What if Pompey pursues Caesar at Dyrrachium?

So, I was wondering: what if Pompey pursued Caesar's withdrawal at Dyrrachium, to later crush him? What would have happened on a long-term?
Cicero famously thought that either way, a military dictatorship would ensue. What are your thoughts on that opinion, and your thoughts in general?
 
Pompey's flavor of military despotism will be more consensual regarding the Senate. This in turn means that conservatives will block reforms and the same issues that propelled Marius and then Sulla and Caesar to power will remain unresolved.
 
Caesar and Pompey are remembered as almost another Marius and Sulla.

Honestly, Octavian is in a similar position relative to Caesar as Caesar was to Marius, so he might still become a bigwig if he isn't purged.
 
Pompey didn’t pursue Caesar because he knew that things could have turned around in Caesar’s favor if he had. Pompey was tactically incompetent, most of his soldiers were rookies, and most of his lieutenants were aristocratic loggerheads. Pompey was no brilliant general, but his time with Sertorius taught him when it was better to pursue enemies and when it wasn’t.
 

Scaevola

Banned
Pompey didn’t pursue Caesar because he knew that things could have turned around in Caesar’s favor if he had. Pompey was tactically incompetent, most of his soldiers were rookies, and most of his lieutenants were aristocratic loggerheads. Pompey was no brilliant general, but his time with Sertorius taught him when it was better to pursue enemies and when it wasn’t.
Tooting your own horn I see :p
 
Pompey didn’t pursue Caesar because he knew that things could have turned around in Caesar’s favor if he had. Pompey was tactically incompetent, most of his soldiers were rookies, and most of his lieutenants were aristocratic loggerheads. Pompey was no brilliant general, but his time with Sertorius taught him when it was better to pursue enemies and when it wasn’t.
Pompey was likely a brilliant general in his best days but that days were in the past at that time... And Caesar was a better general than him and had superior soldiers and lieutenants (true who the latter was pretty easy) so a victory of Pompey was pretty unlikely (at least on the field, reason for which Pompey was unwilling to fight)
 
Pompey was likely a brilliant general in his best days but that days were in the past at that time... And Caesar was a better general than him and had superior soldiers and lieutenants (true who the latter was pretty easy) so a victory of Pompey was pretty unlikely (at least on the field, reason for which Pompey was unwilling to fight)

Wouldn’t say brilliant, his track record when it comes to battles is not really flattering, he purposefully avoided them after Spain, he was, however, a capable general, especially when it came to logistics.
 
Wouldn’t say brilliant, his track record when it comes to battles is not really flattering, he purposefully avoided them after Spain, he was, however, a capable general, especially when it came to logistics.
Well then he was really good in covering his flaws and surely was good with logistic (but Caesar also was good with logistics)
 
Pompey's flavor of military despotism will be more consensual regarding the Senate. This in turn means that conservatives will block reforms and the same issues that propelled Marius and then Sulla and Caesar to power will remain unresolved.

But at that time, wasn't Pompey quite sympathetic of the optimates, and thus wouldn't have passed any reforms? And, probably following Sulla, he would have reigned with an iron fist, the rise of power of opposition would not be of that much concern. And anyways, the senate was conservative.
 
But at that time, wasn't Pompey quite sympathetic of the optimates, and thus wouldn't have passed any reforms? And, probably following Sulla, he would have reigned with an iron fist, the rise of power of opposition would not be of that much concern. And anyways, the senate was conservative.

Pompey had no sympathy for the Senate, his rise to prominence happened flaunting every Senatorial convention, he simply allied with the Senate to oppose Caesar, and the Senate had no sympathy for Pompey, it simply saw him as the lesser of two evils. Pompey didn’t have it in him to use the iron fist, he never did despite having the power to do so, and he was far from being a skilled politician. Had he won, the Senate would have discarded him the first chance it got, and a new round of civil wars would have started once a new general rose to power.
 
Pompey had no sympathy for the Senate, his rise to prominence happened flaunting every Senatorial convention, he simply allied with the Senate to oppose Caesar, and the Senate had no sympathy for Pompey, it simply saw him as the lesser of two evils. Pompey didn’t have it in him to use the iron fist, he never did despite having the power to do so, and he was far from being a skilled politician. Had he won, the Senate would have discarded him the first chance it got, and a new round of civil wars would have started once a new general rose to power.
Exactly. After Julia’s death the optimates decided to break once for all the alliance between Caesar and Pompey and bring the latter on their side offering to him as new bride Cornelia Metella, the widowed daughter of Metellus Scipio. Pompey married Cornelia (as he had always wanted being fully accepted as Senator and recognized as primus-inter-pares by the other senators) and in the end he become almost a pawn in the hands of the optimates...
 
