Five Men and Pompey: A Series of Dramatic Portraits — Text and Context

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Benét, Stephen Vincent, 1898-1943 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2020 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Pompey, the Great, 106 B.C.-48 B.C. -- Drama Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 8,166

Reading time 36 min

Text sections 9

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #62494

Stephen Vincent Benét's 1915 verse drama presents five monologues by figures around Pompey the Great, using shifting voices and pacing to explore political loyalty, personal memory, and the collapse of the Roman Republic.

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File: pg62494

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e thought shall you know till you lie in your grave; A thought not even your soul can brave!-- The thought of a mean and evil slave, And a knife that was forged in Spain!

So the Republic dies! and all my work Is vain; the things I built are shattered now, My task is done, the task I dared not shirk; And I am very tired. Nydia, come! Come as you came that day down the green walk, The day I rode in triumph back to Rome, After the Cimbri had been crushed--and talk, Talk as we talked that day beside the pool, Shadowed by ilex, where the golden hearts Of lilies burned within the water cool,-- Nydia! But she stays not, she departs! The marble seat--you lifted up your face-- I have fought long now. I am weary. Come! Nydia! Nydia! and lead me home! Home! How the Forum blazes in the sun! The Roman faces and the kindly speech; The melon-sellers, proffering to each That comes, ripe, green-streaked melons--What! you shun An old friend, Balbus? No! It was not I! No! by the gods! I never gave consent To those red days of massacre!----They cry! Oh gods! they cry, cry, they are not yet dead! They _will_ not die: they hurl upon my head Curses and prayers! I hear them in my tent! They are not dead! Oh gods! They are not dead! I never gave consent!

Still the time slips And Nydia comes not. I am very tired. The things are broken to which I aspired, And you alone are left. Love! She is here Nydia, Nydia....

I dine in the Apollo room tonight, With Cicero and Pompey! See to it!

Cicero! Pompey! But ten years ago Lucullus was the hero, Conqueror Of Mithridates, Rescuer of Rome! All’s Pompey now; he goes far--and has gone; And, with it all, is just the honest, brave, Young captain that I saw that hot, raw, day; The first day of my shame. Oh gods, gods, gods! Must Rome have always victories, victories, Incredible conquests till the whole world reels, And still thrust traps into my path until I fall at last? When Pompey came I knew. Oh he was kind, quite kind, considerate Of the old bitter man there who had failed, Recalled without a triumph! He was kind In all his splendid, conquering, strength and youth! Yet, I had beaten Mithridates. So Let the old lion growl through teeth once sharp! This sordid squabble of a vulgar crowd Of stiff patricians, ranting demagogues, Serves well for others. I, I have my trees, My cherries, rooted firm in Roman soil, Shedding a delicate whiteness on the hills When spring comes. A far greater triumph that Than all my conquests. Yes, they know me well, These young men, “That old dragon on the hill, Who gives such gorgeous dinners. Gods, his wines! Fit for Apollo!” Yes, an excellent host, Learned in sauces, skilled in oysters, game; Within whose heart no spark of ancient fire Burns on.... Oh Power! Power! Once to lead An army, once again, and see the thick Rain of the Parthian arrows and the blaze As forty brazen cohorts broke the foe! The thin lines buckle, the black masses fly! _Imperator Romanus!_ No, Lucullus, But the good host who--plants his cherry-trees!

Love? I have loved once, once.... That awful day We stormed in through the gates of Amisus.... The loot-mad soldiers, howling, smote the town Down in a mud of blood and dirt and wine, Bodies and gold and priceless tapestries. Half-mad I rushed to stop them, beat and struck; I think they would have murdered me at once, But that one drunkard yelled “The General! Lower your swords, lads! Sir, we won this town! You take your pleasures and let us take ours!” I reeled into the blackness of an arch, And saw before me, white-robed, laurel-crowned, Just such a maiden as might once have danced Along the friezes of the Parthenon; A face like that on an old silver coin, Demetrius sent me, clear-cut, beautiful With all the burning beauty of the Greek. Pure and serene her grey eyes gazed in mine.... We spoke few words; what need to speak at all When just our eyes told all we had to tell, There in the soft, cool blackness, splashed with light From the red pools of burning wine without?

