I am reading Mary Beard's SPQR and at some point, she mentions that:
"Pompey has a good claim to be called the first Roman emperor. True, he has usually gone down in history as the man who finally supported the cause of the Republic against the increasingly independent power of Caesar, and so as an opponent of imperial rule. But his treatment in the East and the honours showered upon him (or which he contrived) closely prefigured many of the defining elements of the Roman emperor's image and status. It was almost that as if the forms and symbols of imperial rule that, a few decades later under Julius Caesar and even more his great-nephew, the emperor Augustus, became standard in Italy and Rome had their prototypes in Roman rule abroad [...]."
Later on, she mentions examples of the formation of his cult of personality and I couldn't help but wonder; What is the consensus on who laid first the foundation for the idea of an Emperor?
Mary Beard makes a great point here. Pompey was, in many ways, the archetype for the later autocratic imperial regime. He broke just about every rule and custom the Republic had and acted his entire life as an autocrat and a bully. His greatest weakness was his desire to "fit in" with Roman elite, especially the senatorial elite whom he variously fought against and supported his entire life. His earliest entrance on the scene is a great example.
In 83 BCE, Sulla returned from the war against Mithridates in the East with his army to find Italia was hostile to him (that's another story). He landed at Brundisium and moved north against Rome as if an invader, and along the way, he met with a 23-year-old Pompeius, who had raised a veritable private army of his father's veteran legionnaires in Picenum and marched south in support of Sulla's return. Sulla must have wondered who the hell this kid was, but he was happy to take any help he could get. He hailed this kid as imperator and off they went. The following year, having taken (back) Rome from the Marians, Sulla gave Pompey, briefly his step-son, imperium pro praetore and sent him off to mop up further opposition in Sicily. Pompey was a nobody at this point, elected to no magistracy, and for him to carry imperium of any sort was technically illegal at worst and against the mos maiorum at best. Pompey went off to Sicily with his troops, captured the consul Carbo, and put him to death without any sort of trial. This was, uh, very much not legal or in keeping with the mos maiorum. While he was there, he reorganized Sicily and accrued for himself a great number of personal clients (a maneuver he had learned from his father in Picenum during the Social War).
After Sicily, Pompey's "command" was "extended" to North Africa, where he again quickly mopped up the opposition. When Sulla asked that he kindly disband his forces now that the job was done, Pompey politely declined and returned to Italy in force, reportedly quipping that "more men worship the rising than the setting sun." Sulla relented and Pompey was permitted a military triumphal procession in Rome, an absolutely unprecedented honor, at the tender age of 24, having been elected to no Roman public office whatsoever.
This is just an anecdote from the very beginning of Pompey's long and wacky career, but this type of behavior was the very clear blueprint for behavior later, like that of Octavian: special imperium, special dispensations or the outright ignoring of laws, age restrictions, considerations of established custom, autocratic directives among subject peoples, military adventurism, cult of personality, etc. One could argue that some of these elements had already been released earlier, by the Scipios, or the Gracchi, or Marius, or Sulla, but in Pompey they all came together in one guy. Pompey is a very underrated and underrepresented figure in Roman history and really deserves more modern exposure. I'm glad to see that Mary Beard is giving credit (blame?) where credit (blame?) is due.