Nobody Loves a Centurion

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I blame it all on Alexander the Great. Ever since that little Macedonian twit decided that he had to conquer the whole world before he was old enough to shave, every fool with a sword and a decent pair of boots has sought to do the same. In the days of my youth there were a number of would-be Alexanders in Rome. Marius had a go at being Alexander. Sulla tried it. Lucullus tried it. There were others who never even managed to establish a reputation the equal of those men.

Pompey came close to succeeding. Since Rome was a Republic, he couldn’t simply inherit an army as Alexander had, and he was too lazy to bother with holding the offices requisite for higher military command, so he just got his tame tribunes to ram legislation through the Assemblies, giving him the authority and claiming that a state of emergency forbade his return to Rome to stand for office. He usually manufactured the emergency himself. Most often, his tribunes gave him command after a better man had done most of the fighting, thus bestowing on Pompey the kill and the loot. But that just shows that Pompey was more intelligent than Alexander. Romans are usually more intelligent than foreigners.

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