title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charles Town was fortified according to a plan developed in 1704 under Governor Nathaniel Johnson. Both Spain and France contested Britain's claims to the region. Various bands of Native Americans and independent pirates also raided it.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: On September 5–6, 1713 (O.S.) a violent hurricane passed over Charles Town. The Circular Congregational Church manse was damaged during the storm, in which church records were lost. Much of Charles Town was flooded as "the Ashley and Cooper rivers became one." At least seventy people died in the disaster.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: From the 1670s Charleston attracted pirates. The combination of a weak government and corruption made the city popular with pirates, who frequently visited and raided the city. Charles Town was besieged by the pirate Blackbeard for several days in May 1718. Blackbeard released his hostages and left in exchange for a chest of medicine from Governor Robert Johnson.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Around 1719, the town's name began to be generally written as Charlestown and, excepting those fronting the Cooper River, the old walls were largely removed over the next decade. Charlestown was a center for the inland colonization of South Carolina. It remained the southernmost point of the Southern Colonies until the Province of Georgia was established in 1732. As noted, the first settlers primarily came from Europe, Barbados and Bermuda. The Barbadian and Bermudan immigrants were planters who brought enslaved Africans with them, having purchased them in the West Indies.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Early immigrant groups to the city included the Huguenots, Scottish, Irish, and Germans, as well as hundreds of Jews, predominately Sephardi from London and major cities of the Dutch Republic, where they had been given refuge. As late as 1830, Charleston's Jewish community was the largest and wealthiest in North America.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: By 1708, the majority of the colony's population were Black Africans. They had been brought to Charlestown via the Atlantic slave trade, first as indentured servants and then as slaves. In the early 1700s, Charleston's largest slave trader, Joseph Wragg, pioneered the settlement's involvement in the slave trade. Of the estimated 400,000 captive Africans transported to North America to be sold into slavery, 40% are thought to have landed at Sullivan's Island off Charlestown. Free people of color also migrated from the West Indies, being descendants of white planters and their Black consorts, and unions among the working classes.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: In 1767 Gadsden's Wharf was constructed at the city port on the Cooper River; it ultimately extended 840 feet and was able to accommodate six ships at a time. Many slaves were sold from here. Devoted to plantation agriculture that depended on enslaved labor, South Carolina became a slave society: it had a majority-Black population from the colonial period until after the Great Migration of the early 20th century, when many rural Blacks moved to northern and midwestern industrial cities to escape Jim Crow laws.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: At the foundation of the town, the principal items of commerce were pine timber and pitch for ships and tobacco. The early economy developed around the deerskin trade, in which colonists used alliances with the Cherokee and Creek peoples to secure the raw material.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: At the same time, Indians took each other as captives and slaves in warfare. From 1680 to 1720, approximately 40,000 native men, women, and children were sold through the port, principally to the West Indies such as (Bermuda and the Bahamas), but also to other Southern colonies. The Lowcountry planters did not keep Indian slaves, considering them too prone to escape or revolt. They used the proceeds of their sale to purchase enslaved Black Africans for their own plantations. The slave raiding—and the European firearms it introduced—helped destabilize Spanish Florida and French Louisiana in the 1700s during the War of the Spanish Succession. But it also provoked the Yamasee War of the 1710s that nearly destroyed the colony. After that, South Carolina largely abandoned the Indian slave trade.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The area's unsuitability for growing tobacco prompted the Lowcountry planters to experiment with other cash crops. The profitability of growing rice led the planters to pay premiums for slaves from the "Rice Coast" who knew its cultivation; their descendants make up the ethnic Gullah who created their own culture and language in this area. Slaves imported from the Caribbean showed the planter George Lucas's daughter Eliza how to raise and use indigo for dyeing in 1747.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Throughout this period, the slaves were sold aboard the arriving ships or at ad hoc gatherings in town's taverns. Runaways and minor slave rebellions prompted the 1739 Security Act, which required all white men to carry weapons at all times (even to church on Sundays). Before it had fully taken effect, the Cato or Stono Rebellion broke out. The white community had recently been decimated by a malaria outbreak, and the rebels killed about 25 white people before being stopped by the colonial militia. As a result of their fears of rebellion, whites killed a total of 35 to 50 Black people.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The planters attributed the violence to recently imported Africans and agreed to a 10-year moratorium on slave importation through Charlestown. They relied for labor upon the slave communities they already held. The 1740 Negro Act also tightened controls, requiring a ratio of one white for every ten Blacks on any plantation (which was often not achieved), and banning slaves from assembling together, growing their own food, earning money, or learning to read. Drums were banned because Africans used them for signaling; slaves were allowed to use string and other instruments. When the moratorium expired and Charlestown reopened to the slave trade in 1750, the memory of the Stono Rebellion resulted in traders avoiding buying slaves from the Congo and Angola, whose populations had a reputation for independence.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: By the mid-18th century, Charlestown was the hub of the Atlantic slave trade in the Southern Colonies. Even with the decade-long moratorium, its customs processed around 40% of the enslaved Africans brought to North America between 1700 and 1775, and about half up until the end of the African trade.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The plantations and the economy based on them made this the wealthiest city in the Thirteen Colonies and the largest in population south of Philadelphia. In 1770, the city had 11,000 inhabitants—half slaves—and was the 4th-largest port in the colonies, after Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The elite began to use their wealth to encourage cultural and social development. America's first theater building was constructed here in 1736; it was later replaced by today's Dock Street Theater. StMichael's was erected in 1753. Benevolent societies were formed by the Huguenots, free people of color, Germans, and Jews. The Library Society was established in 1748 by well-born young men who wanted to share the financial cost to keep up with the scientific and philosophical issues of the day.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Delegates for the Continental Congress were elected in 1774, and South Carolina declared its independence from Britain on the steps of the Exchange. Slavery was again an important factor in the city's role during the Revolutionary War. The British attacked the settlement three times, assuming that the settlement had a large base of Loyalists who would rally to their cause once given some military support. The loyalty of white Southerners towards the Crown had largely been forfeited, however, by British legal cases (such as the 1772 Somersett case which marked the prohibition of slavery in England and Wales; a significant milestone in the abolitionist struggle) and military tactics (such as Dunmore's Proclamation in 1775) that promised the emancipation of slaves owned by Patriot planters; these efforts did, however, unsurprisingly win the allegiance of thousands of Black Loyalists.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Battle of Sullivan's Island saw the British fail to capture a partially constructed palmetto palisade from Col. Moultrie's militia regiment on June 28, 1776. The Liberty Flag used by Moultrie's men formed the basis of the later South Carolina flag, and the victory's anniversary continues to be commemorated as Carolina Day.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Making the capture of Charlestown their chief priority, the British sent Sir Henry Clinton, who laid siege to Charleston on April 1, 1780, with about 14,000 troops and 90 ships. Bombardment began on March 11, 1780. The Patriots, led by Benjamin Lincoln, had about 5,500 men and inadequate fortifications to repel the forces against them. After the British cut his supply lines and lines of retreat at the battles of Monck's Corner and Lenud's Ferry, Lincoln's surrender on May 12, 1780 became the greatest American defeat of the war.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The British continued to hold Charlestown for over a year following their defeat at Yorktown in 1781, although they alienated local planters by refusing to restore full civil government. Nathanael Greene had entered the state after Cornwallis's pyrrhic victory at Guilford Courthouse and kept the area under a kind of siege. British Army officer Alexander Leslie, commanding Charlestown, requested a truce in March 1782 to purchase food for his garrison and the town's inhabitants. Greene refused and formed a brigade under Mordecai Gist to counter British forays. Charlestown was finally evacuated by the British in December 1782. Greene presented the British leaders of the town with the Moultrie Flag.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Charleston experienced an economic boom, at least for the top strata of society. The expansion of cotton as a cash crop in the South both led to huge wealth for a small segment of society and funded impressive architecture and culture but also escalated the importance of slaves and led to greater and greater restrictions on Black Charlestonians.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: By 1783, the growth of the city had reached a point where a municipal government because desirable; therefore on August 13, 1783, an act of incorporation for the city of Charleston was ratified. The act originally specified the city's name as "Charles Ton," as opposed to the previous Charlestown, but the spelling "Charleston" quickly came to dominate.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Although Columbia had replaced it as the state capital in 1788, Charleston became even more prosperous as Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin sped the processing of the crop over 50 times. Britain's Industrial Revolution—initially built upon its textile industry—took up the extra production ravenously and cotton became Charleston's major export commodity in the 19th century.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Bank of South Carolina, the second-oldest building in the nation to be constructed as a bank, was established in 1798; branches of the First and Second Bank of the United States were also located in Charleston in 1800 and 1817.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Throughout the Antebellum Period, Charleston continued to be the only major American city with a majority-slave population. The city widespread use of slaves as workers was a frequent subject of writers and visitors: a merchant from Liverpool noted in 1834 that "almost all the working population are Negroes, all the servants, the carmen & porters, all the people who see at the stalls in Market, and most of the Journeymen in trades". American traders had been prohibited from equipping the Atlantic slave trade in 1794 and all importation of slaves was banned in 1808, but American merchantmen frequently refused to permit British inspection for enslaved cargo, and smuggling remained common. Much more important was the domestic slave trade, which boomed as the Deep South was developed in new cotton plantations. As a result of the trade, there was a forced migration of more than one million slaves from the Upper South to the Lower South in the antebellum years. During the early 19th century, the first dedicated slave markets were founded in Charleston, mostly near Chalmers and State streets. Many domestic slavers used Charleston as a port in what was called the coastwise trade, traveling to such ports as Mobile and New Orleans.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Slave ownership was the primary marker of class and even the town's freedmen and free people of color typically kept slaves if they had the wealth to do so. Visitors commonly remarked on the sheer number of Blacks in Charleston and their seeming freedom of movement, though in fact—mindful of the Stono Rebellion and the slave revolution that established Haiti—the whites closely regulated the behavior of both slaves and free people of color. Wages and hiring practices were fixed, identifying badges were sometimes required, and even work songs were sometimes censored. Punishment was handled out of sight by the city's workhouse, whose fees provided the municipal government with thousands a year. In 1820, a state law mandated that each act of manumission (freeing a slave) required legislative approval, effectively halting the practice.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The effects of slavery were pronounced on white society as well. The high cost of 19th-century slaves and their high rate of return combined to institute an oligarchic society controlled by about ninety interrelated families, where 4% of the free population controlled half of the wealth, and the lower half of the free population—unable to compete with owned or rented slaves—held no wealth at all. The white middle class was minimal: Charlestonians generally disparaged hard work as the lot of slaves. All the slaveholders taken together held 82% of the city's wealth and almost all non-slaveholders were poor. Olmsted considered their civic elections "entirely contests of money and personal influence" and the oligarchs dominated civic planning: the lack of public parks and amenities was noted, as was the abundance of private gardens in the wealthy's walled estates.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: In the 1810s, the town's churches intensified their discrimination against their Black parishioners, culminating in Bethel Methodist's 1817 construction of a hearse house over its Black burial ground. 4,376 Black Methodists joined Morris Brown in establishing Hampstead Church, the African Methodist Episcopal church now known as Mother Emanuel. State and city laws prohibited Black literacy, limited Black worship to daylight hours, and required a majority of any church's parishioners be white. In June 1818, 140 Black church members at Hampstead Church were arrested and eight of its leaders given fines and ten lashes; police raided the church again in 1820 and pressured it in 1821.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: In 1822, members of the church, led by Denmark Vesey, a lay preacher and carpenter who had bought his freedom after winning a lottery, planned an uprising and escape to Haiti—initially for Bastille Day—that failed when one slave revealed the plot to his master. Over the next month, the city's intendant (mayor) James Hamilton Jr. organized a militia for regular patrols, initiated a secret and extrajudicial tribunal to investigate, and hanged 35 and exiled 35 or 37 slaves to Spanish Cuba for their involvement. Hamilton imposed more restrictions on both free and enslaved Blacks: South Carolina required free Black sailors to be imprisoned while their ships were in Charleston Harbor though international treaties eventually required the United States to quash the practice; free Blacks were banned from returning to the state if they left for any reason; slaves were given a 9:15 pm curfew; the city razed Hampstead Church to the ground and erected a new arsenal. This structure later was the basis of the Citadel's first campus. The AME congregation built a new church but in 1834 the city banned it and all Black worship services, following Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion in Virginia. The estimated 10% of slaves who came to America as Muslims never had a separate mosque. Slaveholders sometimes provided them with beef rations in place of pork in recognition of religious traditions.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The registered tonnage of Charleston shipping in 1829 was 12,410. In 1832, South Carolina passed an ordinance of nullification, a procedure by which a state could, in effect, repeal a federal law; it was directed against the most recent tariff acts. Soon, federal soldiers were dispensed to Charleston's forts, and five United States Coast Guard cutters were detached to Charleston Harbor "to take possession of any vessel arriving from a foreign port, and defend her against any attempt to dispossess the Customs Officers of her custody until all the requirements of law have been complied with." This federal action became known as the Charleston incident. The state's politicians worked on a compromise law in Washington to gradually reduce the tariffs.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston's embrace of classical architecture began after a devastating fire leveled much of the city. On April 27, 1838, Charleston suffered a catastrophic fire that burned more than 1000 buildings and caused about $3 million in damage at the time. The damaged buildings amounted to about one-fourth of all the businesses in the main part of the city. When the many homes and business were rebuilt or repaired, a great cultural awakening occurred. Previous to the fire, only a few homes were styled as Greek Revival; many residents decided to construct new buildings in that style after the conflagration. This tradition continued and made Charleston one of the foremost places to view Greek Revival architecture. The Gothic Revival also made a significant appearance in the construction of many churches after the fire that exhibited picturesque forms and reminders of devout European religion.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: By 1840, the Market Hall and Sheds, where fresh meat and produce were brought daily, became a hub of commercial activity. The slave trade also depended on the port of Charleston, where ships could be unloaded and the slaves bought and sold. The legal importation of African slaves had ended in 1808, although smuggling was significant. However, the domestic trade was booming. More than one million slaves were transported from the Upper South to the Deep South in the antebellum years, as cotton plantations were widely developed through what became known as the Black Belt. Many slaves were transported in the coastwise slave trade, with slave ships stopping at ports such as Charleston.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston played a major part in the Civil War. As a pivotal city, both the Union and Confederate Armies vied for control of it. The Civil War began in Charleston Harbor in 1861, and ended mere months after the Union forces took control of Charleston in 1865.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Following the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South Carolina General Assembly voted on December 20, 1860, to secede from the Union. South Carolina was the first state to secede. On December 27, Castle Pinckney was surrendered by its garrison to the state militia and, on January 9, 1861, Citadel cadets opened fire on the USS"Star of the West" as it entered Charleston Harbor.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The first full battle of the American Civil War occurred on April 12, 1861, when shore batteries under the command of General Beauregard opened fire on the held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. After a 34-hour bombardment, Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Union control of the sea permitted the repeated bombardment of the city, causing vast damage. Although Admiral Du Pont's naval assault on the town's forts in April 1863 failed, the Union navy's blockade shut down most commercial traffic. Over the course of the war, some blockade runners got through but not a single one made it into or out of the Charleston Harbor between August 1863 and March 1864. The early submarine "H.L. Hunley" made a night attack on the on February 17, 1864.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: General Gillmore's land assault in July 1864 was unsuccessful but the fall of Columbia and advance of General William T. Sherman's army through the state prompted the Confederates to evacuate the town on February 17, 1865, burning the public buildings, cotton warehouses, and other sources of supply before their departure. Union troops moved into the city within the month. The War Department recovered what federal property remained and also confiscated the campus of the Citadel Military Academy and used it as a federal garrison for the next 17 years. The facilities were finally returned to the state and reopened as a military college in 1882 under the direction of Lawrence E. Marichak.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: After the defeat of the Confederacy, federal forces remained in Charleston during Reconstruction. The war had shattered the city's prosperity, but the African-American population surged (from 17,000 in 1860 to over 27,000 in 1880) as freedmen moved from the countryside to the major city. Blacks quickly left the Southern Baptist Church and resumed open meetings of the African Methodist Episcopal and AME Zion churches. They purchased dogs, guns, liquor, and better clothes—all previously banned—and ceased yielding the sidewalks to whites. Despite the efforts of the state legislature to halt manumissions, Charleston had already had a large class of free people of color as well. At the onset of the war, the city had 3,785 free people of color, many of mixed race, making up about 18% of the city's black population and 8% of its total population. Many were educated and practiced skilled crafts; they quickly became leaders of South Carolina's Republican Party and its legislators. Men who had been free people of color before the war comprised 26% of those elected to state and federal office in South Carolina from 1868 to 1876.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: By the late 1870s, industry was bringing the city and its inhabitants back to a renewed vitality; new jobs attracted new residents. As the city's commerce improved, residents worked to restore or create community institutions. In 1865, the Avery Normal Institute was established by the American Missionary Association as the first free secondary school for Charleston's African American population. Gen. Sherman lent his support to the conversion of the United States Arsenal into the Porter Military Academy, an educational facility for former soldiers and boys left orphaned or destitute by the war. Porter Military Academy later joined with Gaud School and is now a university-preparatory school, Porter-Gaud School.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: In 1875, blacks made up 57% of the city's and 73% of the county's population. With leadership by members of the antebellum free black community, historian Melinda Meeks Hennessy described the community as "unique" in being able to defend themselves without provoking "massive white retaliation", as occurred in numerous other areas during Reconstruction. In the 1876 election cycle, two major riots between black Republicans and white Democrats occurred in the city, in September and the day after the election in November, as well as a violent incident in Cainhoy at an October joint discussion meeting.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Violent incidents occurred throughout the Piedmont of the state as white insurgents struggled to maintain white supremacy in the face of social changes after the war and granting of citizenship to freedmen by federal constitutional amendments. After former Confederates were allowed to vote again, election campaigns from 1872 on were marked by violent intimidation of blacks and Republicans by conservative Democratic paramilitary groups, known as the Red Shirts. Violent incidents took place in Charleston on King Street on September 6 and in nearby Cainhoy on October 15, both in association with political meetings before the 1876 election. The Cainhoy incident was the only one statewide in which more whites were killed than blacks. The Red Shirts were instrumental in suppressing the black Republican vote in some areas in 1876 and narrowly electing Wade Hampton as governor, and taking back control of the state legislature. Another riot occurred in Charleston the day after the election, when a prominent Republican leader was mistakenly reported killed.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: In the early 20th century strong political machines emerged in the city reflecting economic, class, racial, and ethnic tensions. The factions nearly all opposed U.S. Senator Ben Tillman who repeatedly attacked and ridiculed the city in the name of upstate poor farmers. Well organized factions within the Democratic Party in Charleston gave the voters clear choices and played a large role in state politics.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: On August 31, 1886, Charleston experienced a strong earthquake. The shock was estimated to have a moment magnitude of 7.0 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X ("Extreme"). It was felt as far away as Boston to the north, Chicago and Milwaukee to the northwest, as far west as New Orleans, as far south as Cuba, and as far east as Bermuda. It damaged 2,000 buildings in Charleston and caused $6 million worth of damage ($ million in dollars), at a time when all the city's buildings were valued around $24 million ($ million in dollars).


