Book VIII

And now beyond wooded Tempe, the Gorge of Hercules, Magnus made by circuitous paths for the lonely forests of Thessaly; as he urged on his horse which was worn out by rapid flight and deaf to the spur, he confused the traces of his retreat and made a labyrinth of his tracks. He dreads the sound of the trees in the wind; and any of his comrades who falls back to join him causes him terror in his agitation and fear for his own person. Though fallen from his lofty eminence, he knows that the price of his blood is still high; and, mindful of his career, he believes that his death can still earn as great a reward as he himself would give for the severed head of Caesar. Though he seeks solitude, his known features suffer him not to hide his disaster in safe concealment. Many who were on their way to the camp at Pharsalia, before rumour had published his defeat abroad, were startled to meet their leader and astounded by the sudden change of fortune; and he was scarcely believed when he reported his own defeat. The presence of any witness of his woes was grievous to him. He would choose to be unknown to all nations, and to pass safely through the cities with a name unknown to fame; but Fortune, who long had favoured him, now demands from her victim the penalty of that favour; she throws all the weight of his renown into the scale of adversity and crushes him beneath his former successes. Now he feels that his honours came too quick upon him; now he curses the exploits of his triumphant youth in Sulla's day; now he hates in his fall to remember the fleets of Cilicia and the armies of Pontus. Thus length of days and life surviving power humble the proudest heart. Unless the end of life comes together with the end of happiness, and anticipates sorrow by speedy death, past greatness is a mockery. Does any dare to trust prosperity, except he has the means of death at hand?

He had reached the shore where the river Peneus, already red with the slaughter of Pharsalia, passed out into the sea. From there a boat, no match for winds and waves and scarcely safe in the shallow river, bore him out trembling over the deep. He whose oars still churn the waters of Corcyra and the bays of Leucas, he, the lord of the Cilicians and the Liburnian land, slinks as a frightened passenger into a little boat. He bids them bend the sail towards the distant shore of Lesbos — the shore entrusted with his loved Cornelia; in that land she was hidden, but she was sadder than if she had stood in the centre of Pharsalia's field. For her sorrow is intensified by forebodings, and her sleep broken by anxious fears. Every night brings Pharsalia before her; and, when darkness disappears, she hastens to the peak of a steep cliff at the shore's edge and looks out over the waves; she is always the first to see the sails of an approaching vessel dipping in the distance, but she dare ask no question concerning her husband's fate. But see! a ship spreading her sail towards the harbours of Lesbos? What it brings, she knows not; and up till now her worst fear is evil news of the war and ominous report; but now the messenger is her husband, and his message, defeat. Why waste the time when you might mourn? Though you might weep already, you only fear. Then, as the ship came close, she sprang up and marked the guilt and cruelty of Heaven, the ghastly pallor of the general, the white hair that hid his face, and the black dust that defiled his garments. Darkness closed upon her grief and robbed her of the light of heaven; sorrow stopped her breath; betrayed by the muscles, all her limbs relaxed, her heart ceased to beat, and long she lay deceived by the hope that this was death. Now the cable was made fast to the shore, and Pompey trod the solitary strand. When her faithful handmaids saw him close at hand, they dared not rail at destiny except with stifled groans, and tried in vain to lift their fainting mistress from the ground; but Pompey folded her in his arms and brings back life to the rigid limbs by his embrace. Back came the blood to the surface of the body; she began to be aware of Pompey's touch, and to be able to endure the sorrowful face of her husband. He forbids her to be conquered by destiny and thus reproves the excess of her sorrow: "Adorned as you are by the fame of such mighty ancestors, why do you suffer the first stroke of Fortune to break down the courage of your noble race? Here is your opportunity for undying fame. To your sex neither peaceful government nor war is a field for glory: a husband's sorrow alone can win it. Lift up your heart, let your devotion wrestle with destiny, and let the very fact that I have been conquered be dear to you. For bring you greater distinction now, when the magistrates and devoted ranks of the Senate and all my retinue of kings have parted from me: from this time be the sole follower of Magnus. The depth of woe, woe that admits of no increase, is unbecoming while your husband lives; to mourn him dead should be your last proof of fidelity. My defeat has brought no loss to you; for Magnus survives the battle, though his greatness has gone; that which you weep for is what you really loved."

