Magnus Pius ─ Sextus Pompeius and The Transformation of the Roman Republic

`This book is destined to be as groundbreaking as Syme's Roman Revolution and will take the discourse in a wholly new direction. Kathryn Welch's radically new reconstruction of the strategy of the Republican forces, against Julius Caesar and his heir Octavian, is so obviously correct that one can only wonder why the facts have, until now, never been presented so cogently.'

Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius, son of Pompey the Great, fits uneasily into narratives of Rome's civil war of 49-31 BC. Ronald Syme, father of international orthodoxy, stated that Sextus was `in reality an adventurer' who was `easily represented as a pirate'. He was wrong

Sextus Pompeius plays havoc with orthodox history. His military success punctures the myth of continuous Caesarian victory. His systematic rescuing of the victims of Triumviral violence belies the claim that only the Caesarian side represented clementia and justice. His naval strategy reveals his commitment to the same cause and ethics as his father and his father's allies. Indeed, Pompey the Great and his Republican allies can only be understood, Welch shows, by a study of his gifted, resilient and ultimately unlucky son. Welch places Sextus Pompeius at the centre of Rome's transition from Republic to Empire and so reveals an ideological landscape very different from 20th-century representations

Kathryn Welch is an internationally-recognised authority on the politics of late-Republican Rome and the civil war period, on which she has published widely. With Anton Powell, she edited Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter (1998) and Sextus Pompeius (2002), and with T.W. Hillard, Roman Crossings: Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic (2005). She is currently preparing, with Kai Brodersen, a volume of papers on Appian, his histories and his treatment of Roman civil conflict

Dr Welch teaches at the University of Sydney