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Charleston race riot of 1919 took place on the night of Saturday, May 10, between members of the US Navy and the local black population. They attacked black individuals, businesses, and homes killing six and injuring dozens.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston languished economically for several decades in the 20th century, though the large federal military presence in the region helped to shore up the city's economy. Charleston's tourism boom began in earnest following the publication of Albert Simons and Samuel Lapham's "Architecture of Charleston" in the 1920s.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Charleston Hospital Strike of 1969, in which mostly black workers protested discrimination and low wages, was one of the last major events of the civil rights movement. It attracted Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, and other prominent figures to march with the local leader, Mary Moultrie.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Joseph P. Riley Jr. was elected mayor in the 1970s, and helped advance several cultural aspects of the city.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Between 1989 and 1996, Charleston saw two significant economic hits. First, the eye of Hurricane Hugo came ashore at Charleston Harbor in 1989, and though the worst damage was in nearby McClellanville, three-quarters of the homes in Charleston's historic district sustained damage of varying degrees. The hurricane caused over $2.8 billion in damage. The city was able to rebound fairly quickly after the hurricane and has grown in population, reaching an estimated 124,593 residents in 2009. Second, in 1993, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) directed that Naval Base Charleston be closed. Pursuant to BRAC action, Naval Base Charleston was closed on April 1, 1996, although some activities remain under the cognizance of Naval Support Activity Charleston, now part of Joint Base Charleston.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: After having been a majority-minority city for most of its history, in the late 20th century many whites began returning to the urban core of Charleston and the area gentrified with rising prices and rents. From 1980 to 2010, the peninsula's population shifted from two-thirds black to two-thirds white; in 2010 residents numbered 20,668 whites to 10,455 blacks. Many African Americans moved to the less-expensive suburbs in these decades.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: On June 17, 2015, 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof entered the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and sat in on part of a Bible study before shooting and killing nine people, all African Americans. Senior pastor Clementa Pinckney, who also served as a state senator, was among those killed during the attack. The deceased also included congregation members Susie Jackson, 87; Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74; Ethel Lance, 70; Myra Thompson, 59; Cynthia Hurd, 54; Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor, 49; Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45; and Tywanza Sanders, 26. The attack garnered national attention, and sparked a debate on historical racism, Confederate symbolism in Southern states, and gun violence, in part based on Roof's online postings. A memorial service on the campus of the College of Charleston was attended by President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and Speaker of the House John Boehner.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: On June 17, 2018, the Charleston City Council apologized for its role in the slave trade and condemned its "inhumane" history. It also acknowledged wrongs committed against African Americans by slavery and Jim Crow laws.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: As of the 2020 United States census, there were 150,227 people, 58,902 households, and 31,780 families residing in the city.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Given Charleston's high concentration of African Americans who spoke the Gullah language, a creole language that developed on the Sea Islands and in the Low Country, the local speech patterns were also influenced by this community. Today, Gullah is still spoken by many African American residents. However, rapid development since 1980, especially on the surrounding Sea Islands, has attracted residents from outside the area and led to a decline in Gullah's prominence.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The traditional educated Charleston accent has long been noted in the state and throughout the South. It is typically heard in wealthy European American older people who trace their families back generations in the city. It has ingliding or monophthongal long mid-vowels, raises "ay" and "aw" in certain environments, and is nonrhotic. Sylvester Primer of the College of Charleston wrote about aspects of the local dialect in his late 19th-century works: "Charleston Provincialisms" (1887) and "The Huguenot Element in Charleston's Provincialisms", published in a German journal. He believed the accent was based on the English as it was spoken by the earliest settlers, therefore derived from Elizabethan England and preserved with modifications by Charleston speakers. The disappearing "Charleston accent" spoken mainly by older natives is still noted in the local pronunciation of the city's name. Many Charleston natives ignore the 'r' and elongate the first vowel, pronouncing the name as "Chalston".