Thus rebuked by her husband, slowly she raised her ailing limbs from the ground, and her wailing broke out into complaints like these:' Would that I had been wedded to hated Caesar; for disaster was my dower and I have brought happiness to no husband. Twice have I brought a curse on mankind; the Fury and the ghosts of the Crassi gave me in marriage; and I, devoted to those dead, have Oi: brought the disaster of Carrhae to the camp of civil war, and hurled nations to their doom, and driven all Heaven away from the better side. O mighty husband, too good for such a wife, had Fortune such power over one so great. Why was I guilty of marrying you, if I was to bring you sorrow?

Now accept the penalty — a penalty which I will gladly pay: that the sea may be smoother for you, the kings steadfast in their loyalty, and the whole world more ready to serve you, scatter the limbs of your companion over the deep. I had rather have laid down my life to buy you victory; as it is, at least expiate your defeat by my death. Let relentless Julia, wherever she is buried, come here and exact the penalty; she has punished our marriage by civil strife; let her be appeased by the death of her rival and spare Magnus when he is hers." With these words she fell back into her husband's arms, and the eyes of all were melted to tears. The stern heart of Magnus was moved, and Lesbos made wet the eyes that were dry at Pharsalia. Next the people of Mytilene, who had now flocked to the shore, addressed Magnus thus: "Since it will ever be our chief boast to have guarded the treasure of so great a husband, do you also honour the city bound to you by sacred ties, and deem our friendly dwellings worthy to shelter you for one night at least. Make this a place of pilgrimage for all ages, a place where strangers may come from Rome and worship. No city is more fit for you to enter after defeat: though all others may hope for the clemency of the conqueror, ours is already guilty. Besides, Lesbos is an island, and Caesar has no fleet. Most of the senators, knowing where to find you, will gather here; you must make good your failure on this famous shore. Take the ornaments of our temples and the treasure of our gods; take our manhood's strength, to use on land or at sea, wherever it is most serviceable; make use of all Lesbos to the utmost of her power. Accept our gifts; though conquered, take them that Caesar may not rob us of them. Only of this charge acquit a land that has served you well: let it not appear that in adversity you doubted our loyalty which you appealed to in your good fortune." Cheered in his hour of defeat to find such devotion, and glad, for the sake of humanity, that loyalty still existed, Pompey replied: "By a most dear pledge I have proved to you that no land on earth is more acceptable to me: Lesbos held my heart, while Cornelia was your hostage; Lesbos was my hearth and home, all that was dear and sacred; Lesbos was Rome to me. To no other shore did I first direct my vessel in my flight; and, though I knew that Lesbos had already earned Caesar's anger by keeping safe my wife, I did not fear to put in your hands so mighty a means of gaining his forgiveness. But here I must call a halt and make you guilty no more. My own future I must follow up over all the world. Ah, too happy Lesbos, and famous for ever, whether she teaches other nations and kings to harbour me or alone proves faithful to me. For I am resolved to search the world and find out where goodness is, and where crime. Hear my last prayer, ye gods, if any god is still upon my side: may I find nations like to Lesbos, who will suffer a defeated man, pursued by Caesar, to enter their ports and also suffer him to sail out again." Thus he spoke and set his sorrowing companion on board. One might have thought that all the people were leaving their native soil for a foreign land; such wailing rose from all the shore; and menacing hands were stretched towards heaven. Pompey's departure they felt less — his ill-fortune only had stirred their grief; but when they saw Cornelia leaving them, Cornelia whom throughout the war they looked on as one of themselves, then the people groaned aloud; if she had sought the camp of a victorious husband, scarce could the matrons have parted from her without tears; with such love had she attached some by her gentleness, others by her goodness and her pure and modest looks, because, humble of heart and a burdensome guest to none of the people, she lived, while her husband's fortune stood firm, as if he had been conquered already.

