The Domination Of Pompeius

Abstract The Pompeii, a family of recent ennoblement, were of non-Latin stock, as the name so patently indicates, probably deriving their origin from Picenum, a region where they possessed large estates and wide influence.1 Cn. Pompeius Strabo, after shattering the Italian insurrection in Picenum, used his influence and his army for personal ends and played an ambiguous game when civil war broke out between Marius and Sulla. Brutal, corrupt and perfidious, Strabo was believed to have procured the assassinat10n of a consul. When he died of a natural but providential death the populace broke up his funeral. Strabo was a sinister character, ‘hated by heaven and by the nobility’, for good reasons. There were no words to describe Cn. Pompeius the son. After his father’s death, protected by influential politicians, he lay low, lurking no doubt in Picenum.