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston is known as "The Holy City". Despite beliefs that the term dates to the city's earliest days and refers to its religiously tolerant culture, the term was coined in the 20th century, likely as a mockery of Charlestonians' self-satisfied attitude about their city. Regardless of the nickname's origination, residents have embraced the term and explained it in more flattering terms.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Anglican church was dominant in the colonial era, and the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul is today the seat of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. Many French Huguenot refugees settled in Charleston in the early 18th century. The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the Southern United States and houses the oldest black congregation south of Baltimore, Maryland.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: South Carolina has long allowed Jews to practice their faith without restriction. Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, founded in 1749 by Sephardic Jews from London, is the fourth-oldest Jewish congregation in the continental United States and was an important site for the development of Reform Judaism. Brith Sholom Beth Israel is the oldest Orthodox synagogue in the South, founded by Sam Berlin and other Ashkenazi German and Central European Jews in the mid-19th century.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The city's oldest Catholic parish, St Mary of the Annunciation Catholic Church, is the mother church of Catholicism in South Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In 1820, Charleston was established as the see city of the Diocese of Charleston, which at the time comprised the Carolinas and Georgia, and presently encompasses the state of South Carolina.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, established in Charleston in 1801, is considered the mother council of the world by Scottish Rite Freemasons.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston's culture blends traditional Southern U.S., English, French, and West African elements. The downtown peninsula has a number of art, music, local cuisine, and fashion venues. Spoleto Festival USA, held annually in late spring, was founded in 1977 by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who sought to establish a counterpart to the "Festival dei Due Mondi" (the Festival of Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Italy.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston's oldest community theater group, the Footlight Players, has provided theatrical productions since 1931. A variety of performing arts venues includes the historic Dock Street Theatre. The annual Charleston Fashion Week held each spring in Marion Square brings in designers, journalists, and clients from across the nation. Charleston is known for its local seafood, which plays a key role in the city's renowned cuisine, comprising staple dishes such as gumbo, she-crab soup, fried oysters, Lowcountry boil, deviled crab cakes, red rice, and shrimp and grits. Rice is the staple in many dishes, reflecting the rice culture of the Low Country. The cuisine in Charleston is also strongly influenced by British and French elements.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston annually hosts Spoleto Festival USA founded by Gian Carlo Menotti, a 17-day art festival featuring over 100 performances by individual artists in a variety of disciplines. The annual Piccolo Spoleto festival takes place at the same time and features local performers and artists, with hundreds of performances throughout the city. Other festivals and events include Historic Charleston Foundation's Festival of Houses and Gardens and Charleston Antiques Show, the Taste of Charleston, The Lowcountry Oyster Festival, the Cooper River Bridge Run, The Charleston Marathon, Southeastern Wildlife Exposition (SEWE), Charleston Food and Wine Festival, Charleston Fashion Week, the MOJA Arts Festival, and the Holiday Festival of Lights (at James Island County Park), and the Charleston International Film Festival. The Charleston Conference is a major library industry event, held in the city center since 1980.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Gullah community has had a tremendous influence on music in Charleston, especially when it comes to the early development of jazz music. In turn, the music of Charleston has had an influence on that of the rest of the country. The geechee dances that accompanied the music of the dock workers in Charleston followed a rhythm that inspired Eubie Blake's "Charleston Rag" and later James P. Johnson's "Charleston", as well as the dance craze that defined a nation in the 1920s. "Ballin' the Jack", which was a popular dance in the years before "Charleston", was written by native Charlestonian Chris Smith.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Jenkins Orphanage was established in 1891 by the Rev. Daniel J. Jenkins in Charleston. The orphanage accepted donations of musical instruments and Rev. Jenkins hired local Charleston musicians and Avery Institute Graduates to tutor the boys in music. As a result, Charleston musicians became proficient on a variety of instruments and were able to read music expertly. These traits set Jenkins musicians apart and helped land some of them positions in big bands with Duke Ellington and Count Basie. William "Cat" Anderson, Jabbo Smith, and Freddie Green are but a few of the alumni who became professional musicians. Orphanages around the country began to develop brass bands in the wake of the Jenkins Orphanage Band's success.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: As many as five bands were on tour during the 1920s. The Jenkins Orphanage Band played in the inaugural parades of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft and toured the US and Europe. The band also played on Broadway for the play "Porgy" by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, a stage version of their novel of the same title. The story was based in Charleston and featured the Gullah community. The Heywards insisted on hiring the real Jenkins Orphanage Band to portray themselves on stage. Only a few years later, DuBose Heyward collaborated with George and Ira Gershwin to turn his novel into the now famous opera, "Porgy and Bess" (so named so as to distinguish it from the play). George Gershwin and Heyward spent the summer of 1934 at Folly Beach outside of Charleston writing this "folk opera", as Gershwin called it. "Porgy and Bess" is considered one of the first Great American Operas and is widely performed.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston has a vibrant theater scene and is home to America's first theater. Most of the theaters are part of the League of Charleston Theatres, better known as Theatre Charleston. Some of the city's theaters include:


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston has many historic buildings, art and historical museums, public parks, and other attractions, including:


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Other notable sports venues in Charleston include Johnson Hagood Stadium (home of The Citadel Bulldogs football team), McAlister Field House (home of The Citadel Bulldogs basketball team), and Toronto Dominion Bank Arena at the College of Charleston, which seats 5,100 people who view the school's basketball and volleyball teams.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Various books and films have been set in Charleston; some of the best known works are listed below. In addition, Charleston is a popular filming location for movies and television, both in its own right and as a stand-in for Southern and/or historic settings.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Commercial shipping is important to the economy. The city has two shipping terminals, of a total of five terminals owned and operated by the South Carolina Ports Authority in the Charleston metropolitan area, which are part of the fourth-largest container seaport on the East Coast and the seventh-largest container seaport in the United States. The port is also used to transfer cars and car parts for Charleston's auto manufacturing business, such as Mercedes and Volvo.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Sometimes known as Silicon Harbor, the city is becoming a popular location for high tech and innovation, and this sector has had the highest rate of growth between 2011 and 2012, due in large part to the Charleston Digital Corridor. In 2013, the Milken Institute ranked the Charleston region as the ninth-best performing economy in the US because of its growing IT sector. Notable companies include Blackbaud, Greystar Real Estate Partners, Evening Post Industries, Le Creuset, SPARC a Booz Allen Hamilton subsidiary, BoomTown, CSS, and Benefitfocus.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: In June 2017, the mean sales price for a home in Charleston was $351,186 and the median price was $260,000.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston has a strong mayor-council government, with the mayor acting as the chief administrator and the executive officer of the municipality. The mayor also presides over city council meetings and has a vote, the same as other council members. The current mayor, since 2016, is John Tecklenburg. The council has 12 members who are each elected from single-member districts.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The City of Charleston Fire Department consists over 300 full-time firefighters. These firefighters operate out of 21 companies located throughout the city: 16 engine companies, two tower companies, two ladder companies, a heavy rescue company, a HAZ-MAT unit and several special units. Training, Fire Marshall, Operations, and Administration are the divisions of the department. The department operates on a 24/48 schedule and is a Class 1 ISO rating. Russell (Rusty) Thomas served as Fire Chief until June 2008, and was succeeded by Chief Thomas Carr in November 2008. The department is presently led by Chief Daniel Curia.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The City of Charleston Police Department, with a total of 458 sworn officers, 117 civilians, and 27 reserve police officers, is South Carolina's largest police department. Luther Reynolds serves as the current Chief of Police. He follows Greg Mullen and Reuben Greenberg. Chief Reynolds is credited with continuing successful community outreach programs such as The Illumination Project and fostering a culture of mutual respect. Under Chief Reynolds, the agency has successfully withstood challenges such as the Coronavirus and downtown disturbances. Additionally, the agency continues to recruit police candidates in a competitive market.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Emergency medical services (EMS) for the city are provided by Charleston County Emergency Medical Services (CCEMS) & Berkeley County Emergency Medical Services (BCEMS). The city is served by the EMS and 911 services of both Charleston and Berkeley counties since the city is part of both counties.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston is the primary medical center for the eastern portion of the state. The city has several major hospitals located in the downtown area: Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center (MUSC), Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, and Roper Hospital. MUSC is the state's first school of medicine, the largest medical university in the state, and the sixth-oldest continually operating school of medicine in the United States. The downtown medical district is experiencing rapid growth of biotechnology and medical research industries coupled with substantial expansions of all the major hospitals. Additionally, more expansions are planned or underway at another major hospital located in the West Ashley portion of the city: Bon Secours-St Francis Xavier Hospital. The Trident Regional Medical Center located in the City of North Charleston and East Cooper Regional Medical Center located in Mount Pleasant also serve the needs of residents of the city of Charleston.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Coast Guard Station Charleston responds to search and rescue emergencies, conducts maritime law enforcement activities, and Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security (PWCS) missions. Personnel from Station Charleston are highly trained professionals, composed of federal law enforcement officers, boat crewmen, and coxswains who are capable of completing a wide range of missions. In 2020, the Coast Guard announced plans to construct a "superbase" on the former Charleston Naval Shipyard complex to consolidate all its Charleston-area facilities and become the homeport for five Security cutters and additional offshore cutters.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The following table shows Charleston's crime rate for six crimes that Morgan Quitno uses to calculate the ranking of "America's most dangerous cities", in comparison to the national average. The statistics shown are for the number of crimes committed per 100,000 people. Since 1999, the overall crime rate of Charleston has declined markedly. The total crime index rate for Charleston in 1999 was 597.1 crimes committed per 100,000 people, while in 2011, the total crime index rate was 236.4 per 100,000.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The City of Charleston is served by the Charleston International Airport. It is located in the City of North Charleston and is about northwest of downtown Charleston. It is the busiest passenger airport in South Carolina . The airport shares runways with the adjacent Charleston Air Force Base. Charleston Executive Airport is a smaller airport located in the John's Island section of the city of Charleston and is used by noncommercial aircraft. Both airports are owned and operated by the Charleston County Aviation Authority. As of April 2019, British Airways does seasonal non-stop flights from Charleston to London-Heathrow.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston is served by two daily Amtrak trains: The Palmetto and Silver Meteor at the Amtrak station located at 4565 Gaynor Avenue in the City of North Charleston located around 7.5 miles from downtown Charleston.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Interstate 26 (I-26) begins in downtown Charleston, with exits to the Septima Clark Expressway, the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge and Meeting Street. Heading northwest, it connects the city to North Charleston, the Charleston International Airport, I-95, and Columbia. The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge and Septima Clark Expressway are part of U.S. Route 17 (US 17), which travels east–west through the cities of Charleston and Mount Pleasant. The Mark Clark Expressway, or I-526, is the bypass around the city and begins and ends at US 17. US 52 is Meeting Street and its spur is East Bay Street, which becomes Morrison Drive after leaving the east side. This highway merges with King Street in the city's Neck area (industrial district). US 78 is King Street in the downtown area, eventually merging with Meeting Street.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge across the Cooper River opened on July 16, 2005, and was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Americas at the time of its construction. The bridge links downtown Charleston with Mount Pleasant, and has eight lanes plus a 12-foot lane shared by pedestrians and bicycles. The height of the bridge varies, but it is estimated that it has a height of 573 feet. It replaced the Grace Memorial Bridge (built in 1929) and the Silas N. Pearman Bridge (built in 1966). They were considered two of the more dangerous bridges in America and were demolished after the Ravenel Bridge opened.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The city is also served by a bus system, operated by the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA). Most of the urban area is served by regional fixed route buses, which are equipped with bike racks as part of the system's Rack and Ride program. CARTA offers connectivity to historic downtown attractions and accommodations with the Downtown Area Shuttle trolley buses, and it offers curbside pickup for disabled passengers with its Tel-A-Ride buses. A bus rapid transit system is in development, called Lowcountry Rapid Transit that will connect Charleston to Summerville through North Charleston.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Rural parts of the city and metropolitan area are served by a different bus system, operated by Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Rural Transportation Management Association. The system is also commonly called the TriCounty Link.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Port of Charleston, owned and operated by the South Carolina Ports Authority, is one of the largest ports in the United States, ranked seventh in the top 25 by containerized cargo volume in 2018. It consists of six terminals, with the sixth having opened in April 2021. Port activity at the two terminals located in the city of Charleston is one of the city's leading sources of revenue, behind tourism.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Today, the Port of Charleston boasts the deepest water in the southeast region and regularly handles ships too big to transit through the Panama Canal. A harbor-deepening project is currently underway to take the Port of Charleston's entrance channel to 54 feet and harbor channel to 52 feet at mean low tide. With an average high tide of 6 feet, the depth clearances will become 60 feet and 58 feet, respectively.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Part of Union Pier Treminal, in the city of Charleston, is a cruise ship passenger terminal which hosted numerous cruise departures annually through 2019. Beginning in May 2019, until cruise operations were interrupted in April 2020, the Carnival "Sunshine" was permanently stationed in Charleston, offering 4, 5, and 7-day cruises to the Caribbean.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: With the closure of the Naval Base and the Charleston Naval Shipyard in 1996, Detyens, Inc. signed a long-term lease. With three dry docks, one floating dock, and six piers, Detyens Shipyard, Inc. is one of the largest commercial marine repair facilities on the East Coast. Projects include military, commercial, and cruise ships.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Because most of the city of Charleston is located in Charleston County, it is served by the Charleston County School District. Part of the city, however, is served by the Berkeley County School District in northern portions of the city, such as the Cainhoy Industrial District, Cainhoy Historical District and Daniel Island.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston is also served by a large number of independent schools, including Porter-Gaud School (K-12), Charleston Collegiate School (K-12), Ashley Hall (Pre K-12), Charleston Day School (K-8), First Baptist Church School (K-12), Palmetto Christian Academy (K-12), Coastal Christian Preparatory School (K-12), Mason Preparatory School (K-8), and Addlestone Hebrew Academy (K-8).


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston Office of Education also operates out of the city and oversees several K-8 parochial schools, such as Blessed Sacrament School, Christ Our King School, Charleston Catholic School, Nativity School, and Divine Redeemer School, all of which are "feeder" schools into Bishop England High School, a diocesan high school within the city. Bishop England, Porter-Gaud School, and Ashley Hall are the city's oldest and most prominent private schools, and are a significant part of Charleston history, dating back some 150 years.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Public institutions of higher education in Charleston include the College of Charleston, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and the Medical University of South Carolina. The city is also home to private schools including the Charleston Southern University and Charleston School of Law. Charleston is also home to the Roper Hospital School of Practical Nursing, and the city has a downtown satellite campus for the region's technical school, Trident Technical College. Charleston has the only college in the country that offers bachelor's degrees in the building arts, The American College of the Building Arts.