By now the sun had sunk half his ball of fire in the sea, and his disc was not wholly seen either by those from whom he withdrew it, or by those, if such there be, to whom he revealed it. The care that kept watch in Pompey's breast turned at one time to the allied cities in league with Rome and to the wavering allegiance of the kings, at another time to the pathless lands of the region that lies beyond the burning suns of the south. So sad and weary were his thoughts, such his loathing of the morrow, that often he threw off the heavy load of his conflicting purposes, and questioned the steersman concerning all the stars; by what star does he mark the land? what rule and measure for cleaving the sea does the sky afford? by what star does he keep a course to Syria? or which of the seven stars in the Wain is a sure guide to Libya? The skilled watcher of the silent sky replied to him thus: "All those lights which move and glide through the starry heavens mislead the hapless seaman, because the sky is ever shifting; to them we pay no heed; but the pole-star, which never sets or sinks beneath the waves, the brightest star in the two Bears, he it is that guides our course. When I see him mount ever towards the zenith, and when the Little Bear rises above the towering yards, then we face towards the Bosporus and the Black Sea that hollows the Scythian shore. But whenever Bootes sinks from the topmast and the Little Bear moves nearer the horizon, the ship is making for the ports of Syria. Next after that conies Canopus, a star that shuns the North and limits its wanderings to the southern sky; if you keep it on the left and sail on past Pharos, your vessel will strike the Syrtis in mid-ocean. But whither do you bid me shape our course, and with which sheet shall the canvas be stretched?" With unsettled purpose, Magnus answered him thus: "Wherever we sail, be this your only care, to turn your bark ever further from the shore of Thessaly, and to leave the West behind in sailing and steering; all else trust to the winds. I have taken on board my companion, the pledge I left for safety; then I had no doubt what shore to make for, but now chance must provide a harbour." Thus he spoke; and the steersman tugged at the sails that hung in equal lengths from the level yard-arms, and turned the vessel to the left; and, that she might cleave the waves made rough by Chios and the rocks of Asina, he slackened the ropes at the bow and made tiut those at the stern. The sea was conscious of the movement and gave a different sound, when the beak cut the water in a new direction and the ship's course was altered. With less skill the charioteer makes the right wheel spin round the left, and forces his car close to the turning-post without striking it.

The sun revealed the earth and veiled the stars. All who had fled far and wide from the fatal field of Pharsalia rallied round Magnus; first to meet him, after he quitted the shore of Lesbos, was his son, and next came his loyal band of senators; for even when cast down by destiny and routed in battle, he was not deprived by Fortune of kings to serve him: the exile was escorted by the lords of earth and the monarchs of the East. Deiotarus, who had tracked his leader through his wanderings, he bade repair to the ends of the earth.' Since,' said he "the world, so far as it was Roman, has been lost by the disaster of Pharsalia, it remains, O most loyal of my kings, to test the allegiance of the East, of the nations who drink the Euphrates and the Tigris, rivers as yet unmolested by Caesar. Seeking success for me, refuse not to explore the distant home of the Medes and remote Scythia; be willing to change your clime completely, and bear to the proud scion of Arsaces this message from me: If our ancient treaty holds good — the treaty which I swore to observe in the name of the Roman Thunderer, and which was made fast by your Wise Men — then fill full your quivers, and stretch the bows of Armenia with the strings of the Getae; for, when I marched towards the Caspian Gates and pursued the hardy Alani, ever at war, I suffered the Parthian s to ride at will over the Persian plains and never forced them to take hasty refuge in Babylon. I passed the realm of Cyrus and the uttermost parts of the Chaldean kingdom, where the impetuous Ganges and Nysaean Hydaspes join the sea; and I was nearer to the flame of the rising sun than Persia is; though I was everywhere victorious, I forbore to add the Parthians, and them alone, to the list of my triumphs; and, alone among the kings of the East, the Parthian approached me on equal terms. And a second time, thanks to me, the sons of Arsaces were saved. For who else curbed the righteous anger of Rome that followed the blow of the defeat in Assyria? Now let Parthia, bound by so many benefits from me, burst her bounds, to cross the bank forbidden for many centuries and pass the Bridge of Alexander. If the Parthians conquer for Pompey's sake, Rome will welcome her conqueror.'" Hard was the task enjoined, but the king did not refuse; he laid aside the badges of royalty and left the ship, wearing garments taken in haste from a menial. In danger a king finds safety in the disguise of a beggar; how much safer then is the lot of the really poor man than that of the lords of earth! The king was set ashore; and Pompey himself sailed past the rocks of Icaria, and skirted the foaming cliffs of little Samos, shunning Ephesus and Colophon with their calm waters; the breeze blew fresh from the shore of Cos; next he avoided Cnidos and Rhodes, famous island of the sun, and shortened the long circuit of the bay of Telmessus by keeping the open sea. The land of Pamphylia now confronted his vessel; so far he had not dared to trust himself to any city, but now he entered the walls of little Phaselis; for she was robbed of her terrors by her scanty population, and her houses were drained of their inhabitants; there were more men on board the ship than in all the town. From hence he set sail again, and soon came in view of Mount Taurus and Dipsus falling down the mountain-side.

