Imperialism 2 gog version comparison
Pompey is even supposed to have gone so far as to have tried to emulate Alexander’s distinctive appearance: 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’. As the elder Pliny later wrote, Pompey’s victories ‘equalled in brilliance the exploits of Alexander the Great’.
There was an obvious precedent for all this. 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’. The client–rulers who swelled the train of Rome also swelled his own. It also, not coincidentally, raised him to a pinnacle of glory and wealth. In a sense Pompey personified Roman imperialism, where absolute destruction was followed by the construction of stable empire and the rule of law. 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” ( ). Finally, Appian adds that in his third triumph he was said to have worn ‘a cloak of Alexander the Great’. 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. 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’. 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. 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.
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.įields tells of it in Warlords of Republican Rome. 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). 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’. 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. Similarly does the received Roman Imperial chronology create aged but still active characters: e.g. 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. James et al., Centuries of Darkness, being a leader in the field here – such revisionism can serve to make more realistic certain ancient genealogies. My revision (based on the efforts of many) has already successfully undertaken some necessary folding of Egyptian and Mesopotamian history.Įgypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms Far Closer in Time than Conventionally Thoughtīringing New Order to Mesopotamian History and ChronologyĪpart from the inestimable benefit of getting rid of the artificial ‘Dark Ages’ – P. Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesarįound 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). 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. 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.