Pompey Seizes Power

What if General Pompey took over the Roman government? He had several opportunities during his long career, but he failed to take them. And, try not to just say"Pharsalus"What if?
 
Not gonna happen. Pompey wanted to work within the republic, even if it meant gaming the system. Remember, he tried his entire life trying to get the respect of Cato. Caesar was a whole different breed.
 
It would depend entirely on your POD. Unfortunately, I have to go against you there and say the most likely scenario is Pompey winning Pharsalus. As has been pointed out, he had plenty of opportunities to make a grab for sole power, but didn't even think about taking them -- Gnaeus Pompeius wanted to be first among equals, and that's hard when you round up your equals and have their heads chopped off in the Forum.

So let's say Pompey ignores all the puffed up aristos in his command tent, imposes his will, and sticks with his (probable) plan to attrit Caesar to death in Greece. He then returns to Rome in triumph. The Optimates are not going to sit quietly and hand a dictatorship to Pompey with a smile, nor will they even tolerate the idea of him becoming First Man in Rome. They would turn on him and try to get rid of Pompey too, and I doubt Pompey would sit still for it. Pompey has the army, and most of those aristos were proven idiots, so Pompey fights a brief, short civil war, and then has to proscribe to pay all his veterans off, so the surviving Ceasarians and Optimates wind up on the chopping block.

Not wanting to be sole ruler in the first place, Pompey follows Sulla's model of using the dictatorship to set the Republic back up, but on a conservative footing and based squarely on his own followers. He relinquishes the dictatorship, but instead of retiring to Picenum, he assumes his place on the front bench of the Senate. However, Pompey is ill-suited to lead by influence rather than command, eventually becomes obnoxious to his faction, and winds up assassinated.
 
Pompey forces Cato to make him dictator after the incident with Clodius and Caesar dies at Alesia. Crassus is already dead in Pathia and Pompey has married into his family. Caesar was childless

Pompey de facto princeps in BC 50
 
Pompey forces Cato to make him dictator after the incident with Clodius and Caesar dies at Alesia. Crassus is already dead in Pathia and Pompey has married into his family. Caesar was childless

Pompey de facto princeps in BC 50
Cato would kill himself first before he allowed Pompey to take control of the republic officially. If Caesar dies at Alesia, there is really no reason for the optimates not to turn on Pompey again. They only called on him because Caesar was a bigger threat.

Besides, I read somewhere that Pompey really just wanted to retire from public life for the most part. Sure, he wanted to keep connections and make sure his interests were followed, but he was becoming less and less active in public life until the conflict with Caesar erupted.
 
No way.

Marcus Porcius would not have made anyone dictator, not even himself. He would have fought tooth and nail to stop it, stopping at nothing. If killing Pompey or dying himself would have been necessary, he wouldn't have shrunk from it.

Pompey forces Cato to make him dictator after the incident with Clodius and Caesar dies at Alesia. Crassus is already dead in Pathia and Pompey has married into his family. Caesar was childless

Pompey de facto princeps in BC 50
 
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