Could Magnus have believed, when he gave peace to the sea, that he would profit by it himself.' Now he flees unharmed along the coast of the pirates in his little vessel. He was followed by a number of senators who rallied round their fugitive leader; and at little Syhedra — the harbour which sends forth and receives again the ships of Selinus — Magnus at last opened his sorrowful lips at a meeting of the nobles, and spoke thus: "Comrades in battle and in flight, you who represent our country, though I, who ask your counsel and seek to set a new enterprise on foot, stand here on a barren shore in the land of Cilicia, and have no armies round me, yet hear me with proud hearts. I did not fall for ever on the field of Pharsalia; nor has my destiny sunk so low that I can never again raise my head and shake off the defeat I have suffered. If the ruins of Carthage could raise Marius to office and replace him in the Calendar, full already of his name, shall Fortune keep me down, whom she has smitten with a lighter blow? Mine are a thousand ships that toss on Grecian waters, and mine a thousand leaders; Pharsalia scattered my resources but did not overthrow them. If it had, I could find safety merely in the fame of the mighty deeds I wrought over all the earth, and in that name which the whole world loves. It is for you to weigh well the kingdoms in point of strength and loyalty — Libya, Parthia, and Egypt- - and to decide who may with honour retrieve the fortunes of Rome. But I will unveil to you my own secret thoughts and the purpose to which the balance of my mind inclines. I mistrust the youth of the Egyptian king; for dangerous loyalty requires the years of manhood. Next, I fear the two-faced cunning of the fickle Moor; for that impious son of Carthage, mindful of his pedigree, threatens Italy, and his empty head is full of Hannibal — Hannibal, who by collateral descent disgraces the dynasty and is related to his Numidian ancestors. Already, when Varus begged his aid,; Juba swelled with pride to see Rome take the second place. Therefore, my companions, let us be up and hasten to the Eastern clime. The waters of the Euphrates shut off from us a mighty world, and the Caspian Gates hide boundless solitudes; in Assyria a different hemisphere makes the changes hof night and day; they have an ocean of their own, and a sea severed from ours and unlike in the colour of its water. Their one passion is for war. Tall is their warhorse on the plain, and strong their bow; youth and age are quick to stretch the deadly string, and death follows sure from every shaft. Their archers were the first to break the Macedonian phalanx, and they took Bactra, the seat of the Medes, and Babylon, the city of Assyria, with her proud walls. Nor is the Roman javelin much dreaded by the Parthians; but they come boldly to battle, having proved their Scythian quivers on the day when Crassus fell. And the shafts which they shower do not depend on steel alone, but their hurtling missiles are thoroughly steeped in poison.

