PILLAR OF POMPEY AT ALEXANDRIA]

Pothinus the eunuch, Achilles the general, who was a native Egyptian,
and Theodotus of Chios, who was the prince's tutor in rhetoric, were the
men by whom the fate of this great Roman was decided. "By putting him to
death," said Theodotus, "you will oblige Caesar, and have nothing to
fear from Pompey;" and he added with a smile, "Dead men do not bite."
So Achilles and Lucius Septimius, the head of the Roman troops in the
Egyptian army, were sent down to the seaside to welcome him, to receive
him as a friend, and to murder him. They handed him out of his galley
into their boat, and put him to death on his landing. They then cut off
from his lifeless trunk the head which had been three times crowned with
laurels in the capitol; and in that disfigured state the young Ptolemy
saw for the first time, and without regret, the face of his father's
best friend.

When Caesar, following the track of Pompey, arrived in the roadstead of
Alexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation he turned away
when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man who had been
his son-in-law and for long years his colleague in rule, and to get
whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt. The dagger of the rash
assassin precluded an answer to the question, how Caesar would have dealt
with the captive Pompey; but, while the human sympathy which still found
a place in the great soul of Caesar, side by side with ambition, enjoined
that he should spare his former friend, his interest also required that
he should annihilate Pompey otherwise than by the executioner. Pompey
had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler of Rome; a dominion so
deeply rooted does not end with the ruler's death. The death of Pompey
did not break up the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged,
incapable, and worn-out chief, in his sons Gnacus and Sextus, two
leaders, both of whom were young and active, and the second of them of
decided capacity. To the newly founded hereditary monarchy, hereditary
pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite, and it was very
doubtful whether by this change of persons Caesar did not lose more than
he gained.

Meanwhile in Egypt Caesar had now nothing further to do, and the Romans
and Egyptians expected that he would immediately set sail and
apply himself to the subjugation of Africa, and to the huge task of
organisation which awaited him after the victory. But Caesar, faithful