Pompey the Great: ‘Roman Alexander’?

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

Conventional ancient Roman history/chronology needs to be subjected to revisionist scrutiny just as we found to have been the case with ancient Egypt and the Near East. This article will be a continuation of efforts towards trying to determine whether the seemingly impregnable fortress of conventional ancient Roman history is firmly based, or if it, too, might be susceptible to breaches when revisionist pressure is applied.

  

 

 

 

My three-part series:

 

Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar

 

https://www.academia.edu/14752305/Jesus_Christ_was_the_Model_for_some_legends_surrounding_Julius_Caesar



https://www.academia.edu/14805253/Jesus_Christ_was_the_Model_for_some_legends_surrounding_Julius_Caesar._Part_Two_Hellenistic_Influence  

https://www.academia.edu/14886145/Jesus_Christ_was_the_Model_for_some_legends_surrounding_Julius_Caesar._Part_Three_Divine_Augustus

 found me arriving at the conclusion that the renowned ‘Julius Caesar’ was largely – if not entirely – a composite figure, based upon, among others, Jesus Christ; Alexander the Great; and Octavius (Augustus).


 

My revision (based on the efforts of many) has already successfully undertaken some necessary folding of Egyptian and Mesopotamian history.

For respective examples of this, see my:

 

Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms Far Closer in Time than Conventionally Thought

https://www.academia.edu/3690058/Egypt_s_Old_and_Middle_Kingdoms_Far_Closer_in_Time_than_Conventionally_Thought

 

https://www.academia.edu/21893462/Egypt_s_Old_and_Middle_Kingdoms_Far_Closer_in_Time_than_Conventionally_Thought._Part_Two_Some_Striking_Visual_Evidence

 and





 

Bringing New Order to Mesopotamian History and Chronology

https://www.academia.edu/26707668/Bringing_New_Order_to_Mesopotamian_History_and_Chronology

 

Apart from the inestimable benefit of getting rid of the artificial ‘Dark Ages’ – P. James et al., Centuries of Darkness, being a leader in the field here – such revisionism can serve to make more realistic certain ancient genealogies. For instance, it was found that the conventional Egyptian history, in the case of some detailed genealogies of officials serving a string of named pharaohs, ends up with a whole lot of octogenarian persons, or older, still actively functioning in office. Similarly does the received Roman Imperial chronology create aged but still active characters: e.g. John the Evangelist, in his 90’s (according to a tradition) vigorously chasing a young man on horseback; Yohanan ben Zakkai still going at 120 (highly unlikely), straddling the supposedly two Jewish Revolts.

 

Now, reverting back to the Roman Republican period again, I turn to a brief consideration of Julius Caesar’s famous contemporary and fellow triumvir, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, or, as we know him better, Pompey ‘the Great’.

 

Is Pompey also a composite?

 

If there is any value in the conclusions that I reached about ‘Julius Caesar’ in my series, “Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar”, then that, I believe, must put extreme pressure on the validity of ‘Pompey the Great’ himself, Caesar’s fellow triumvir (along with Crassus). More especially so as Pompey, too, like Julius Caesar, was – as we shall shortly learn – likened to Alexander the Great – Pompey perhaps even more explicitly so than Caesar was.

Fields tells of it in Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008, p. 67):

 

Meteoric Rise

 

His flatterers, so it was said, likened Pompey to Alexander the Great, and whether because of this or not, the Macedonian king would appear to have been constantly in his mind. His respect for the fairer sex is comparable with Alexander’s, and Plutarch mentions that when the concubines of Mithridates were brought to him he merely restored them to their parents and families. …. Similarly he treated the corpse of Mithridates in a kingly way, as Alexander treated the corpse of Dareios, and ‘provided for the expenses of the funeral and directed that the remains should receive royal interment’. …. Also, like Alexander, he founded many cities and repaired many damaged towns, searched for the ocean that was thought to surround the world, and rewarded his soldiers munificently. Finally, Appian adds that in his third triumph he was said to have worn ‘a cloak of Alexander the Great’. ….

 

It is interesting to learn that the original name of Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’, who, like Pompey, would desecrate the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, was likewise “Mithridates” (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes).