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston is the nation's 89th-largest Designated market area (DMA), with 332,770 households and 0.27% of the U.S. TV population. These stations are licensed in Charleston and have significant operations or viewers in the city:


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: As a population and wealth center with colleges and cultural outlets, Charleston has produced many notable people in all fields. Among the most notable historical and contemporary figures are:


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: The relationship with Spoleto began when Pulitzer Prize-winning Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti selected Charleston as the city to host the American version of Spoleto's annual Festival of Two Worlds. "Looking for a city that would provide the charm of Spoleto, as well as its wealth of theaters, churches, and other performance spaces, they selected Charleston, South Carolina, as the ideal location. The historic city provided a perfect fit: intimate enough that the Festival would captivate the entire city, yet cosmopolitan enough to provide an enthusiastic audience and robust infrastructure."


title: Charleston, South Carolina

text: Charleston is also twinned with Speightstown. The first colonists to settle in the region designed the original parts of Charlestown based on the plans of Barbados's capital city, Bridgetown. Many indigo, tobacco, and cotton planters relocated their slaves and plantation operations from Speightstown to Charleston after the sugarcane industry came to dominate agricultural production in Barbados.


title: Pompey

text: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a leading Roman general and statesman. He played a significant role in the transformation of Rome from republic to empire. He was (for a time) a student of Roman general Sulla as well as the political ally, and later enemy, of Julius Caesar.


title: Pompey

text: A member of the senatorial nobility, Pompey entered into a military career while still young. He rose to prominence serving the dictator Sulla as a commander in the civil war of 83–82 BC. Pompey's success as a general while young enabled him to advance directly to his first Roman consulship without following the traditional "cursus honorum" (the required steps to advance in a political career). He was elected as Roman consul on three occasions. He celebrated three Roman triumphs, served as a commander in the Sertorian War, the Third Servile War, the Third Mithridatic War, and in various other military campaigns. Pompey's early success earned him the cognomen "Magnus" – "the Great" – after his boyhood hero Alexander the Great. His adversaries gave him the nickname "adulescentulus carnifex" ("teenage butcher") for his ruthlessness.


title: Pompey

text: In 60 BC, Pompey joined Crassus and Caesar in the military-political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Pompey married Caesar's daughter, Julia, which helped secure this partnership. After the deaths of Crassus and Julia, Pompey became an ardent supporter of the political faction the "optimates"— a conservative faction of the Roman Senate. Pompey and Caesar then began contending for leadership of the Roman state in its entirety, eventually leading to Caesar's Civil War. Pompey was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, and he sought refuge in Ptolemaic Egypt, where he was assassinated in a plot by the courtiers of Ptolemy XIII.


title: Pompey

text: Pompey was born in Picenum (a region of Ancient Italy) to a local noble family. His father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, was the first of his branch of the "gens Pompeia" to achieve senatorial status in Rome, despite his provincial origins. The Romans referred to Strabo as a "novus homo" (new man). Pompeius Strabo ascended the traditional "cursus honorum", becoming quaestor in 104 BC, praetor in 92 BC and consul in 89 BC.


title: Pompey

text: Pompey's father acquired a reputation for greed, political double-dealing, and military ruthlessness. He fought the Social War against Rome's Italian allies, and was granted a triumph. Strabo died during the siege of Rome by the Marians, in 87 BC—either as a casualty of an epidemic, or by having been struck by lightning. His twenty-year-old son Pompey inherited his estates and the loyalty of his legions.


title: Pompey

text: Pompey served under his father's command during the final years of the Social War. When his father died, Pompey was put on trial due to accusations that his father stole public property. As his father's heir, Pompey could be held to account. He discovered that the theft was committed by one of his father's freedmen. Following his preliminary bouts with his accuser, the judge took a liking to Pompey and offered his daughter Antistia in marriage, and so Pompey was acquitted.


title: Pompey

text: Another civil war broke out between the Marians and Sulla in 84–82 BC. The Marians had previously taken over Rome while Sulla was fighting the First Mithridatic War (89–85 BC) against Mithridates VI in Greece. In 84 BC, Sulla returned from that war, landing in Brundisium (Brindisi) in southern Italy. Pompey raised three legions from his father's veterans and his own clients in Picenum to support Sulla's march on Rome against the Marian regime of Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Gaius Marius. Cassius Dio described Pompey's troop levy as a "small band."


title: Pompey

text: Sulla defeated the Marians and was appointed as Dictator. He admired Pompey's qualities and thought that he was useful for the administration of his affairs. He and his wife, Metella, persuaded Pompey to divorce Antistia and marry Sulla's stepdaughter Aemilia. Plutarch commented that the marriage was "characteristic of a tyranny, and benefitted the needs of Sulla rather than the nature and habits of Pompey, Aemilia being given to him in marriage when she was with a child by another man." Antistia had recently lost both her parents. Pompey accepted, but "Aemilia had scarcely entered Pompey's house before she succumbed to the pangs of childbirth." Pompey later married Mucia Tertia, but there's no record of when this took place, the sources only mentioning Pompey's divorce with her. Plutarch wrote that Pompey dismissed with contempt a report that she had had an affair while he was fighting in the Third Mithridatic War between 66 and 63 BC. However, on his journey back to Rome, he examined the evidence more carefully and filed for divorce. Cicero wrote that the divorce was strongly approved. Cassius Dio wrote that she was the sister of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer and that Metellus Celer was angry because he had divorced her despite having had children by her. Pompey and Mucia had three children: the eldest, Gnaeus Pompey (Pompey the Younger); Pompeia Magna, a daughter; and Sextus Pompey, the younger son. Cassius Dio wrote that Marcus Scaurus was Sextus’ half-brother on his mother's side. He was condemned to death, but later released for the sake of his mother Mucia.


title: Pompey

text: The survivors of the Marians, those who were exiled after they lost Rome and those who escaped Sulla's persecution of his opponents, were given refuge on Sicily by Roman general Marcus Perpenna Vento. Papirius Carbo had a fleet there, and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had forced entry into the Roman province of Africa. Sulla sent Pompey to Sicily with a large force. According to Plutarch, Perpenna fled and left Sicily to Pompey. While the Sicilian cities had been treated harshly by Perpenna, Pompey treated them with kindness. However, Pompey "treated Carbo in his misfortunes with an unnatural insolence," taking Carbo in fetters to a tribunal he presided over, examining him closely "to the distress and vexation of the audience," and finally, sentencing him to death. Pompey treated Quintus Valerius "with unnatural cruelty." His opponents dubbed him "adulescentulus carnifex" (adolescent butcher). While Pompey was still in Sicily, Sulla ordered him to the province of Africa to fight Gnaeus Domitius, who had assembled a large force there. Pompey left his brother-in-law, Gaius Memmius, in control of Sicily and sailed his army to Africa. When he got there, 7,000 of the enemy forces went over to him. Domitius was subsequently defeated at the battle of Utica and died when Pompey attacked his camp. Some cities surrendered, some were taken by storm. King Hiarbas of Numidia, who was an ally of Domitius, was captured and executed. Pompey invaded Numidia and subdued it in forty days, restoring Hiempsal II to the throne. When he returned to the Roman province of Africa, Sulla ordered him to send back the rest of his troops and remain there with one legion to wait for his successor. This turned the soldiers who had to stay behind against Sulla, but Pompey said that he would rather kill himself than go against Sulla. When Pompey returned to Rome, everyone welcomed him. To outdo them, Sulla saluted him as "Magnus" (the Great), after Pompey's boyhood hero Alexander the Great, and ordered the others to give him this cognomen.


title: Pompey

text: Pompey asked for a triumph, but Sulla refused because the law allowed only a consul or a praetor to celebrate a triumph, and said that if Pompey—who was too young even to be a senator—were to do so, he would make both Sulla's regime and his honor odious. Plutarch commented that Pompey "had scarcely grown a beard as yet." Pompey replied that more people worshiped the rising sun than the setting sun, implying that his power was on the increase, while Sulla's was on the wane. According to Plutarch, Sulla did not hear him directly but saw expressions of astonishment on the faces of those that did. When Sulla asked what Pompey had said, he was taken aback by the comment and cried out twice "Let him have his triumph!" Pompey tried to enter the city on a chariot drawn by four of the many elephants he had captured in Africa, but the city gate was too narrow and he changed over to his horses. His soldiers, who had not received as much of a share of the war booty as they expected, threatened a mutiny, but Pompey said that he did not care and that he would rather give up his triumph. Pompey went ahead with his extra-legal triumph. Sulla was annoyed, but did not want to hinder his career and kept quiet. However, in 79 BC, when Pompey canvassed for Lepidus and succeeded in making him a consul against Sulla's wishes, Sulla warned Pompey to watch out because he had made an adversary stronger than him. He omitted Pompey from his will.


title: Pompey

text: After Sulla's death in 78 BC, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus tried to revive the fortunes of the "populares". He became the new leader of the reformist movement silenced by Sulla. He tried to prevent Sulla from receiving a state funeral and from having his body buried in the Campus Martius. Pompey opposed this and ensured Sulla's burial with honours. In 77 BC, when Lepidus had left for his proconsular command (he was allocated the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul), his political opponents moved against him and he was recalled from his proconsular command. When he refused to return, they declared him an enemy of the state, and, when Lepidus did move back to Rome, he did so at the head of an army.


title: Pompey

text: The Senate passed a Consultum Ultimum (the Ultimate Decree) which called on the interrex Appius Claudius and the proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus to take necessary measures to preserve public safety. Catulus and Claudius persuaded Pompey, who had several legions' worth of veterans in Picenum (in the northeast of Italy) ready to take up arms at his command, to join their cause. Pompey, invested as a legate with propraetorial powers, quickly recruited an army from among his veterans and threatened Lepidus, who had marched his army to Rome, from the rear. Pompey penned up Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Lepidus's lieutenants, in Mutina.


title: Pompey

text: After a lengthy siege, Brutus surrendered. Plutarch wrote that it was not known whether Brutus had betrayed his army or whether his army had betrayed him. Brutus was given an escort and retired to a town by the river Po, but the next day he was apparently assassinated on Pompey's orders. Pompey was blamed for this, because he had written that Brutus had surrendered of his own accord, and then wrote a second letter denouncing him after he had him murdered.


