ven 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 king
to allow him to land. The Egyptian court, long informed of the disaster
at Pharsalus, was on the point of refusing to receive Pompeius;
but the king's tutor Theodotus pointed out that, in that case
Pompeius would probably employ his connections in the Egyptian army
to instigate rebellion; and that it would be safer, and also preferable
with regard to Caesar, if they embraced the opportunity of making away
with Pompeius. Political reasonings of this sort did not readily fail
of their effect among the statesmen of the Hellenic world.

Death of Pompeius

Achillas the general of the royal troops and some of the former soldiers
of Pompeius went off in a boat to his vessel; and invited him
to come to the king and, as the water was shallow, to enter their barge.
As he was stepping ashore, the military tribune Lucius Septimius
stabbed him from behind, under the eyes of his wife and son
who were compelled to be spectators of the murder from the deck
of their vessel, without being able to rescue or revenge
(28 Sept. 706). On the same day, on which thirteen years before
he had entered the capital in triumph over Mithradates,(39)
the man, who for a generation had been called the Great and for years
had ruled Rome, died on the desert sands of the inhospitable
Casian shore by the hand of one of his old soldiers. A good officer
but otherwise of mediocre gifts of intellect and of heart,
fate had with superhuman constancy for thirty years allowed him
to solve all brilliant and toilless tasks; had permitted him to pluck
all laurels planted and fostered by others; had brought him
face to face with all the conditions requisite for obtaining
the supreme power--only in order to exhibit in his person an example
of spurious greatness, to which history knows no parallel.
Of all pitiful parts there is none more pitiful than that of passing
for more than one really is; and it is the fate of monarchy
that this misfortune inevitably clings to it, for barely once
in a thousand years does there arise among the people a man
who is a king not merely in name, but in reality. If this dispropo