Sextus Pompeius

The son of Pompey the Great cast a long shadow. Acclaimed by the Roman populace in his lifetime, his traditional virtues and military successes put to shame his civil-war rival Octavian. After his death, he was passionately and safely abused by Octavian and Augustan writers as a marginal nuisance, a pirate. The image of a 'second rank' figure has been propagated by scholars into recent times. But a very different story can now be constructed, from the testimony of historians and poets in antiquity and from the eloquent and long-neglected coinage of Sextus Pompeius himself.

Anton Powell is author of Athens and Sparta and of studies in the politics of Latin poetry. Kathryn Welch has published numerous papers on the politics of late-Republican Rome. Powell and Welch have previously collaborated in editing Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter (CPW and Duckworth, 1998).