CHAPTER IX.

POMPEY.

At an age when Caesar was still idling away his time, Pompey had achieved honors such as the veteran generals of Rome were accustomed to regard as the highest to which they could aspire.  He had only just left, if indeed he had left, school, when his father took him to serve under him in the war against the Italian allies of Rome.  He was not more than nineteen when he distinguished himself by behaving in circumstances of great difficulty and danger with extraordinary prudence and courage.  The elder Pompey, Strabo “the squint-eyed,” as his contemporaries called him, after their strange fashion of giving nicknames from personal defects, and as he was content to call himself, was an able general, but hated for his cruelty and avarice.  The leaders of the opposite faction saw an opportunity of getting rid of a dangerous enemy and of bringing over to their own side the forces which he commanded.  Their plan was to assassinate the son as he slept, to burn the father in his tent, and at the same time to stir up a mutiny among the troops.  The secret, however, was not kept.  A letter describing the plot was brought to the young Pompey as he sat at dinner with the ringleader.  The lad showed no sign of disturbance, but drank more freely than usual, and pledged his false friend with especial heartiness.  He then rose, and after putting an extra guard on his father’s tent, composed himself to sleep, but not in his bed.  The assassins stabbed the coverlet with repeated blows, and then ran to rouse the soldiers to revolt.  The camp was immediately in an uproar, and the elder Pompey, though he had been preserved by his son’s precautions, dared not attempt to quell it.  The younger man was equal to the occasion.  Throwing himself on his face in front of the gate of the camp, he declared that if his comrades were determined to desert to the enemy, they must pass over his dead body.  His entreaties prevailed, and a reconciliation was effected between the general and his troops.

Not many weeks after this incident the father died, struck, it was said, by lightning, and Pompey became his own master.  It was not long before he found an opportunity of gaining still higher distinction.  The civil war still continued to rage, and few did better service to the party of the aristocrats than Pompey.  Others were content to seek their personal safety in Sulla’s camp; Pompey was resolved himself to do something for the cause.  He made his way to Picenum, where his family estates we e situated and where his own influence was great, and raised three legions (nearly twenty thousand men), with all their commissariat and transport complete, and hurried to the assistance of Sulla.  Three of the hostile generals sought to intercept him.  He fell with his whole force on one of them, and crushed him, carrying off, besides his victory, the personal distinction of having slain in single combat the champion of the opposing force.  The towns by which he passed eagerly hailed him as their deliverer.  A second commander who ventured to encounter him found himself deserted by his army and was barely able to escape; a third was totally routed.  Sulla received his young partisan, who was not more than twenty-three years of age, with distinguished honors, even rising from his seat and uncovering at his approach.