 

And (p. 98):

 

In a sense Pompey personified Roman imperialism, where absolute destruction was followed by the construction of stable empire and the rule of law. It also, not coincidentally, raised him to a pinnacle of glory and wealth. The client–rulers who swelled the train of Rome also swelled his own. He received extraordinary honours from the communities of the east, as ‘saviour and benefactor of the People and of all Asia, guardian of land and sea’. …. There was an obvious precedent for all this. As the elder Pliny later wrote, Pompey’s victories ‘equalled in brilliance the exploits of Alexander the Great’. Without a doubt, so Pliny continues, the proudest boast of our ‘Roman Alexander’ would be that ‘he found Asia on the rim of Rome’s possessions, and left it in the centre’. ….

 

Pompey is even supposed to have gone so far as to have tried to emulate Alexander’s distinctive appearance: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/cleopatra/pompey.html

 

The marble bust of Pompey is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen). Its somewhat incongruous appearance, the round face and small lidded eyes beneath the leonine mane of hair, is because Pompey, the most powerful Roman of his day, sought a comparison with Alexander the Great, whose distinctive portraits were characterized by a thoughtful facial expression and, more iconographically, locks of hair brushed back high from the forehead, a stylistic form known as anastole, from the Greek “to put back.”

 

Did Pompey absorb – like I argued may have been the case with Julius Caesar – not only Alexander-like characteristics, but also general Hellenistic ones?

And might that mean that the famous event of Pompey’s desecration (by his presence therein) of the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, supposedly in 63 BC:

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12264-pompey-the-great

 

The capture of the Temple mount was accompanied by great slaughter. The priests who were officiating despite the battle were massacred by the Roman soldiers, and many committed suicide; while 12,000 people besides were killed. Pompey himself entered the Temple, but he was so awed by its sanctity that he left the treasure and the costly vessels untouched (“Ant.” xiv. 4, § 4; “B. J.” i. 7, § 6; Cicero, “Pro Flacco,” § 67). The leaders of the war party were executed, and the city and country were laid under tribute. A deadly blow was struck at the Jews when Pompey separated from Judea the coast cities from Raphia to Dora, as well as all the Hellenic cities in the east-Jordan country, and the so-called Decapolis, besides Scythopolis and Samaria, all of which were incorporated in the new province of Syria. ….

 

may be in fact a muddled version of that real historical incident when Antiochus (Mithridates) ‘Epiphanes’ most infamously desecrated the Temple by erecting an image of Zeus in his own likeness on the altar?

 

Part Two:

Republic spilling into Empire

 

 

What a complete mess is conventional ancient history! Kingdoms, dynasties and rulers duplicated, or triplicated. History and culture having a “strange afterglow” centuries later. Impossible “Dark "Ages” procrusteanising time periods by extension. BC characters and events mysteriously projected into AD 'time’. 

And, in this case, the Roman Republic flopping over into its Empire.

 

Dolly Parton put it well: “It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it” (9 to 5).

 

There is that strange re-duplication, about 60 years later, of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. But it seems that the history books also ‘know’ of a ‘third’ bloody capture of Jerusalem in Roman history - one which is thought, however, to have preceded the other supposedly two assaults by Rome in the Neronic and Hadrianic (so-called) imperial eras. It is considered to have occurred in Republican times, in 63 BC, when Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey ‘the Great’), one time ally of Julius Caesar, captured Jerusalem and killed 12,000 Jews. This is quite a massive event, to say the least, yet it is often mentioned only in passing. See my article:

 

Pompey the Great: 'Roman Alexander'?

 

https://www.academia.edu/36342232/Pompey_the_Great_Roman_Alexander

 

Strange that it is nowhere referred to in the Bible.

Hence, I suspect that there also needs to be a folding of some Roman Republican history with early Roman Imperial history. There was, for example:

 

1. a Pompey the Great (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) also at the time of Caligula (see A. Barrett, Caligula - the Corruption of Power, p. 237) about a century after (presumably) the Republican Pompey. And there was then also a
2. Marcus Crassus; the same name as the ‘earlier’ Pompey’s fellow consul (see Mackay, p. 135). Moreover, Caligula may have been murdered by a
3. Cassius Longinus (Barrett, p. 162); the same name as the chief conspirator against Julius Caesar.

 

All very strange indeed and desperately needing to be explained. ….