o Egypt and marry Berenice. He was low-minded in all his pleasures and
tastes, and got the nickname of _Cybiosactes_, the scullion. He was
even said to have stolen the golden sarcophagus in which the body of
Alexander was buried; and was so much disliked by his young wife that
she had him strangled on the fifth day after their marriage. Berenice
then married Archelaus, a son of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus;
and she had reigned one year with her sister and two years with her
husbands when the Roman army brought back her father, Ptolemy Auletes,
into Egypt.

Gabinius, on marching, gave out as an excuse for quitting the province
entrusted to him by the senate, that it was in self-defence; and that
Syria was in danger from the Egyptian fleet commanded by Archelaus. He
was accompanied by a Jewish army under the command of Antipator, sent by
Hyrcanus, whom the Romans had just made governor of Judaea. Mark Antony
was sent forward with the horse, and routed the Egyptian army near
Pelusium, and then entered the city with Auletes. The king, in the
cruelty of his revenge, wished to put the citizens to the sword, and was
only stopped by Antony's forbidding it. The Egyptian army was at this
time in the lowest state of discipline; it was the only place where the
sovereign was not despotic. The soldiers, who prized the lawlessness of
their trade even more than its pay, were a cause of fear only to their
fellow-citizens. When Archelaus led them out against the Romans, and
ordered them to throw up a trench around their camp, they refused to
obey; they said that ditch-making was not work for soldiers, but that
it ought to be done at the cost of the state. Hence, when on this first
success Gabinius followed with the body of the army, he easily conquered
the rest of the country and put to death Berenice and Archelaus. He then
led back the army into his province of Syria, but left behind him a body
of troops under Lucius Septimius to guard the throne of Auletes and to
check the risings of the Alexandrians.

Gabinius had refused to undertake this affair, which was the more
dangerous because against the laws of Rome, unless the large bribe were
first paid down in money. He would take no promises; and Auletes, who in
his banishment had no money at his command, had to borrow it of some one
who would listen to his large promises of after payment. He found this
person in Rabirius Posthumus, who had before lent him money, and who saw
that