title: Pompey

text: Catulus, who had recruited an army at Rome, now took on Lepidus, directly defeating him in a battle just to the north of Rome. After having dealt with Brutus, Pompey marched against Lepidus' rear, catching him near Cosa. Although Pompey defeated him, Lepidus was still able to embark part of his army and retreat to Sardinia. Lepidus fell ill while on Sardinia and died, allegedly because he found out that his wife had had an affair.


title: Pompey

text: Quintus Sertorius, the last survivor of the Cinna-Marian faction (Sulla's main opponents during the civil wars of 88-80 BC), waged an effective guerrilla war against the officials of the Sullan regime in Hispania. He was able to rally the local tribes, particularly the Lusitanians and the Celtiberians, in what came to be called the Sertorian War (80-72 BC). Sertorius's guerrilla tactics wore down the Sullans in Hispania; he even drove the proconsul Metellus Pius from his province of Hispania Ulterior. Pompey, who had just successfully assisted the consul Catulus in putting down the rebellion of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, asked to be sent to reinforce Metellus. He had not disbanded his legions after squashing the rebels and remained under arms near the city with various excuses until he was ordered to Hispania by the senate on a motion of Lucius Philippus. A senator asked Philippus if he "thought it necessary to send Pompey out as proconsul. 'No, indeed!' said Philippus, 'but as proconsuls,' implying that both the consuls of that year were good for nothing." Pompey's proconsular mandate was extra-legal, as a proconsulship was the extension of the military command (but not the public office) of a consul. Pompey, however, was not a consul and had never held public office. His career seems to have been driven by desire for military glory and disregard for traditional political constraints.


title: Pompey

text: Pompey recruited an army of 30,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, its size evidence of the seriousness of the threat posed by Sertorius. On Pompey's staff were his old lieutenant Afranius, D. Laelius, Petreius, C. Cornelius, probably Gabinius and Varro. Gaius Memmius, his brother-in-law, who was already serving in Spain under Metellus, was transferred to his command and served him as a quaestor. On his way to Hispania, he opened a new route through the Alps and subdued tribes that had rebelled in Gallia Narbonensis. Cicero later describes Pompey leading his legions to Spain through a welter of carnage in a transalpine war during the autumn of 77 BC. After a hard and bloody campaign, Pompey wintered his army near the Roman colony of Narbo Martius. In the spring of 76 BC, he marched on and entered the Iberian peninsula through the Col de Petrus. He would remain in Hispania from 76 BC to 71 BC. Pompey's arrival gave the men of Metellus Pius new hope and led to some local tribes, which were not tightly associated with Sertorius, to change sides. According to Appian, as soon as Pompey arrived, he marched to lift the siege of Lauron, where he suffered a substantial defeat at the hands of Sertorius himself. It was a serious blow to Pompey's prestige. Pompey spent the rest of 76 BC recovering from the defeat and preparing for the coming campaign.


title: Pompey

text: In 75 BC, Sertorius decided to take on Metellus while he left the battered Pompey to two of his legates (Perpenna and Herennius). In a battle near Valentia, Pompey defeated Perpenna and Herennius and regained some of his prestige. Sertorius, hearing of the defeat, left Metellus to his second-in-command, Hirtuleius, and took over the command against Pompey. Metellus then promptly defeated Hirtuleius at the Battle of Italica and marched after Sertorius. Pompey and Sertorius, both not wanting to wait for the arrival of Metellus (Pompey wanted the glory of finishing off Sertorius for himself and Sertorius did not relish fighting two armies at once), hastily engaged in the indecisive Battle of Sucro. On Metellus’ approach, Sertorius marched inland. Pompey and Metellus pursued him to a settlement called "Seguntia" (certainly not the more known Saguntum settlement on the coast, but one of the many Celtiberian towns called Seguntia, since Sertorius had withdrawn inland), where they fought an inconclusive battle. Pompey lost nearly 6,000 men and Sertorius half of that. Memmius, Pompey's brother-in-law and the most capable of his commanders, also fell. Metellus defeated Perpenna, who lost 5,000 men. According to Appian, the next day, Sertorius attacked Metellus' camp unexpectedly, but he had to withdraw because Pompey was approaching. Sertorius withdrew to Clunia, a mountain stronghold in present-day Burgos, and repaired its walls to lure the Romans into a siege and sent officers to collect troops from other towns. He then made a sortie, passed through the enemy lines and joined his new force. He resumed his guerrilla tactics and cut off the enemy's supplies with widespread raids, while pirate tactics at sea disrupted maritime supplies. This forced the two Roman commanders to separate. Metellus went to Gaul, and Pompey wintered among the Vaccaei and suffered shortages of supplies. When Pompey spent most of his private resources on the war, he asked the senate for money, threatening to go back to Italy with his army if this was refused. The consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus, canvassing for the command of the Third Mithridatic War, believing that it would bring glory with little difficulty and fearing that Pompey would leave the Sertorian War to take on the Mithridatic one, ensured that the money was sent to keep Pompey. Pompey got his money and was stuck in Hispania until he could convincingly beat Sertorius. The "retreat" of Metellus made it seem like victory was further away then ever and led to the joke that Sertorius would be back in Rome before Pompey.


title: Pompey

text: In 73 BC, Rome sent two more legions to Metellus. He and Pompey then descended from the Pyrenees to the river Ebro. Sertorius and Perpenna advanced from Lusitania again. According to Plutarch, many of the senators and other high-ranking men who had joined Sertorius were jealous of their leader. This was encouraged by Perpenna, who aspired to the chief command. They secretly sabotaged him and meted out severe punishments on the Hispanic allies, pretending that this was ordered by Sertorius. Revolts in the towns were further stirred up by these men, which caused Sertorius to kill some allies and sell others into slavery. Appian wrote that many of Sertorius' Roman soldiers defected to Metellus. Sertorius reacted with severe punishments and started using a bodyguard of Celtiberians instead of Romans. Moreover, he reproached his Roman soldiers for treachery. This aggrieved the soldiers, because they felt that they were blamed for the desertion of other soldiers and, since this was happening while they were serving under an enemy of the regime in Rome, in a sense, they were betraying their country through him. Moreover, the Celtiberians treated them with contempt as men under suspicion. These facts made Sertorius unpopular; only his skill at command kept his troops from deserting en masse.


title: Pompey

text: Metellus took advantage of his enemy's poor morale, bringing many towns allied to Sertorius under subjection. Pompey besieged Palantia until Sertorius showed up to relieve the city. Pompey set fire to the city walls and retreated to Metellus. Sertorius rebuilt the wall and then attacked his enemies who were encamped around the castle of Calagurris, which led to the loss of 3000 men. In 72 BC, there were only skirmishes. However, Metellus and Pompey advanced on several towns, some of them defecting and some being attacked. Appian wrote that Sertorius fell unto "habits of luxury," drinking and consorting with women. He was defeated continually. He became hot-tempered, suspicious and cruel in punishment. Perpenna began to fear for his safety and conspired to murder Sertorius. Plutarch, instead, thought that Perpenna was motivated by ambition. He had gone to Hispania with the remnants of the army of Lepidus in Sardinia and had wanted to fight this war independently to gain glory. He had joined Sertorius reluctantly because his troops wanted to do so when they heard that Pompey was coming to Hispania, but, in all reality, he wanted to take over the supreme command.


title: Pompey

text: When Sertorius was murdered, the formerly disaffected soldiers grieved for the loss of their commander whose bravery had been their salvation and were angry with Perpenna. The native troops, especially the Lusitanians, who had given Sertorius the greatest support, were angry too. Perpenna responded with the carrot and the stick: he gave gifts, made promises and released some of the men Sertorius had imprisoned, while threatening others and killing some men to strike terror. He secured the obedience of his troops, but not their true loyalty. Metellus left the fight against Perpenna to Pompey. The two skirmished for nine days. Then, as Perpenna did not think that his men would remain loyal for long, he marched into battle, but Pompey ambushed and defeated him. Frontinus wrote about the battle in his stratagems:


title: Pompey

text: Pompey won against a poor commander and a disaffected army. Perpenna hid in a thicket, fearing his troops more than the enemy, and was eventually captured. Perpenna offered to produce letters to Sertorius from leading men in Rome who had invited Sertorius to Italy for seditious purposes. Pompey, fearing that this might lead to an even greater war, had Perpenna executed and burned the letters without even reading them. Pompey remained in Hispania to quell the last disorders and settle affairs. He showed a talent for efficient organisation and fair administration in the conquered province. This extended his patronage throughout Hispania and into southern Gaul. His departure from Hispania was marked by the erection of a Triumphal monument at the summit off the pass over the Pyrenees. On it, he recorded that, from the Alps to the limits of Further Spain, he had brought 876 towns under Roman sway.


title: Pompey

text: While Pompey was in Hispania, the rebellion of the slaves led by Spartacus (the Third Servile War, 73–71 BC) broke out. Crassus was given eight legions and led the final phase of the war. He asked the senate to summon Lucullus and Pompey back from the Third Mithridatic War and Hispania, respectively, to provide reinforcements, "but he was sorry now that he had done so, and was eager to bring the war to an end before those generals came. He knew that the success would be ascribed to the one who came up with assistance, and not to himself." The senate decided to send Pompey, who had just returned from Hispania. On hearing this, Crassus hurried to engage in the decisive battle, and routed the rebels. On his arrival, Pompey cut to pieces 6,000 fugitives from the battle. Pompey wrote to the senate that Crassus had conquered the rebels in a pitched battle, but that he himself had extirpated the war entirely.