Most of Pompey's lieutenants are mediocre true; but they do have the advantage of horse with the Germans and Gauls of Titus Labienus and the Thracians of Rhescuporis and the Cappadocians of Ariobarzanes and so on and so in an aggressive pursuit after Caesar the sheer numbers of skirmishers and raiders and heavy lancers should heavily restrict what the Caesarians can and can not physically attempt in strategic maneuver and interfere with the sort of pre-battle shuffling that Caesar was so good at. Imagine a larger scale Ruspina but without any refuge for Caesar to retreat to. That counts for a lot more then how brain dead Lentulus and Metellus Scipio are.
 
Most of Pompey's lieutenants are mediocre true; but they do have the advantage of horse with the Germans and Gauls of Titus Labienus and the Thracians of Rhescuporis and the Cappadocians of Ariobarzanes and so on and so in an aggressive pursuit after Caesar the sheer numbers of skirmishers and raiders and heavy lancers should heavily restrict what the Caesarians can and can not physically attempt in strategic maneuver and interfere with the sort of pre-battle shuffling that Caesar was so good at. Imagine a larger scale Ruspina but without any refuge for Caesar to retreat to. That counts for a lot more then how brain dead Lentulus and Metellus Scipio are.

Yeah but the only two places in Greece where cavalry could be properly deployed were in the middle of the Peloponnese and in Thessaly, where some plains could be found. At Dyrrachium it would have been way harder to properly use cavalry.
 
Yeah but the only two places in Greece where cavalry could be properly deployed were in the middle of the Peloponnese and in Thessaly, where some plains could be found. At Dyrrachium it would have been way harder to properly use cavalry.
Well for one I imagine broken terrain is no issue for the Germans nor for the Illyrians and for the other their unmounted cousins and foot raiders would have no issue either, such as the Cicilians of Tarcondimotus or the Galatians of Deiotarus or the Cretan archers and Rhodian mariners of Pompey's navy. Besides the Pompeian cavalry is going to be provided with native guides and supply points and is going to be crossing the mountains as friendly territory unless Caesar somehow manages a defection while losing or has the spare time to utterly lay waste to the locals.
 
Well for one I imagine broken terrain is no issue for the Germans nor for the Illyrians and for the other their unmounted cousins and foot raiders would have no issue either, such as the Cicilians of Tarcondimotus or the Galatians of Deiotarus or the Cretan archers and Rhodian mariners of Pompey's navy. Besides the Pompeian cavalry is going to be provided with native guides and supply points and is going to be crossing the mountains as friendly territory unless Caesar somehow manages a defection while losing or has the spare time to utterly lay waste to the locals.

Cavalry’s only good in battle when it’s in formation, Pompey probably employed his cavalry as scouts to know of Caesar’s movements, who was too damn fast to be encircled.
 
Cavalry’s only good in battle when it’s in formation, Pompey probably employed his cavalry as scouts to know of Caesar’s movements, who was too damn fast to be encircled.
Sorry if I was unclear but I wasn't really talking about battle but more campaign. Caesar's a speedy little devil, but flight and flight while pursued are two separate things and the need to protect his foraging parties (as he will be increasingly living on the land), his auxiliaries, and his own scouts, will slow him down a lot more then if he was unengaged and the general enveloping pressure of large numbers of raiders is perfect for keeping him this slow- if they had been released to do so by Pompey from the beginning as he has TTL instead of leisurely getting around to it and giving Caesar's legions plenty of respite as OTL.
 
Sorry if I was unclear but I wasn't really talking about battle but more campaign. Caesar's a speedy little devil, but flight and flight while pursued are two separate things and the need to protect his foraging parties (as he will be increasingly living on the land), his auxiliaries, and his own scouts, will slow him down a lot more then if he was unengaged and the general enveloping pressure of large numbers of raiders is perfect for keeping him this slow- if they had been released to do so by Pompey from the beginning as he has TTL instead of leisurely getting around to it and giving Caesar's legions plenty of respite as OTL.

That’s true. As I said, Pompey wasn’t really a brilliant general, I doubt he had any clear plan against Caesar beyond “trap him and starve him”.
 
There was also the political issues involved in a civil war too, Pompey as much as Caesar had former friends and clients on the other side and if it had been Caesar's head that was ultimately given to him by a foreign monarch then he would have to, at least publicly, too show pious grief for the death of a good Roman. It would not due to push his Legions to mutiny trying to whip them into assaulting their fellow Romans like poor Ahenobarbus. Plus the conservative Senators may have succeeded in finally breaking apart Caesar and Pompey, but he spent his youth with them as his political enemies and would not forget that once the war's conclusion and the political battle for peace seem apparently near at hand. Really his caution is rather sympathetic, if your forget that Labienus and his largely foreign cavalry forces are right there and ready to go, their swords still red from the massacred captives.
 
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