Pompey

Yet sometimes a pledge of public faith, and the rights of embassy are allowed to men of that description, which was done by Pompey to the fugitives from the Pyrenean forest.

For as a case in point, he alleges the conduct of the Italian Infantry, who, upon receiving assurances of protection from Caesar, deserted Pompey, even before he was reduced to absolute despair:

And therefore Ulpian says, that the public have a property in sacred things.

Over the head of Pompey a ward and a eunuch pronounced sentence;

Nothing was softer than the countenance of Pompey;

The question is whether Caesar or Pompey is to possess the state;

that when he had come to Rhodes on his way from Syria, he wished to hear Posidonius;

but what need is there, when my aim is that we should not think we shall be wretched after death, to make life too more wretched by bewailing it?

He who, had he met death then, would have died amid the amplest fortunes — by the prolonging of his life how many, how great, how incredible calamities he drained!

Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar, after so often razing whole cities to the ground and cutting down in pitched battle myriads of horse and foot, themselves at last departed from life.

not the death of a single man, but of houses like that of the Pompeii.

Alexander, Gaius, and Pompey — what are they beside Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates?

Do you call happier that Demetrius, Pompey's freedman, who was not ashamed to be richer than Pompey himself?

When Gaius—his old kinsman, his new host—threw open Caesar's house to him only to mock his own, Pompey lacked bread and water!

When good men come to a bad end—when Socrates is forced to die in prison, Rutilius to live in exile, Pompey and Cicero to offer their necks to their own clients, when that Cato, the living image of the virtues, falling upon his sword, declares openly that all is over both with himself and with the republic—it is inevitable that one should be tormented that fortune pays out such unjust rewards.

Cnaeus Pompey first published abroad to Italy the cherry from Pontus.

If you consecrated him on account of his many slaughters and battles, that great Pompey put forth a far greater number, victor over the pirates of the sea, who had not left even Ostia safe:

But indeed the same Cornelius Tacitus — that most talkative of liars — forgetting his own assertion, reports in his later books that Pompey the Great, when the Jews were subdued and Jerusalem taken, entered the temple and, searching it thoroughly, found nothing of an image.

The war for supremacy between Cæsar and Pompey which had for some time been gradually growing more certain, broke out in 49 bc, when Cæsar led his army across the Rubicon, and Cicero after much irresolution threw in his lot with Pompey, who was overthrown the next year in the battle of Pharsalus and later murdered in Egypt.

But imagine a man not only cunning in doing some wicked thing, but also very powerful, as Marcus Crassus was — who yet was wont to use his advantage well, as our Pompeius does today, to whom thanks are owed for acting rightly;

when he had seized the caskets of letters sent to Gnaeus Pompeius by those who seemed to have been either on the other side or on neither, he burned them.

let him be set at once against Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus.

But that same man was afterwards deceived by Alexandrian treachery and offered himself to be run through by the basest slave, at last understanding the empty boasting of his surname.

but does it serve any good purpose that Pompey was the first to exhibit in the circus a battle of eighteen elephants, with criminals set against them after the manner of a real fight?

Recently, when mention happened to be made of Marcus Cato, you grew indignant, as you cannot endure injustice, that Cato's own age had understood him too little, that it had ranked a man who rose above the likes of Pompey and Caesar below the likes of Vatinius;

Who is loftier than Pompey, more fortunate than Sulla, richer than Crassus, more eloquent than Tully?

But that same Cornelius Tacitus — that most talkative of liars, to be sure — in the same history relates that Gnaeus Pompey, when he had taken Jerusalem and therefore entered the temple to spy out the secrets of the Jewish religion, found there no image at all.

But to you, after the benefit of an injury — once you were exempted from senility rather than from your eminence — after the obscene omens of Gracchus and the violent mockeries of Lepidus, after the triple altars of Pompey and the long delays of Caesar, when Statilius Taurus set the walls in place and Sentius Saturninus proclaimed the solemnities — when concord brings its pleasure — the toga was offered.

And so Pompey the Great—less only than his own theatre—when he had built that citadel of all turpitudes, fearing some day the censorian animadversion upon his memory, set a temple of Venus on top, and, calling the people by an edict to the dedication, named it not a theatre but a temple of Venus, "under which," he said, "we have placed tiers of seats for the spectacles.