Bret Devereaux

rewatching HBO's Rome. (which is awesome). Query: does the Roman Empire look any different if Pompey wins? Discuss

For me, the biggest thing here is taking Octavian out of the picture. Pompey seems to me to have lacked a vision for the future of the Roman state even moreso than Sulla. And I don't see that vision emerging from Gnaeus or Sextus.

It's possible that Cicero ends up in a position to 'manage' a Pompey Republic, but that strikes me as unlikely. But the Republic desperately needed someone to short-circuit the cycle of private armies, rogue generals, senatorial intransigence and so on.

Pompey, for sure, isn't the guy with the political understanding to see his way through that. Without an Octavian in the wings, it seems to me that what you get is another 'pause' - perhaps a decade, but perhaps with Antony/Lepidus and other Caesarians lurking in Gaul...

...followed by yet another repeat where the next successful rogue general decides to take his army against Gnaeus Jr., Sextus and the Senate after Pompey is out of the picture. I'm not sure just how many such cycles the Republic could take before it fell apart.

So I suppose I don't think Pompey or his kids had the political genius to set up the empire. Consequently, I think Pompey winning raises the chance of the Roman state just disintegrating (like Alexander's empire) in civil war after civil war.

ooh. that is possible. Putting individual ability at the center of a crucial turning point in history!

I really do think Octavian is one of those figures where it is hard to overstate his influence. Sulla, Caesar, Cicero and Pompey really demonstrate the degree to which traditional Roman elite thinking was not well suited to reforming broken systems of government.