Wives of Pompey the Great
He married Mucia Tertia in 79 BCE, this time gaining an alliance with the powerful gens Caecilia: this was Pompey's longest marriage, and produced all three of his surviving children.
"[1] For most of these marriages, few or no primary sources exist, and it is often difficult to establish matters of fact amidst the political biases and agendas of later historians.
[13] The letters of Cicero, an early ally and perhaps personal friend of Pompey's,[17] allude briefly to his marriages to Mucia and Julia.
[a] In 86 BCE,[b] in his capacity as iudex,[c] Antistius presided over the trial of Pompey for embezzlement of public funds (peculatus) during the Social War.
[28] Antistia's marriage to Pompey has generally been interpreted as a cynical political move: on Antistius' part, as an effort to increase his standing through alliance to an up-and-coming young nobleman, and as an equally-cynical attempt by Pompey to influence his trial, as well as to gain the favour and patronage of Antistius and his family.
The divorce followed the murder of Antistia's father in 82 BCE, carried out by Marian supporters under the praetor Junius Damasippus, who viewed Antistius as unreliable due to his marriage alliance with Pompey.
[37] However, the marriage has also been characterised as Sulla's attempt to neutralise the potential threat of Pompey's popularity and growing power.
[15][40] The persistence of Aemilia's doubts in the historical record has been taken as evidence against the suggestion that all Roman women were content to be used by their families for political gain.
Keith Hopkins has characterised Plutarch's implications as to the motives behind the marriage as "suspect",[13] while Hillman has suggested that Plutarch's account is primarily concerned with making political points about Sulla's tyranny and presenting the affair through a tragic lens, with comparatively little regard for the facts of the story or its chronological accuracy.
[16] The divorce was criticised in Roman society:[43] the damage it caused to Pompey's reputation has been cited as a factor in his cultivation of an alliance with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the father of the future triumvir, in 79 BCE.
[47] Mucia was the mother of all three of Pompey's children that survived to adulthood: a daughter, Pompeia, and two sons, Sextus and Gnaeus.
[15] She worked informally as an intermediary between her husband and other political figures: when Cicero sought an alliance with Pompey, he went first to Mucia.
[51] Erich Gruen has suggested that Pompey's divorce from Mucia was motivated by a desire to render himself eligible for remarriage to a niece of Cato the Younger, and thereby to create a marriage alliance with the latter's family.
[55] It also created a rift between Pompey and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, whom she married within a year,[56] and with whom she had at least one son, named after his father.
[72] However, both Pompey and Julia were later portrayed as being personally devoted to each other, to the extent that Plutarch accused him of neglecting his public duties in favour of his marriage.
According to his narrative, a riot broke out near Pompey during an election of aediles, which Guy Chilver and Robin Seager date to 55 BCE.
When Julia saw the bloodstained clothes being brought home by Pompey's slaves, she thought that her husband must have been killed: she fainted and miscarried.
[78] Memmius would be exiled from Rome in 52 BCE under the lex Pompeia de ambitu, a law which Pompey himself introduced in the same year.
[79] Shortly after the death of Julia in 54 BCE, Caesar offered for his great-niece, Octavia the Younger, who was presently married to the ex-consul Gaius Claudius Marcellus, as a new wife for Pompey.
[85] Unlike his previous wives, Cornelia accompanied Pompey during his military campaigns of Caesar's civil war, which broke out in 49 BCE.
[85] According to Appian, her presence was an influential factor in Pompey's flight to Egypt: he had wished to seek refuge in Parthia, but his friends advised against placing Cornelia "in the power" of such "barbarians".
