camp, he declared that if his comrades were determined to desert to the
enemy, they must pass over his dead body. His entreaties prevailed, and
a reconciliation was effected between the general and his troops.

Not many weeks after this incident the father died, struck, it was said,
by lightning, and Pompey became his own master. It was not long before
he found an opportunity of gaining still higher distinction. The civil
war still continued to rage, and few did better service to the party of
the aristocrats than Pompey. Others were content to seek their personal
safety in Sulla's camp; Pompey was resolved himself to do something for
the cause. He made his way to Picenum, where his family estates we e
situated and where his own influence was great, and raised three legions
(nearly twenty thousand men), with all their commissariat and transport
complete, and hurried to the assistance of Sulla. Three of the hostile
generals sought to intercept him. He fell with his whole force on one of
them, and crushed him, carrying off, besides his victory, the personal
distinction of having slain in single combat the champion of the
opposing force. The towns by which he passed eagerly hailed him as their
deliverer. A second commander who ventured to encounter him found
himself deserted by his army and was barely able to escape; a third was
totally routed. Sulla received his young partisan, who was not more than
twenty-three years of age, with distinguished honors, even rising from
his seat and uncovering at his approach.

During the next two years his reputation continued to increase. He won
victories in Gaul, in Sicily, and in Africa. As he was returning to
Rome after the last of these campaigns, the great Dictator himself
headed the crowd that went forth to meet him, and saluted him as Pompey
the Great, a title which he continued to use as his family name[5]. But
there was a further honor which the young general was anxious to obtain,
but Sulla was unwilling to grant, the supreme glory of a triumph. "No
one," he said, "who was not or had not been consul, or at least praetor,
could triumph. The first of the Scipios, who had won Spain from the
Carthaginians, had not asked for this honor because he wanted this
qualification. Was it to be given to a beardless youth, too young even
to sit in the Senate?" But the beardless youth insisted. He even had the
audacity to hint that the future belonged not to Sulla but to himself.
"More men," he