title: Pompey

text: Pompey was granted a second triumph for his victory in Hispania, which, again, was extra-legal. He was asked to stand for the consulship, even though he was only 35 and thus below the age of eligibility to the consulship, and had not held any public office, much less climbed the "cursus honorum" (the progression from lower to higher offices). Livy noted that Pompey was made consul after a special senatorial decree, because he had not occupied the quaestorship, was an equestrian and did not have senatorial rank. Plutarch wrote that "Crassus, the richest statesman of his time, the ablest speaker, and the greatest man, who looked down on Pompey and everybody else, had not the courage to sue for the consulship until he had asked the support of Pompey." Pompey accepted gladly. In the "Life of Pompey", Plutarch wrote that Pompey "had long wanted an opportunity of doing him some service and kindness..." In the "Life of Crassus", he wrote that Pompey "was desirous of having Crassus, in some way or other, always in debt to him for some favor". Pompey promoted his candidature and said in a speech that "he should be no less grateful to them for the colleague than for the office which he desired."


title: Pompey

text: Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls for the year 70 BC. Plutarch wrote that, in Rome, Pompey was looked upon with both fear and great expectation. About half of the people feared that he would not disband his army, seize absolute power by arms and hand power to the Sullans. Pompey, instead, declared that he would disband his army after his triumph and then "there remained but one accusation for envious tongues to make, namely, that he devoted himself more to the people than to the senate..." When Pompey and Crassus assumed office, they did not remain friendly. In the "Life of Crassus", Plutarch wrote that the two men differed on almost every measure, and by their contentiousness rendered their consulship "barren politically and without achievement, except that Crassus made a great sacrifice in honour of Hercules and gave the people a great feast and an allowance of grain for three months." Towards the end of their term of office, when the differences between the two men were increasing, a man declared that Jupiter told him to "declare in public that you should not suffer your consuls to lay down their office until they become friends." The people called for a reconciliation. Pompey did not react, but Crassus "clasped him by the hand" and said that it was not humiliating for him to take the first step of goodwill.


title: Pompey

text: Neither Plutarch nor Suetonius wrote that the acrimony between Pompey and Crassus stemmed from Pompey's claim about the defeat of Spartacus. Plutarch wrote that "Crassus, for all his self-approval, did not venture to ask for the major triumph, and it was thought ignoble and mean in him to celebrate even the minor triumph on foot, called the ovation (a minor victory celebration), for a servile war." According to Appian, however, there was a contention for honours between the two men—a reference to the fact that Pompey claimed that he had ended the slave rebellion led by Spartacus, whereas in fact Crassus had done so. In Appian's account, there was no disbanding of armies. The two commanders refused to disband their armies and kept them stationed near the city, as neither wanted to be the first to do so. Pompey said that he was waiting the return of Metellus for his Spanish triumph; Crassus said that Pompey ought to dismiss his army first. Initially, pleas from the people were of no avail, but eventually Crassus yielded and offered Pompey the handshake.


title: Pompey

text: Plutarch's reference to Pompey's "devot[ing] himself more to the people than to the senate" was related to a measure regarding the plebeian tribunes, the representatives of the plebeians. As part of the constitutional reforms Sulla carried out after the civil war, he revoked the power of the tribunes to veto the "senatus consulta" (the written advice of the senate on bills, which was usually followed to the letter), and prohibited ex-tribunes from ever holding any other office. Ambitious young plebeians had sought election to this tribunate as a stepping stone for election to other offices and to climb up the "cursus honorum". Therefore, the plebeian tribunate became a dead end for one's political career. He also limited the ability of the plebeian council (the assembly of the plebeians) to enact bills by reintroducing the "senatus auctoritas", a pronouncement of the senate on bills that, if negative, could invalidate them. The reforms reflected Sulla's view of the plebeian tribunate as a source of subversion that roused the "rabble" (the plebeians) against the aristocracy. Naturally, these measures were unpopular among the plebeians, the majority of the population. Plutarch wrote that Pompey "had determined to restore the authority of the tribunate, which Sulla had overthrown, and to court the favour of the many" and commented that "there was nothing on which the Roman people had more frantically set their affections, or for which they had a greater yearning, than to behold that office again." Through the repeal of Sulla's measures against the plebeian tribunate, Pompey gained the favour of the people.


title: Pompey

text: In the "Life of Crassus", Plutarch did not mention this repeal and, as mentioned above, he only wrote that Pompey and Crassus disagreed on everything and that, as a result, their consulship did not achieve anything. Yet, the restoration of tribunician powers was a highly significant measure and a turning point in the politics of the late Republic. This measure must have been opposed by the aristocracy, and it would have been unlikely that it would have been passed if the two consuls had opposed each other. Crassus does not feature much in the writings of the ancient sources. Unfortunately, the books of Livy, otherwise the most detailed of the sources which cover this period, have been lost. However, the "Periochae", a short summary of Livy's work, records that "Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Pompey were made consuls... and reconstituted the tribunician powers." Suetonius wrote that, when Julius Caesar was a military tribune, "he ardently supported the leaders in the attempt to reestablish the authority of the tribunes of the commons [the plebeians], the extent of which Sulla had curtailed." The two leaders are presumed to have been the two consuls, Crassus and Pompey.


title: Pompey

text: Piracy in the Mediterranean became a large-scale problem, with a big network of pirates coordinating operations over wide areas with many fleets. According to Cassius Dio, the many years of war contributed to this, as a large number of fugitives joined them, since pirates were more difficult to catch or break up than bandits. The pirates pillaged coastal fields and towns. Rome was affected through shortages of imports and the supply of grains, but the Romans did not pay proper attention to the problem. They sent out fleets when "they were stirred by individual reports" and these did not achieve anything. Cassius Dio wrote that these operations caused greater distress for Rome's allies. It was thought that a war against the pirates would be big and expensive, and that it was impossible to attack or drive back all the pirates at once. As not much was done against them, some towns were turned into pirate winter quarters and raids further inland were carried out. Many pirates settled on land in various places and relied on an informal network of mutual assistance. Towns in Italy were also attacked, including Ostia, the port of Rome, with ships burned and pillaged. The pirates seized important Romans and demanded large ransoms.


title: Pompey

text: Cilicia had been a haven for pirates for a long time. It was divided into two parts: Cilicia Trachaea (Rugged Cilicia), a mountainous area in the west, and Cilicia Pedias (Flat Cilicia) in the east, by the Limonlu river. The first Roman campaign against the pirates was led by Marcus Antonius Orator in 102 BC, in which parts of Cilicia Pedias became Roman territory, but only a small part becoming a province. Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus was given the command of fighting piracy in Cilicia in 78–74 BC. He won several naval victories off Cilicia and occupied the coasts of nearby Lycia and Pamphylia. He received his agnomen of Isauricus because he defeated the Isauri, who lived in the core of the Taurus Mountains, which bordered on Cilicia. He incorporated Isauria into the province of Cilicia Pedias. However, much of Cilicia Pedias belonged to the kingdom of Armenia. Cilicia Trachea was still under the control of the pirates.


title: Pompey

text: In 67 BC, three years after Pompey's consulship, the plebeian tribune Aulus Gabinius proposed a law ("lex Gabinia") for choosing "...from among the ex-consuls, a commander with full power against all the pirates." He was to have dominion over the waters of the entire Mediterranean and up to inland for three years, empowered to pick fifteen lieutenants from the senate and assign specific areas to them, allowed to have 200 ships, levy as many soldiers and oarsmen as he needed and collect as much money from the tax collectors and the public treasuries as he wished. The use of treasury in the plural might suggest power to raise funds from treasures of the allied Mediterranean states as well. Such sweeping powers were not a problem because comparable extraordinary powers given to Marcus Antonius Creticus to fight piracy in Crete in 74 BC provided a precedent. The "optimates" in the Senate remained suspicious of Pompey—this seemed yet another extraordinary appointment. Cassius Dio claimed that Gabinius "had either been prompted by Pompey or wished in any case to do him a favor... he did not directly utter Pompey's name, but it was easy to see that if, once the populace should hear of any such proposition, they would choose him." Plutarch described Gabinius as one of Pompey's intimates and claimed that he "drew up a law which gave him not an admiralty, but an out-and-out monarchy and irresponsible power over all men."


title: Pompey

text: Cassius Dio wrote that Gabinius’ bill was supported by everybody except the senate, which preferred the ravages of pirates rather than giving Pompey such great powers, and that some senators attempted to kill Gabinius in the Senate House. This outraged the people, who set upon the senators. They all ran away, except for the consul Gaius Piso, who was arrested, but Gabinius had him freed. The "optimates" tried to persuade the other nine plebeian tribunes to oppose the bill, two of whom, Trebellius and Roscius, agreed to do so. Trebellius tried to speak against the bill at the Plebeian Assembly, but Gabinius postponed the vote and introduced a motion to remove him from the tribunate. After seventeen tribes had voted in favor of the motion, Trebellius backed down, keeping his office, but forced into silence. Having witnessed his colleague's humiliation, Roscius did not dare to speak, but suggested with a gesture that two commanders should be chosen. At this, the people "gave a great threatening shout", forcing Roscius to back down as well. The law was passed and the senate ratified it reluctantly. Pompey tried to appear as if he was forced to accept the command because of the jealousy that would be caused if he would lay claim to the post and the glory that came with it. Cassius Dio commented that Pompey was "always in the habit of pretending as far as possible not to desire the things he really wished."


title: Pompey

text: Plutarch did not mention Gabinius nearly being killed. He gave details of the acrimony of the speeches against Pompey, with one of the senators proposing that Pompey should be given a colleague. Only Caesar supported the law and, in Plutarch's view, he did so "not because he cared in the least for Pompey, but because from the outset he sought to ingratiate himself with the people and win their support." In his account, the people did not attack the senators, only shouted loudly, resulting in the assembly being dissolved. On the day of the vote, Pompey withdrew to the countryside, and the "lex Gabinia" was passed. Pompey extracted further concessions and received 500 ships, 120,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and twenty-four lieutenants. With the prospect of a campaign against the pirates, the prices of provisions fell. Pompey divided the sea and the coast into thirteen districts, each assigned to a commander with his own forces.