Even a slight wound is fatal, and death is in a mere scratch. (Would that my belief in the power of the cruel sons of Arsaces were not so strong! The destiny which controls the Medes rivals too closely that of Rome, and their nation is greatly blessed of Heaven.) I shall pour forth nations uprooted from another land; I shall summon all the East from its habitations and hurl it against my foe. But if the loyalty of the East and my treaty with the barbarians shall fail me, then let chance bear my shattered fortunes beyond the trodden highways of the world. I will not sue to the kings I made. If I fall at the end of the earth, this wilj be sufficient consolation for my death, that Caesar has been guilty of no outrage against my corpse, and guilty of no respect. But when I review the whole story of my life, I was ever worshipful in that Eastern world: how great was I beyond the Maeotian Mere and by the Tanais, the cynosure of all the East! Into no lands did my name go forth with more glorious exploits, and from none did I return more triumphant. Rome, smile on my enterprise! for no greater boon can Heaven confer on you than that you should use Parthians to fight your civil wars, and so destroy that great nation and make them share our calamities. When Caesar's armies clash with the Medes, the issue must avenge either me or the Crassi." Thus he spoke; but he perceived by their muttering that the meeting had condemned his plan. Lentulus was superior to them all in keen sense of honour and generous indignation; and thus he spoke in terms befitting one who had just been consul: "Has the defeat of Pharsalia so utterly broken your spirit? Has a single day fixed the world's destiny? Is the mighty issue to be decided by the result of Pharsalia? Is all cure for our bleeding wound impossible? Plas Fortune left you no course, Magnus, save to fall at the Parthians' feet? Why do you fly from our world, and shun whole regions of earth and sky? why seek a heaven turned from ours and foreign stars, in order to worship Chaldaean fires with savage rites, and to serve Parthians? Why was the love of freedom put forward as the pretext of war? Why thus deceive a suffering world, if you can stoop to be a slave to any? The Parthian king heard your name and trembled when you were ruler of Rome, and saw you lead kings captive from the Hyrcanian forests and Indian shores; shall he now see you cast down by destiny, a beaten, broken man, and raise his mad ambition against the Roman world, measuring himself and Rome together by the prayers of Pompey? You will utter nothing worthy of your pride and past history; unskilled to communicate in the Latin tongue, he will require you, Magnus, to appeal to him by your tears. Must we endure this stain upon our honour, that Parthia shall forestall Rome in avenging Rome's own disaster in the West? Rome chose you surely as a leader for civil war only: why do you publish among the Scythian nations our mutual sufferings and disasters, of which they were ignorant? Why do you teach the Parthians to cross the Euphrates? Thus Rome loses the one mitigation of her great suffering — that she submits to no foreign ruler but owns a son of her own as master. Does it please you to march across the world against the walls of Rome, with savage nations at your back, and preceded by the standards taken together with the Crassi at the Euphrates? One king alone was absent from Pharsalia, while Fortune still concealed her preference; and will he now challenge the mighty strength of the conqueror when he hears tidings of his triumph? Will he now be willing to make common cause with you? Such self-reliance does not belong to that people. Every native of the Northern snows is vehement in war and courts death; but every step you go towards the East and the torrid zone, the people grow softer as the sky grows kinder. There one sees loose garments and flowing robes worn even by men. In the smiling land of Media, amid the plains of Sarmatia, and in the level lands that extend by the Tigris, the Parthian cannot be conquered by any foe, because he has room for flight; but, where earth rises in hills, he will never climb the rough mountain ridges, nor fight on through thick darkness when crippled by the failure of his bow, nor stem a river in fierce eddy by swimming; nor, when every limb is drenched in blood of battle, will he endure the long summer day beneath the stifling dust. They have no battering-rams and no war-engines of any kind, and no strength to level ditches; but any defence that can keep out an arrow will be a wall against pursuing Parthians. Their battle is a skirmish, they flee while fighting, their squadrons rove at large. Their soldiers are more swift to yield their own ground than to dislodge the foe from his. Their missiles are smeared with guile; their valour nowhere dares to face the enemy at close quarters, but only to draw the bow at a distance and suffer the winds to carry their weapons whither they will. Strength belongs to the sword, and every manly race uses cold steel to fight with. But the first hour of battle disarms the Parthians and bids them retreat with emptied quivers. All their reliance is on poison, and none on the strong hand. Do you count those as men, Magnus, who are not content to