defeated party thus allowed themselves
to be helplessly driven about by fate, and even those
who had determined to continue the struggle knew not how or where
to do so, Caesar, quickly as ever resolving and quickly acting,
laid everything aside to pursue Pompeius--the only one of his opponents
whom he respected as an officer, and the one whose personal capture
would have probably paralyzed a half, and that perhaps
the more dangerous half, of his opponents. With a few men
he crossed the Hellespont--his single bark encountered in it a fleet
of the enemy destined for the Black Sea, and took the whole crews,
struck as with stupefaction by the news of the battle of Pharsalus,
prisoners--and as soon as the most necessary preparations were made,
hastened in pursuit of Pompeius to the east. The latter had gone
from the Pharsalian battlefield to Lesbos, whence he brought away
his wife and his second son Sextus, and had sailed onward round
Asia Minor to Cilicia and thence to Cyprus. He might have joined
his partisans at Corcyra or Africa; but repugnance toward his
aristocratic allies and the thought of the reception which awaited him
there after the day of Pharsalus and above all after his disgraceful
flight, appear to have induced him to take his own course
and rather to resort to the protection of the Parthian king
than to that of Cato. While he was employed in collecting money
and slaves from the Roman revenue-farmers and merchants in Cyprus,
and in arming a band of 2000 slaves, he received news that Antioch
had declared for Caesar and that the route to the Parthians
was no longer open. So he altered his plan and sailed to Egypt,
where a number of his old soldiers served in the army and the situation
and rich resources of the country allowed him time and opportunity
to reorganize the war.

In Egypt, after the death of Ptolemaeus Auletes (May 703)
his children, Cleopatra about sixteen years of age and Ptolemaeus Dionysus
about ten, had ascended the throne according to their father's will
jointly, and as consorts; but soon the brother or rather his guardian
Pothinus had driven the sister from the kingdom and compelled her
to seek a refuge in Syria, whence she made preparations
to get back to her paternal kingdom. Ptolemaeus and Pothinus
lay with the whole Egyptian army at Pelusium for the sake
of protecting the eastern frontier against her, just when Pompeius
cast anchor at the Casian promontory and sent a request to the