title: Pompey

text: Appian gave the same number of infantry and cavalry, but the number of ships was 270, and the lieutenants were twenty-five. He listed them and their areas of command as follows: Tiberius Nero and Manlius Torquatus (in command of Hispania and the Straits of Hercules); Marcus Pomponius (Gaul and Liguria); Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and Publius Atilius (Africa, Sardinia, Corsica); Lucius Gellius and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus (Italy); Plotius Varus and Terentius Varro (Sicily and the Adriatic Sea, as far as Acarnania); Lucius Sisenna (the Peloponnese, Attica, Euboea, Thessaly, Macedon, and Boeotia); Lucius Lollius (the Greek islands, the Aegean sea, and the Hellespont); Publius Piso (Bithynia, Thrace, the Propontis and the mouth of the Euxine); Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos Iunior (Lycia, Pamphylia, Cyprus, and Phoenicia). Pompey made a tour of the whole area. He cleared the western Mediterranean in forty days, proceeded to Brundisium (Brindisi) and cleared the eastern Mediterranean in the same amount of time.


title: Pompey

text: In Plutarch's account, Pompey's scattered forces encompassed every pirate fleet they came across and brought them to port, the remaining pirates escaping to Cilicia. Pompey attacked Cilicia with his sixty best ships; after that, he cleared the Tyrrhenian Sea, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and the Libyan Sea in forty days with the help of his lieutenants. Meanwhile, the consul Piso sabotaged Pompey's equipment and discharged his crews, and thus Pompey went back to Rome. The markets in Rome now were well-stocked with provisions again and the people acclaimed Pompey. Piso was nearly stripped of his consulship, but Pompey prevented Aulus Gabinius from proposing a bill to this effect. He set sail again and reached Athens, defeating the Cilician pirates off the promontory of Coracesium. He then besieged them and they surrendered, together with the islands and towns they controlled, the latter being fortified and difficult to take by storm. Pompey seized many ships, but he also spared the lives of 20,000 pirates. He resettled some of them in the city of Soli, which had recently been devastated by Tigranes the Great, the king of Armenia. Most were resettled in Dyme in Achaea, Greece, which was underpopulated and had plenty of good land. Some pirates were received by the half-deserted cities of Cilicia. Pompey thought that they would abandon their old ways and be softened by a change of place, new customs and a gentler way of life.


title: Pompey

text: In Appian's account, Pompey went to Cilicia expecting to have to undertake sieges of rock-bound citadels. However, he did not have to. His reputation and the magnitude of his preparations provoked panic and the pirates surrendered, hoping to be treated leniently because of this. They gave up large quantities of weapons, ships and shipbuilding materials. Pompey destroyed the material, took away the ships and sent some of the captured pirates back to their countries. He recognised that they had undertaken piracy due to the poverty caused by the mentioned war and settled many of them in Mallus, Adana, Epiphania or any other uninhabited or thinly populated town in Cilicia. He sent some to Dyme in Achaea. According to Appian, the war against the pirates lasted only a few days. Pompey captured 71 ships and 306 ships were surrendered. He seized 120 towns and fortresses and killed about 10,000 pirates in battles.


title: Pompey

text: In Cassius Dio's brief account, Pompey and his lieutenants patrolled "the whole stretch of sea that the pirates were troubling," and his fleet and his troops were irresistible both on sea and land. The leniency with which he treated the pirates who surrendered was "equally great" and won over many pirates, who went over to his side. Pompey "took care of them" and gave them land which was empty or settled them in underpopulated towns so that they would not resort to crime due to poverty. Soli was among these cities. It was on the Cilician coast and had been sacked by Tigranes the Great. Pompey renamed it Pompeiopolis.


title: Pompey

text: Metellus, a relative of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, with whom Pompey had fought in Hispania, had been sent to Crete, which was the second source of piracy before Pompey assumed command. He hemmed in and killed many pirates, besieging the remnants. The Cretans called on Pompey to come to Crete, claiming that it was under his jurisdiction. Pompey wrote to Metellus to urge him to stop the war and sent one of his lieutenants, Lucius Octavius. The latter entered the besieged strongholds and fought with the pirates. Metellus persisted, captured and punished the pirates, and sent Octavius away after insulting him in front of the army.


title: Pompey

text: Lucius Licinius Lucullus was conducting the Third Mithridatic War (73–63 BC) against Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, and Tigranes the Great, the king of Armenia. Lucullus was successful in battle; however, the war was dragging on and he opened a new front in Armenia. In Rome, he was accused of protracting the war for "the love of power and wealth" and of plundering royal palaces as if he had been sent "not to subdue the kings, but to strip them". Some of the soldiers became disgruntled and were incited by Publius Clodius Pulcher not to follow their commander. Commissioners were sent to investigate and the soldiers mocked Lucullus in front of the commission.


title: Pompey

text: In 68 BC, the province of Cilicia was taken from Lucullus and assigned to Quintus Marcius Rex. He refused a request for aid from Lucullus because his soldiers refused to follow him to the front. According to Cassius Dio, this was a pretext. One of the consuls for 67 BC, Manius Acilius Glabrio, was appointed to succeed Lucullus. However, when Mithridates won back almost all of Pontus and caused havoc in Cappadocia, which was allied with Rome, Glabrio did not go to the front, but delayed in Bithynia.


title: Pompey

text: Another plebeian tribune, Gaius Manilius, proposed the "lex Manilia". It gave Pompey command of the forces and the areas of operation of Lucullus, and, in addition to this, Bithynia, which was held by Acilius Glabrio. It commissioned him to wage war on Mithridates and Tigranes, allowing him to retain his naval force and his dominion over the sea granted by the "lex Gabinia". Thus Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Upper Colchis, Pontus and Armenia, as well as the forces of Lucullus, were added to Pompey's command. Plutarch noted that this meant the placing of Roman supremacy entirely in the hands of one man.


title: Pompey

text: The "optimates", unhappy about so much power being given to Pompey, saw this as the establishment of a tyranny. They agreed to oppose the law, but they were fearful of the mood of the people. Only Catulus spoke up, and the law was passed. Julius Caesar supported the law, and Cicero justified it in his extant speech "Pro Lege Manilia". Former consuls also supported the law, with Cicero mentioning Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus (consul in 72 BC), Gaius Cassius Longinus Varus (73 BC), Gaius Scribonius Curio (76 BC) and Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus (79 BC). According to Cassius Dio, while this was happening, Pompey was preparing to sail to Crete to face Metellus Creticus. Lucullus was incensed at the prospect of Pompey replacing him. The outgoing commander and his replacement traded insults. Lucullus called Pompey a "vulture" who fed from the work of others, referring not merely to Pompey's new command against Mithridates, but also his claim to have finished the war against Spartacus.


title: Pompey

text: According to Cassius Dio, Pompey made friendly proposals to Mithridates to test his disposition. Mithridates tried to establish friendly relations with Phraates III, the king of Parthia. Pompey foresaw this, established a friendship with Phraates and persuaded him to invade the part of Armenia under Tigranes. Mithridates sent envoys to conclude a truce, but Pompey demanded that he lay down his arms and hand over the deserters. There was unrest among the scared deserters, which were joined by some of Mithridates' men, who feared having to fight without them. The king held them in check with difficulty and had to pretend that he was testing Pompey. Pompey, in Galatia, prepared for war. Lucullus met him and claimed that the war was over and that there was no need for an expedition. He failed to dissuade Pompey, and verbally abused him. Pompey ignored him, forbade the soldiers to obey Lucullus, and marched to the front. In Appian's account, when the deserters heard about the demand to hand them back, Mithridates swore that he would not make peace with the Romans and that he would not give them up.


title: Pompey

text: Cassius Dio wrote that Mithridates kept withdrawing because his forces were inferior. Pompey entered Lesser Armenia, which was not under Tigranes' rule. Mithridates did the same and encamped on a mountain that was difficult to attack. He sent the cavalry down for skirmishes, which caused a large number of desertions. Pompey moved his camp to a wooded area for protection, setting up a successful ambush. When Pompey was joined by more Roman forces, Mithridates fled to the Armenia of Tigranes.


title: Pompey

text: In Plutarch's version, the location of the mountain is unspecified and Mithridates abandoned it because he thought that it had no water. Pompey took the mountain and had wells sunk. He then besieged Mithridates' camp for 45 days; however, Mithridates managed to escape with his best men. Pompey caught up with him by the river Euphrates, lined up for battle to prevent him from crossing the river and advanced at midnight. He wanted to just surround the enemy camp to prevent an escape in the darkness, but his officers convinced him to charge. The Romans attacked with the moon behind them, confusing the enemy who, because of the shadows, thought that they were nearer. The enemy troops fled in panic and were cut down.


title: Pompey

text: In Cassius Dio, this battle occurred when Mithridates entered a defile. The Romans hurled stones, arrows and javelins on the enemy, which was not in battle formation, from an elevated height. When they ran out of missiles, they charged those on the outside, and those in the center were crushed together. Most were horsemen and archers, and they could not respond in the darkness. When the moon rose, it was behind the Romans, casting shadows and causing confusion for the enemy. Many were killed, but many, including Mithridates, fled. He then tried to go to Tigranes. Plutarch wrote that Tigranes forbade him from coming and put a reward on him, while Cassius Dio did not mention a reward. He wrote that Tigranes arrested his envoys because he thought that Mithridates was responsible for a rebellion by his son.