Pompey built a private legion from his father's veterans and marched it to Sulla
In his early twenties, Pompey recruited and equipped an entire legion from his father's veterans and marched it to join Sulla. The dictator hailed him as imperator and later dubbed him Magnus, the Great. His enemies preferred another label: the teenage butcher.
Pompey was born in Picenum on 29 September 106 BC. His father, Pompeius Strabo, was the first of his branch to reach the Senate and became consul in 89 BC, earning a reputation for greed, double-dealing and ruthlessness. Young Pompey served with him in the Social War. When Strabo died in 87 BC, whether from disease or at the hands of his own troops, the son inherited an embezzlement charge and was acquitted, reportedly after agreeing to marry the judge's daughter, Antistia.
Rome was then split between Sulla, away fighting Mithridates, and rivals who had seized the Senate. When Sulla landed at Brundisium in 83 BC, Pompey brought his home-raised legion south; the government sent three armies to stop him, he routed one and the quarrelling commanders of the others withdrew. As cavalry commander for Metellus he helped defeat Carbo's forces in the north, then with Crassus beat Carrinas near Spoletium and ambushed troops trying to relieve Marius the Younger at Praeneste. Those failures broke the anti-Sullan resistance.
Such early triumphs let him skip the usual ladder of offices. He was consul three times, in 70, 55 and 52 BC, celebrated three triumphs and commanded in the Sertorian War, the slave revolt known as the Third Servile War and the Third Mithridatic War. The name Magnus was said to reflect his admiration for Alexander the Great.
In 60 BC he joined Crassus and Caesar in the First Triumvirate and married Caesar's daughter Julia. Her death in 54 BC and that of Crassus the following year removed the ties binding the partnership, and Pompey drifted toward the conservative optimates. The rivalry with Caesar became civil war. Beaten at Pharsalus in 48 BC, Pompey fled to Egypt, where courtiers of Ptolemy XIII assassinated him on 28 September, a day short of his 58th birthday.
Source: Pompey
