Not many weeks after this incident the father died, struck, it was said, by lightning, and Pompey became his own master. It was not long before he found an opportunity of gaining still higher distinction. The civil war still continued to rage, and few did better service to the party of the aristocrats than Pompey. Others were content to seek their personal safety in Sulla's camp; Pompey was resolved himself to do something for the cause. He made his way to Picenum, where his family estates we e situated and where his own influence was great, and raised three legions (nearly twenty thousand men), with all their commissariat and transport complete, and hurried to the assistance of Sulla. Three of the hostile generals sought to intercept him. He fell with his whole force on one of them, and crushed him, carrying off, besides his victory, the personal distinction of having slain in single combat the champion of the opposing force. The towns by which he passed eagerly hailed him as their deliverer. A second commander who ventured to encounter him found himself deserted by his army and was barely able to escape; a third was totally routed. Sulla received his young partisan, who was not more than twenty-three years of age, with distinguished honors, even rising from his seat and uncovering at his approach. During the next two years his reputation continued to increase. He won victories in Gaul, in Sicily, and in Africa. As he was returning to Rome after the last of these campaigns, the great Dictator himself headed the crowd that went forth to meet him, and saluted him as Pompey the Great, a title which he continued to use as his family name[5]. But there was a further honor which the young general was anxious to obtain, but Sulla was unwilling to grant, the supreme glory of a triumph. "No one," he said, "who was not or had not been consul, or at least praetor, could triumph. The first of the Scipios, who had won Spain from the Carthaginians, had not asked for this honor because he wanted this qualification. Was it to be given to a beardless youth, too young even to sit in the Senate?" But the beardless youth insisted. He even had the audacity to hint that the future belonged not to Sulla but to himself. "More men," he said, "worship the rising than the setting sun." Sulla did not happen to catch the words, but he saw the emotion they aroused in the assembly, and asked that they should be repeated to him. His astonishment permitted him to say nothing more than "Let him triumph! Let him triumph." And triumph he did, to the disgust of his older rivals, whom he intended, but that the streets were not broad enough to allow of the display, still further to affront by harnessing elephants instead of horses to his chariot. [Footnote 5: _Pompeius_ was the name of his house (_gens). Strabo_ had been the name of his family (_familia_). This he seems to have disused, assuming _Magnus_ in its stead.]