What Roman military hero do you admire most?

[Theodosius the Great]

That's good advice. I'm simply drawing a contrast between the two men in their methods. We already agree that Caesar's scale of brutality was unsurpassed. We disagree on why.

....the hard work had been done prior to his arrival! (again)

Lucullus built on Sulla's efforts and Pompey built on Lucullus'. There was still hard fighting to do against Mithradates whose army was swollen with Roman deserters from Lucullus' legions. No matter how many times Mithradates was defeated he always came back. Not only did Pompey defeat him but successfully isolated him diplomatically from the neighboring kingdoms which drove the old king to despair, madness and suicide. That was a greater (i.e. permanent) achievement. Clearly Pompey was the more intelligent man who brought about the end of Rome's most dangerous enemy.

They hardly put up a resistance, either...

There was little resistance to his subsequent eastern settlement partly because his reputation as a generous and moderate general preceded him. Josephus says that he successfully elicted goodwill from the region.

Contrast this with Caesar's Alexandrian War where he unnecessarily deposed the pro-Roman government and needlessly endangered the lives of his men.

The fact that Caesar proabaly triples the size of Roman teritory probabaly explains the extent of his brutality.

I read that Caesar roughly doubled the size. The more important factor was the length of his command. But that alone doesn't explain the disproportionate civilian casaulties. Pompey also doubled the size of the empire when he absorbed Syria and the surrounding territories.

And the behaviour of the Christian Emperors like Constantine can hardly be described as 'Christian' by any stretch of the imagination....

I'll answer this non sequitur by saying that anyone who looks for Christian virtues among secular rulers is looking in the wrong place. Good Christian rulers are the exception, not the rule. Besides, who is nominating Constantine as a military hero?

No, Caesar, defiantely did more for the Romans than any other...regardless of how he did it...And we only have Pompeys story of how he actually treated the pirates....

We have some details about Pompey's campaigns and settlements of Spain and the East. In Spain he was tested more rigorously than anywhere else. His victory there was hard fought and no one can say someone else did the hard work before him. Many generals were sent before him to reconquer it and they were all clobbered, as was Pompey himself on occassion. He had to adjust to the guerilla tactics of the enemy under the command of a superb general who knew Roman tactics as well as he did. And Pompey won with a smaller army than Caesar or Lucullus. After taking over Lucullus' command he dismissed many of the veterans and went on to build the eastern provinces. His methods were more sophiscated and far less bloody. His successes didn't depend on Caesar's crude aggressiveness.

And I think Scipio, Pompey, and Trajan did more for Rome than Caesar.

~Theo