opened in fraud and violence. It was prosecuted, in war and in peace, through illegality and treachery.”
    Now, early in 61, before Caesar had left for Spain, Pompey returned to Italy triumphant with his 40,000 legionaries. He had not only settled all the troubles of Asia Minor, thus enriching Rome with immense and increasing wealth, but he brought back—a gift, as it were, to the empire—the rich and important province of Syria. Mithridates was dead, Roman influence extended as far as the Caucasus, and the sea was pirate-free. In the course of the past three years and more he had not only enriched his country immeasurably but, of course, himself as well. Such was to be expected, for the rewards enjoyed by victorious Roman generals were not just the medals, titles and retirement pensions that their successors in our century may consider their simple due. Pompey the Great was now almost certainly richer than Crassus: what is more he had hundreds of indebted clients in the territories that he had subdued and thousands of devoted legionaries whom he had also benefited, and to whom he had promised land on a very large scale. On arriving in Italy he had dis-missed his soldiers, though many senators had feared he might use them to impose a dictatorship, and advanced on Rome in total confidence. Caesar was among the first to propose massive new honors to the returning conqueror, for he saw that Pompey as well as Crassus might make a more than useful ally.
    J. A. Froude in his Caesar—a Sketch conveys the atmosphere of Pompey’s reception as well as the subsequent disillusionment with him:
     
    He was received as he advanced with the shouts of applauding multitudes. He entered Rome in a galaxy of glory. A splendid column commemorated the cities which he had taken, the twelve million human beings whom he had slain or subjected. His triumph was the most magnificent which the Roman citizens had ever witnessed, and by special vote he was permitted to wear his triumphal robe in the senate as often and as long as might please him. The fireworks over, and with the aureole of glory about his brow, the great Pompey, like another Samson shorn of his locks, dropped into impotence and insignificance.
     
    The fact was—and Caesar in the remaining weeks before he left for Spain will have had time to discern it—Pompey was no orator, and a poor politician. He might shine on distant fields of battle and in military organization but he did not distinguish himself in the senate. Like many another returning warrior who has been years away from home (MacArthur springs to mind), during his long residence in other climates and among his soldiers or the prostrate conquered he had lost touch with the seat of power and the tortuous maze of manipulation. Caesar, as has been observed, was always, even as a youth in the East, accustomed to hear regularly from correspondents in Rome and to return there whenever opportunity offered. He knew—as Pompey perhaps did not, or had forgotten—that it was in the capital that the alliances were made and the political maneuvers engendered. Cicero, in a letter to his friend Atticus, reported with evident satisfaction, after listening to a speech by Pompey: “He gave no pleasure to the wretched; to the bad he seemed vapid and spineless; he was not pleasing to the well-to-do; to the good he seemed without any weight; and so he was looked on coldly.” He had also made the grave error—in the eyes of the senate—of settling affairs abroad in a high-handed manner without bothering to consult them, and he had made extravagant promises of land to his soldiers which the senators