the cool thing about there being so little reliable info on pompey jr’s side of the civil war is that weird ass theories like “scipio and cato kept sextus in africa as a sort of hostage so gnaeus would behave” or “the imp f inscription on gnaeus’s coins is short for imperator felix” have to actually be mentioned before they’re dismissed. and i the reader gets to see them
but one thing all the ancient sources agree on is that Sextus Pompey made a great joke when he invited Antony and Caesar jr to a convivium on his flagship during the Misenum conference and said “welcome to dinner at my Carinae property*”
*Carinae was a neighborhood where Pompey Sr. had a house. Antony bought it at auction along with the rest of Pompey’s property. Carina is also the Latin word for “keel” and by metonymy, a “boat”. Interestingly, Pompey’s Carinae house is probably the one that had rostra (captured ships’ prows) on it, just to make this whole thing where Sextus tries to regain his patrimony by becoming master of the seas and the “son of Neptune”.
sextus went “how many themes can i cram into a single joke?” and decided on all of them, and this is why you cannot not love him