2025/05/05 by D. A. Rafferty, Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Christopher J. Dart · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Classical Antiquity Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/9783111705446-012
openalex publication_date 2025/05/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Pompeius's sole consulship in 52 BCE is overshadowed as a turning point by Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon just three years later.Yet it ended the violence and dysfunction of the fifties and returned Rome to stable government.It also entrenched Pompeius's dominant position within and over the Res Publica.During his year in office Pompeius purged Rome's violent actors through political trials, while he also rendered other senators much more vulnerable to prosecution and so in need of protection.He created a situation in which he could, if willing, remove anyone from the political community.After his consulship ended, his position as proconsul governing Hispania in absentia and his command of troops within Italy ensured he held military supremacy over Rome and had plans to counter any challenge to his position, on any plane.Competitive Authoritarianism gives historians a useful theoretical tool to understand the nature of this new regime as neither free state nor autocracy but a new third thing. For instance, Syme (1939) only very briefly treats it in chapter 3 on the "Domination of Pompeius".Similarly, Leach (2014) characterised the period of 54 to 50 as "Pompey's Principate".