face the risk of battle with the steel alone? Is it worth your while to seek a shameful alliance, in order that you may die parted by the whole world from your country, that foreign earth may rest upon your bones, that a tomb may cover you, poor indeed and petty, but yet shameful while Crassus seeks burial in vain? But your lot is easier, since death, the utmost penalty, is not terrible to the brave. But death is not what Cornelia has to fear in the power of that infamous king. Are we ignorant of that barbarous lust, which in the blind fashion of beasts defiles the binding sanctities of marriage with a myriad wives, and in which the secrets of the infamous bridal-chamber are displayed in the presence of a thousand women? The king, maddened with feasting and wine, ventures on unions that no laws have ever specified; a single male is not exhausted by a whole night spent in the arms of so many concubines. Their own sisters lie on the couches of the kings, and, for all the sanctity of the relation, their own mothers. Thebes, the city of Oedipus, is condemned in the eyes of mankind by the gloomy legend of the crime which he committed unwittingly: how often an Arsaces is born from such a union to rule the Parthians I What can I consider unpermitted to one who permits himself to beget children by his mother? The noble daughter of Metellus will wait by the bed of the barbarian, one among a thousand wives. And yet, Magnus, the king's lust will be devoted to her more than to any other, for it will be heated by cruelty and by the fame of her husbands. For, to heighten the horrid pleasure of the Parthian, he will know that she was once the wife of Crassus also: as if long due to the doom of Carrhae, she will be carried off as a captive taken in the defeat of long ago. If the pitiful disaster which we suffered in the East rankles in your heart, you will blush, not only to beg help from the death-dealing king, but also to have made war on Romans before Parthians. What greater reproach will the world bring against you and Caesar than this — that, when you twa meet in conflict, vengeance for the Crassi has been forgotten? All our leaders should have made haste to Bactra; and, that every sword might be engaged, they should have left the northern frontier of the empire exposed to the Dacians and the hordes of the Rhine, until treacherous Susa and Babylon were laid in ruins over the tombs of their monarchs. We pray to Fortune that peace with Assyria may end; and if the civil war was settled by Pharsalia, let it be the conqueror who goes to Parthia. They are the one nation on earth whom I could rejoice to see Caesar triumph over. As soon as you cross the cold Araxes, will not the ghost of that sorrowing old man, riddled with Scythian arrows, hurl this reproach upon you? 'We unburied ghosts hoped that you would come after our death to avenge our ashes: do you come to make a treaty and a peace? 'Next, memorials of the defeat will crowd upon your sight — the walls, round which the headless bodies of our generals were dragged; the place where the Euphrates closed over such famous men, and the Tigris carried the Roman dead underground and then restored them to sight again. If you can pass through these scenes, Magnus, you can also sue to Caesar enthroned on the field of Pharsalia. Why not turn your eyes to the Roman world.'' If you fear faithless Juba and his realm that stretches far to the South, then Pharos and the land of Lagus is our goal. On the West Egypt is protected by the Libyan Syrtes; and on the North the rapid river with its seven channels drives back the sea; rich in its native wealth, the land has no need of foreign wares or of Heaven's rain, so great is her reliance upon the Nile alone. The sceptre which the boy Ptolemy holds he owes to you, Magnus; it was entrusted to your guardianship. Who would dread a mere empty name? His is the age of innocence; look not for friendship or loyalty or fear of God in a court where the king has long reigned; use robs kings of all shame; the subjects' yoke is lightest where their king is new." Lentulus said no more, but he turned all minds to his view. How free are desperate men to speak their minds! The policy of Magnus was outvoted.

Then they left Cilician soil and steered their vessels in haste for Cyprus — Cyprus which the goddess, mindful of the Paphian waves, prefers to any of her shrines (if we believe that deities have birth, or if it is lawful to hold that any of the gods had a beginning). When Pompey had left that shore, having sailed past the long line of cliffs with which Cyprus projects to the South, from there he sailed a fresh course along the cross-current of the open sea. Unable to make the tower whose light the seaman blesses in darkness, with difficulty he reached the furthest shore of Egypt with battling sail, where the largest branch of the divided Nile, one of seven rivers, runs out to the shoals of Pelusium. It was the season when Libra balances the hours of day and night in equal scales, and stays level for one day only; for the shortening day makes compensation to the winter nights for their loss in spring. When he learnt that the king was encamped on. Mount Casius, Pompey bent his course thither; the sun was not yet setting, nor the sails flagging.

