Free The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich Page A

to enhance his already formidable military reputation Crassus preferred to stay in Rome, intriguing behind the scenes for his own political and financial ends. His one major military achievement was in putting down a slave revolt which broke out in 73 BC . Having first pursued its leader, Spartacus, through Calabria, he finally caught up with him in Apulia, where he executed him on the spot. Six thousand rebel slaves were subsequently crucified, their crosses lining the Appian Way.
    Pompey, who had been absent in Spain–where he founded the city of Pamplona and named it after himself–returned just in time for the crucifixions, in which he participated with enthusiasm; characteristically, he then attempted to take the credit for the entire operation. As can be readily understood, Crassus was furious. Each had an army behind him, and for a moment it looked as if the Republic was once again to be plunged into civil war; fortunately the rivals came to a last-minute understanding: the two would present themselves for election to the consulship in the year 70 BC . Strictly speaking, neither of them was eligible, neither having disbanded his army as consular candidates were required to do. Pompey, moreover–who was still only thirty-six–had not even taken his seat as a senator. But the Senate had not the courage to stand up against two such men, and they were duly elected. They spent their year of office meticulously undoing all Sulla’s legislation.
    In the years that followed, while Crassus remained busy in Rome–occupied with an interminable quarrel with the Senate over tax collections in Asia–Pompey went from strength to strength. In 67 BC , with 120,000 men and 500 ships and in only sixty days, he virtually eliminated the pirates who had long plagued the Mediterranean, thus making the seas safe for the best part of a thousand years. He was then despatched to the east, where the King of Pontus was up to his old tricks. Unfortunately for Pompey, Mithridates committed suicide before battle could be joined, but there was plenty of other work to be done in eastern lands before he returned home. Without bothering to consult the Senate, he rapidly annexed Pontus; moving south to Syria, he expelled the last Seleucid king and made this too a province, thereby acquiring for Rome the great city of Antioch. Finally he pressed on to Judaea, where he captured Jerusalem–sensibly allowing the reigning king to remain on his throne as a ‘client’ of Rome. All this he accomplished in just four years, during which it is not too much to say that he changed the face of the Near East more radically than at any other time until the coming of Islam.
    When Pompey returned to Rome in 62 BC it was as a conquering hero. He was granted a second Triumph, far more splendid than the first. Many Romans trembled, remembering the return of Sulla just twenty years before, but the
triumphator
disbanded his troops, asking nothing but the ratification of all that he had done in the east and a grant of land on which his veteran soldiers could settle. Both requests seemed reasonable enough; with regard to the first, he had indeed acted without authority, but the slowness of communications in those days had left him no alternative. In any case Rome’s gains had been immense; the Romans had little cause to complain.
    Complain, however, they did. One of the principal critics of Pompey’s actions was Crassus, clearly motivated by personal jealousy of his old rival. The two most powerful men in Rome were now at loggerheads, both with the government and with each other.
             
     
    The third and greatest member of this astonishing triumvirate 19 now appears on the scene. In 62 BC Gaius Julius Caesar was thirty-eight, and married to Sulla’s granddaughter Pompeia (he was to divorce her in the following year). 20 His reputation in Rome was that of a cultivated intellectual and a formidable orator in the Senate, a provider of lavish entertainments