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Notes -
More and Pompey didn't lose by playing cooperatebot against defectbot.
More never tried to fight the Reformation Parliament and the Succession Oath - it was as obvious to him as it was to everyone else that with the King's mind made up there was nothing to fight. Saint Thomas More was playing a different game, with the only prize worth having in his estimation not being of this world, so he decided that martyrdom was a better alternative to going along to get along.
I'm not going to litigate which of Pompey and Caesar defected first, but at the critical decision point they are both all-in on defection - Pompey just lost the resulting war.
Pompey’s side defected 80 years earlier when they beat the Tribune of the Plebs to death with table legs, committing what was in the Roman worldview both treason and blasphemy. Then they spent most of the next century being shocked at the succession of demagogues who were suddenly willing to break all sorts of political norms, for some unknown reason.
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Because you bloody well know that there are many points in the First Triumvirate where he could have crushed Caesar who had demonstrated his danger to him but let his friendship and honor get in the way. A courtesy that Caesar did not pay him later, except perhaps posthumously.
To be sure, but once again it is politics we are talking about, not Godliness. His martyrdom did not change England's course.
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