suffered,
it was amply compensated by the recovery of the lighthouse-island, which
along with the mole as far as the first arch-opening remained in the
hands of Caesar.
At length the longed-for relief arrived, Mithridates of Pergamus, an
able warrior of the school of Mithridates Eupator, whose natural son
he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army,--the
Ituraeans of the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of Jamblichus,
son of Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the minister Antipater, and the
contingents generally of the petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia and
Syria. From Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy on
the day of his arrival, he took the great road towards Memphis, with the
view of avoiding the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the
Nile before its division; during which movement his troops received
manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled in this part
of Egypt. The Egyptians, with the young king Ptolemy now at their head,
whom Caesar had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the
insurrection by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detain
Mithridates on its farther bank. The army fell in with the enemy
even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews' camp, between Onion and
Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithridates, trained in the Roman fashion
of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained the
opposite bank at Memphis. Caesar, on the other hand, as soon as he
obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a part
of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the west
of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile to meet
Mithridates advancing up the river.
The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it. Caesar
then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated, overthrew,
notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptian
vanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian camp
itself. It lay at the foot of a rising ground between the Nile--from
which only a narrow path separated it--and marshes difficult of access.
Caesar caused the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the front
and from the flank on the path along the Nile; and during this assault
ordered a third detachment to ascend unseen the heights of the camp. The
victory was complete; the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who
did not fall beneath the
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