Few words. They chime like little silver bells Within my heart now, or like trumpet blasts Bear up my soul a little towards the gods.

We had three years. She died before my fall.

Continue Reading →

Benét's Five Men and Pompey opens with Sertorius, a rebel leader in Spain, speaking in a breathless, fragmented monologue that mixes military calculation with private grief. The verse moves from clipped tactical lines—'The net is cast: / Cast, and draws ever tighter'—to a sudden, aching recollection of a lost woman: 'Ah, Nydia! Nydia! Had you not died.' This shift in register, from the language of siege to the language of loss, sets the pattern for the entire work. Each of the five dramatic portraits uses a distinct rhythm and emotional temperature, so that the reader experiences the same historical events from inside radically different minds.

Sertorius and the Rhythm of Defeat

The first portrait, 'The Last Banquet,' gives Sertorius a voice that is both weary and volatile. Benét marks the speaker's exhaustion through short, broken lines: 'Twelve years! Twelve years of striving! and at last / My power is—secure?' The dash and the question together signal a man who cannot believe his own success. As the monologue progresses, the syntax becomes more fractured, mirroring the conspiracy closing in. When Sertorius suddenly cries 'Guards! Guards!—I think you will not rise again, / Perpenna, from that blow!' the pace accelerates into action, but the scene is already over. Benét uses these abrupt tempo changes to keep the reader off balance, as if the historical outcome—Sertorius's assassination—is both inevitable and shocking.

Caesar's Letter and the Forking Path

In 'De Bello Civili,' Benét constructs Caesar's monologue as a reading of letters, a device that allows the voice to shift between public argument and private memory. The opening lines mimic the clipped, rational tone of a statesman weighing options: 'H'm. “Rome mistaken—.” H'm.' But as Caesar recalls a friend from his youth, the verse opens into long, sensuous lines: 'Under the blazing stars. A brown slave girl / Plucked at a lute whose drowsy murmur died / Throbbingly into sweetness.' This lyrical passage, with its piled colors—'Crimson like pigeon’s blood, blue like the sea, / Yellow like old, old ivory'—contrasts sharply with the political calculations that frame it. The poem then pivots again, presenting a verse letter from Calinus that condemns Caesar in a different, prophetic voice. The result is a portrait of a man torn between nostalgia and ambition, his decision to march on Ariminum presented as a sudden, almost arbitrary break.

Pompey After Pharsalia: The Voice of the Loser

The final portrait, 'After Pharsalia,' gives Pompey a sparse, elegiac tone. The opening line—'So it is over; you have won at last'—is direct and flat, stripped of the rhetorical flourishes that mark Caesar's speech. Pompey's voice is that of a man who has already lost, and Benét keeps the lines short and declarative: 'Freedom and the Republic. Once. No more.' The repetition of 'Freedom' and the single-word sentence 'Once' create a rhythm of finality. Unlike Sertorius, who rages against his fate, or Caesar, who hesitates and then acts, Pompey simply observes his own defeat. The pace is slow, almost static, as if the speaker is already becoming a historical figure rather than a living man. This deliberate deceleration gives the sequence a somber close, emphasizing that the Republic's end is not a dramatic collapse but a quiet extinguishing.

Because the excerpts provide only five of the nine text sections, the reader encounters the work as a series of intense, self-contained moments rather than a continuous narrative. Benét's method rewards attention to small shifts in line length, punctuation, and diction—each speaker's voice is a distinct instrument. Reading the portraits in order reveals a deliberate arc: from the frantic energy of Sertorius, through the layered indecision of Caesar, to the resigned stillness of Pompey. The gaps between the monologues are as telling as the speeches themselves.

Reading Five Men and Pompey, I kept thinking how loyalty, once fractured, leaves a peculiar silence in its wake. There’s a similar ache in the older voices of Four Plays of Aeschylus — A Closer Reading, where memory weighs heavier than any crown. Sometimes the past isn’t a lesson; it’s just company that stays. I remember that feeling long after the page turns.