Pompey lost the civil war we all know. But it can be argued his achievements rival those of Caesar. I don't know of any documentaries telling the story of Pompey. A man who conquered the eastern Empire for the Romans and cleared the Mediterranean of pirates providing security for trade for his country (to his own benefit as well). Such tremendous achievements and he is still disregarded even though retaining the title of Mangus (the great.) History is written by the victors, but Caesar was disgusted by Pompey's end and respected him. Why are his achievements and life story only known but the most die-hard fans of Roman history?
Given more attention by whom? If we truly mean "in history," then no classicist, Latinist, or historian worth a good goddamn would in a million years deny Pompey's importance or overlook him. I don't know how he's treated by pop history, but no academic would ever dare overlook Pompey
History is written by the victors
Hogwash. This tired, absurd, and overused trope is particularly nonsensical for Pompey. Not only are our sources primarily sympathetic to the senatorial class or actually made up of them (like Cicero) but our sources quite frankly are obsessed with Pompey. Our most important source contemporary to the 60s-40s, Cicero, thought until 58 that he was Pompey's best friend, and even after Cicero's exile we can tell from his letters that the man went through some serious mental hoops to come to grips with the fact that Pompey had betrayed him--Cicero's letters and speeches from 57 until around 52 are obsessed with Pompey. Pompey naturally features prominently in all of our major post-Augustan sources, Suetonius, Appian, Plutarch, Cassius Dio, etc. Hell, Plutarch devoted an entire book to Pompey. And if we expected the view of the victors of a conflict to be so uncritically supported by historical sources then why is it that literally none of our sources, besides Caesar himself, view Caesar unambiguously. Even Sallust, a contemporary of Caesar's and a Caesarian himself, does not take an uncritical view of Caesar, and in our later material he's generally ambiguous at best (though the greatness of his achievements is always rightly remembered) and a straight-out villain at worst--we we expected Caesar to be uncritically favored in the later tradition then how come Caesar is quite possibly the most chilling villain of all time in the Pharsalia? Certainly Lucan treated Caesar as unambiguously a villain, or at best a rather nasty anti-hero. There's far more to historiography, of the late Republic or of any other period, than simply quoting Churchill's famous logical conceit
I agree, I think it would make a great movie. I imagine the reason it hasn't had so much prominence is that while his achievements were undeniably huge, they were eclipsed in every way by Julius Caesar and the fact that they were active almost simultaneously means Pompey is largely forgotten alongside Caesar. If they were separated by century or two people might remember Pompey more.
Kind of like how nobody noticed when CS Lewis died because he had the misfortune to die the same day JFK was shot.
Caesar's actions had much greater implications for the Republic and later Empire as well, though clearly he built upon precedents set by others including of course, Pompey.