Wives of Pompey the Great

The first-century-BCE Roman statesman and commander Pompey the Great was married five times. These marriages were not only romantic matches, but political arrangements, often dictated by Pompey's political career and need to form alliances with other powerful Roman men.

Pompey's first marriage, in 86 BCE, was to Antistia, the daughter of a judge who was overseeing Pompey's trial for financial misconduct. In 82 or 81 BCE, he was influenced to divorce Antistia in favour of Aemilia, stepdaughter of the dictator Sulla, who died in childbirth shortly afterwards. 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. He divorced Mucia in 61 BCE, possibly for political reasons, and married Julia, the daughter of his political rival Julius Caesar, in 59 BCE. Finally, after Julia's death in 54 BCE, he married Cornelia Metella, who survived him after his own assassination in 48 BCE.

According to the classicist Shelley Haley, Pompey "made use of marriage in a traditional fashion to further his political career", but emphasis on Pompey's ambition has often "caused the modern scholar to lose sight of the woman in such an alliance and to ignore the intimate relationships possible at the heart of such a marriage."^[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.

Pompey's wives have also featured in post-Roman literature and art, such as Pierre Corneille's plays Sertorius and The Death of Pompey, as well as George Frideric Handel's opera Giulio Cesare.