Hello and welcome to this episode of Epoch's where I shall be continuing my narrative of the

decline of fall of the Roman Republic focusing on Pompey and Caesar.

Last time I left off talking about the early life of Pompey.

I shall continue with that for a few more bits of Plutarch,

is mainly Plutarch for Pompe's early life.

And I'll either keep doing that for the whole rest of this episode or at some point if I catch up with the year when Caesar starts appearing and doing things.

I'll switch over to Caesar again in Plutarch, both the early lives, it's really Plutarch, I'm afraid.

Appian only really picks up the story once higher politics and things are going on, so for the

early life of both Pompey and Caesar it is Plutart. So we'll see how far we get.

I hope you enjoy it. Okay let's dive right in. If you remember last time I left off where Pompey had

had some great successes in Sicily and North Africa.

He was still very young man, still in his early mid-20s.

So I pick up after he had conquered Sula's enemies in North Africa and then subjugated the King of Numbidia, Plutarch tells us.

On his return to Utica, which is not far from Carthage, right near what was Carthage,

on his return to Utica, he was given a letter from Sulla, instructing him to send his army back to Italy,

except for one legion, with which he was to remain himself in Africa, until another general came out to supersede him.

This was a message which grieved and distressed

Pompey very much but he did not show his feelings openly. You wonder how Plutarch knows

that. A quick note just to say Plutup was writing quite a long time after Pompey.

Decades and decades, nearly a hundred odd years later, so, well more than a hundred years later.

And Plutok never really tells us what sources he was using. We can only imagine Plutarch did have access

to all sorts of sources which are lost to us, the archives, the Roman archives, lots of historians which just didn't survive through the millennia to us.

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