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Historical person
106–48 BCE
Pompey the Great was a Roman general and politician whose victories in the Mediterranean and east made him one of the republic’s most powerful men. He joined Caesar and Crassus in the First Triumvirate but later aligned with the senate against Caesar. Defeated at Pharsalus in 48 BC, Pompey fled to Egypt, where advisers of the young Ptolemy XIII had him murdered. His death removed Caesar’s principal rival but did not end the civil wars.
Pompey is a major figure in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series and Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels. Fiction often contrasts his established prestige and need for public approval with Caesar’s speed and flexibility. The murder on an Egyptian beach gives his career a deliberately tragic ending, especially because Caesar was reported to have mourned rather than celebrated it.
In Robert Harris’s Imperium, his pursuit of the consulship draws Pompey, Crassus and the Senate into a contest over whether talent and law can overcome inherited power. In Simon Scarrow’s Gladiator: Fight for Freedom, Sold to a gladiator school, he must survive training while concealing a secret about his birth and searching for a way to reach Pompey, his father’s former commander. Other novels featuring Pompey include Colleen McCullough’s Fortune’s Favourites, Steven Saylor’s A Murder on the Appian Way, Colleen McCullough’s Caesar’s Women, Steven Saylor’s Rubicon, and Steven Saylor’s A Mist of Prophecies.
Historical context
Series
The Emperor series is a highly fictionalised retelling of Julius Caesar’s life and the violent end of the Roman Republic. It follows Caesar from youth through war, political ascent and conquest, then continues beyond his assassination into the struggle between Octavian, Antony and Caesar’s killers.
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The Marius’ Mules series follows Marcus Falerius Fronto and Caesar’s legions from the invasion of Gaul to the destruction of the Roman Republic. Battles recorded in Caesar’s commentaries are viewed through officers and soldiers who must endure the practical cost of his ambition, while conspiracies in Rome steadily…
All books in this series
The Masters of Rome series reconstructs the final century of the Roman Republic from the rise of Gaius Marius in 110 BCE to the settlement that made Octavian Augustus in 27 BCE. Across seven novels, military commands, elections, family alliances, provincial wealth and personal patronage become instruments in…
All books in this series
Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy reconstructs the final decades of the Roman Republic through Tiro, Cicero’s enslaved secretary and eventual freedman. Imperium follows the advocate’s prosecution of Verres and campaign for the consulship; Lustrum places his consulship inside the Catilinarian crisis; and Dictator carries him through exile, Caesar’s civil…
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Epic Historical Adventure is Colin Falconer's publisher-defined collection of stand-alone historical thrillers rather than a continuous narrative sequence. The novels range from Alexander the Great, Cleopatra and the Mongol Empire to the Ottoman court, the conquest of Mexico, colonial India, shipwreck and twentieth-century Palestine. Most volumes can be…
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The Mark Antony series presents a biographical saga of the Roman commander from the Catilinarian crisis to his defeat by Octavian. Antony’s youth is shaped by the execution of his stepfather, service under Aulus Gabinius in Judaea and Egypt, and the campaigns in Gaul that bind him to…
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The Gladiator novels follow the young Marcus Cornelius Primus in the final decades of the Roman Republic. Enslavement, gladiatorial training and the search for his abducted mother draw him into the rivalries surrounding Julius Caesar, Pompey and the continuing memory of Spartacus’s revolt.
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The Roma Sub Rosa series follows Gordianus the Finder through the last generation of the Roman Republic. His investigations begin in the aftermath of Sulla’s dictatorship and continue through slave revolt, aristocratic trials, Catiline’s conspiracy, Caesar’s civil war and the assassination of Julius Caesar. The series uses murder…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
