Even this bobbing forest of gibbets was not to be the most humiliating symbol of superpower impotence. In 68 BC, as Lucullus was striking east against Tigranes, the pirates responded by launching an attack against the very heart of the Republic. At Ostia, where the Tiber met the sea, barely fifteen miles from Rome, the pirates sailed into the harbour and burned the consular war fleet as it lay in dock. The port of the hungry capital went up in flames. The grip of famine tightened around Rome. Starving citizens took to the Forum, demanding action on the crisis and the appointment of a proconsul to resolve it – not a paper tiger like Antonius, but a man who could get the job done. Even now, the Senate dug in its heels. Catulus and Hortensius understood perfectly well who their fellow citizens wanted. They knew who was waiting in the wings.
Ever since his consulship, Pompey had been deliberately lying low. His displays of modesty, like all his displays, were carefully staged for their effect. ‘It was Pompey’s favourite tactic to pretend that he was not angling for the things which in fact he wanted the most’,12 a shrewd gambit at the best of times, but especially so when his ambitions aimed as high as they did now. Instead of vaunting himself, he had adopted Crassus’ stratagem of employing proxies to do the boasting on his behalf. Caesar was one of these, a lone voice in favour of Pompey in the Senate – less out of any great enthusiasm for Pompey than because he could see clearly how the dice were going to fall. Now that Sulla’s reforms had been rolled back, the tribunes were back in play. Not for nothing, during his consulship, had Pompey restored their ancient powers. The tribunes had helped him to dismantle Lucullus’ command, and it was a tribune, in 67 BC, who proposed that the people’s hero be given a sweeping licence to deal with the pirates. Despite an impassioned appeal from Catulus not to appoint ‘a virtual monarch over the empire’,13 the citizens rapturously ratified the bill. Pompey was granted the unprecedented force of 500 ships and 120,000 men, together with the right to levy more, should he decide that they were needed. His command embraced the entire Mediterranean, covered all its islands, and extended fifty miles inland. Never before had the resources of the Republic been so concentrated in the hands of a single man.
In every sense, then, Pompey’s appointment was a leap into the dark. No one, not even his supporters, quite knew what to expect. The decision to mobilise on such a scale had in itself been a gesture of despair, and the pessimism with which the Romans regarded even their favourite’s prospects was reflected in the length of his commission: three years. As it proved, to sweep the seas clear of pirates, storm their last stronghold and end a menace that had been tormenting the Republic for decades took the new proconsul a mere three months. It was a brilliant victory, a triumph for Pompey himself and an eye-opening demonstration of the reserves of force available to Rome. Even the Romans themselves appear to have been a little stunned. It suggested that no matter how hesitant their initial response to a challenge might be, there was still no withstanding them should their patience be pushed too far. Campaigns of terror were containable. Rome remained a superpower.
Yet, even though Pompey’s victory had demonstrated once again that the Republic could do pretty much as it pleased, there was none of the savagery that had traditionally been used to drive that lesson home. In a display of clemency quite as startling as his victory, Pompey not merely refrained from crucifying his captives, but bought them plots of land and helped to set them up as farmers. Brigandage, he had clearly recognised, was bred of rootlessness and social upheaval. For as long as the Republic was held responsible for these conditions, there would continue to be a hatred of Rome. Yet it hardly needs emphasising that the rehabilitation of criminals was not standard Roman policy. Perhaps it is significant that Pompey, midway through his campaign against the pirates, should have found the time to visit Posidonius on Rhodes. We know that he attended one of Posidonius’ lectures and then spoke privately with him afterwards. Since it was not the role of philosophers to challenge Roman prejudices, but to give them an intellectual gloss, we can be certain that Pompey would have heard nothing that he did not want to hear – but Posidonius must have helped him, at the very least, to clarify his opinions. Posidonius himself was deeply impressed with his protégé. In Pompey he believed that he had finally found the answer to his prayers: a Roman aristocrat worthy of the values of his class. ‘Always fight bravely’, he advised the parting proconsul, ‘and be superior to others’, a pithy admonition from Homer that Pompey was delighted to accept.14 This was the spirit in which he pardoned the pirates. So it was that the town where he settled them was titled Pompeiopolis: his mercy and munificence were to contribute eternally to the greatness of his name. Stern in war, gracious in peace, it was no wonder that Posidonius could hail him as the hero of the hour.
But Pompey, greedy as ever, wanted more. It was not enough to be the new Hector. From his earliest days, teasing his quiff in front of the mirror, he had dreamed of being the new Alexander. Now he was determined to seize his chance. The East lay all before him, and with it the prospect of glory such as no Roman citizen had ever won before.
The New Alexander
One day in the spring of 66 BC Lucullus watched a cloud of dust rise up on the horizon. Although he was camped by the side of a wood, the plain that stretched before him was parched and treeless. When he finally made out an endless line of troops emerging from the dust, he saw that the lictors of the commanding general had wreathed their rods in laurel, and that the leaves were dry. His own lictors rode out to greet the new arrivals, and in a gesture of welcome handed over fresh laurel. In exchange they were given the faded wreaths.
By such a sign did the gods confirm what everyone already knew. Since the mutiny the winter before Lucullus had found his authority withering by the day. Barely on speaking terms with his men, and certainly unable to trust them in combat, he had dragged his army in slow retreat back from Armenia. Licking his wounds in the uplands west of Pontus, he had been forced to watch helplessly as Mithridates entrenched himself once again in his old kingdom. Yet this was not the worst agony. Lucullus’ replacement was the very man who had always most hankered after his proconsulship, and who had connived with the financiers and their tame tribunes to hack away at his command.
In the aftermath of the victory over the pirates there had been few prepared to stand in the way of Pompey the Great. The majority of the Senate, recognising a winner when they saw one, had abandoned their qualms and voted to award him further, and even more unprecedented, powers. Not only was he to command the largest force ever sent to the East, but he was given the right to make war and peace as he chose, on the spot. Lucullus, by contrast, had been left with nothing. Plenty of his erstwhile allies, including two former consuls and a raft of ancient names, had eagerly signed up to serve with the new proconsul. Lucullus, watching as his fresh laurel wreaths were handed over to Pompey’s lictors, would have recognised a host of impeccably aristocratic faces in his enemy’s train. Did they meet his gaze or, embarrassed, look away? Triumph, failure – both, to the Romans, provided an irresistible spectacle.
Unsurprisingly, the meeting between Lucullus and Pompey, conducted with chilly politeness at first, soon degenerated into a slanging match. Pompey jeered at Lucullus for his inability to finish off Mithridates. Lucullus retorted with a bitter description of his replacement as a carrion bird maddened by blood, only ever settling on the carcasses of wars fought by better men. The abuse turned so violent that the two generals finally had to be pulled apart, but it was Pompey who was the proconsul and could therefore land the killer-blow. He stripped Lucullus of his remaining legions, then continued on his way, leaving Lucullus to nurse his injured dignity, and depart, a private citizen again, on the long road back to Rome.