Wilcox 1987, 113: “The Hellenistic Oecumene changed the face of time. To
describe and explain the new integration of world affairs, historians created a time of
vastly greater chronological scope than that of their Hellenic predecessors.”
As Tony Woodman points out to me, the later Romans did not make this mis-
take: see Tac. Ann.15.25.3 for acknowledgment of the sweep of Pompey’s pirate com-
mand.
Millar 2002, 223 – 24. As he goes on to say, “for a brief moment in 87 – 86 B.C.,
indeed, at the height of Mithridates’ westward expansion, Rome controlled nothing
east of the Adriatic except parts of Greece and Macedonia” (225).
Gruen 1984, esp. 609 – 10, 670.
In so doing he raised himself to the rank of Agamemnon, King of Kings: see
Champlin 2003a. His neglected predecessor Lucullus, meanwhile, who had done so
much to pave the way for him, has become a Thersites.
Kuttner 1999.
See above all Kallet-Marx 1995, 331 – 34.
101.Mith.94 – 95, 119. Pompey was “like a king of kings” (94), and his defeat of
Mithridates made the Roman Empire extend “from the setting of the sun to the river
Euphrates” (114).
Pliny HN.7.95: aequato non modo Alexandri Magni rerum fulgore, sed etiam
Herculis prope ac Liberi patris;Purcell 1995, 139, for this description of Hercules and
Dionysus.
Clarke 1999a, 308. Lucan refers to Pompey’s triumphs over the three parts of
the world, and to the irony that he and his two sons each died in one of them: Euro-
pam, miseri, Libyamque Asiamque timete:/distribuit tumulos uestris fortuna triumphis
(6.817 – 18).
Gruen 1984, 285; cf. Nicolet 1991, 31 – 38; Mattern 1999, 166. Nicholas Hors-
fall points out to me that the impact of Pompey on the contemporary Hellenistic liter-
ary world and on the later imperial discourse of panegyric is strangely understudied.
As he says, much of the raw material for such a study could be accessed via the entry
“Pompeius” in the index of Susemihl (1891 – 92).
Clarke 1999a, 311. Woodman 1983, 214 – 15, collects references to the rich
material of “Alexander-imitation” at Rome. Gruen 1998 — a reference I owe to Ted
Champlin — redresses the balance with a caution against overreading the evidence, but
Gruen’s skepticism about interest in Alexander among the protagonists of the 60s and
50s goes too far.
Wiseman (1992, 34 – 35) deftly inserts Catullus’s poem into the contemporary
atmosphere of world conquest.
I print the horribiles uitro ultimosqueof McKie (1984) in lines 11 – 12, and the
quacumqueof Nisbet (1978a, 94 – 95) in line 13. My thanks to Tony Woodman for stim-
ulating discussion of the problems of text and translation of this extraordinary poem.
notes to pages 59 – 61
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