By now a mounted watchman, galloping along the shore, had filled with the news of his arrival the frightened court. There was scarce time to deliberate; yet all the portentous figures of the Macedonian palace assembled. Among them was Acoreus, made mild by age and taught moderation by decrepitude. Idolatrous Memphis gave him birth — Memphis which measures the Nile when it rises to flood the fields; and during his priesthood more than one Apis had lived through the term assigned him by the Moon, his mistress. He spoke first at the council, dwelling on benefits received and loyalty and the sacred promises of the dead monarch's will. But there was one, more fit to counsel wicked kings and know their heart, and a Pothinus dared to sign the death-warrant of a Pompey. He said: "Ptolemy, the laws of God and man make many guilty: we praise loyalty, but it pays the price when it supports those whom Fortune crushes. Take the side of destiny and Heaven, and court the prosperous but shun the afflicted. Expediency is as far from the right as the stars from earth or fire from water. The power of kings is utterly destroyed, once they begin to weigh considerations of justice; and regard for virtue levels the strongholds of tyrants. It is boundless wickedness and unlimited slaughter that protect the unpopularity of a sovereign. If all your deeds are cruel, you will suffer for it the moment you cease from cruelty. If a man would be righteous, let him depart from a court. Virtue is incompatible with absolute power. He who is ashamed to commit cruelty must always fear it Let Magnus suffer for having despised your youth; he thinks you cannot repel even a beaten man from our coast. And, that a stranger may not rob us of the throne, remember that you have others nearer of kin; and, if your crown is uneasy, restore the Nile and Pharos to the sister you have condemned. Let us in any case protect Egypt from the arms of Rome. Whatever did not belong to Pompey during the war will not belong to Caesar either. Driven from all the world, with no reliance left upon his fortunes, he seeks a people to share his fall. He is dragged down by the ghosts of those who fell in civil war. It is not merely Caesar's sword that he flies from: he flies also from the face of the senators, of whom so many are now glutting the vultures of Thessaly; he fears the foreign nations, whom he forsook and left weltering in blood together; he dreads the kings, whose all he destroyed; guilty of Pharsalia and rejected by every country, he troubles our realm which he has not yet destroyed. But we, Ptolemy, can complain more justly of Pompey than he of us: why does he stain secluded and peace-loving Pharos with the guilt of war and bring down Caesar's displeasure on our land? Why when falling did he choose this country of all others to bring to it the curse of Pharsalia and the punishment which he alone should pay? Even now we have incurred guilt, which we cannot purge away except by using the sword. On his motion the Senate granted us the sovereignty of Egypt, and therefore we prayed for his victory. The sword, which destiny bids me bring forth, I did not intend for Pompey but for the loser, whichever he might be. I shall pierce your heart with it, Magnus; I had rather have slain Caesar; but we are borne by the current that carries the whole world away. Do you doubt whether must do you violence? I must, because may. What reliance upon our kingdom brings him hither, ill-fated man? Does he not see our unwarlike population, scarce able to till the fields softened by the falling Nile? We must take the measure of our kingdom and confess our weakness. Are you, Ptolemy, strong enough to prop the fall of Pompey — that fall beneath which Rome is crushed? Dare you disturb the pyre and ashes of Pharsalia,' and summon war to your own reahns? Before the battle of Pharsalia we took neither side: do we now adopt Pompey's cause when all the world is forsaking it? Do you now challenge the might and proved success of Caesar? To support the loser in adversity is right, but right only for those who have shared in his prosperity; no loyalty ever picked out the wretched as friends."

All gave their voices for the crime. The boy-king was pleased by a deference seldom shown him, when his servants suffered him to give orders for such a tragedy. Achillas was chosen to execute the crime, and manned a small boat with armed accomplices for the horrid deed, where the land of traitors juts out into the sands of Mount Casius, and the Egyptian shoals tell of the neighbouring Syrtes. Ye gods! Do the Nile and barbarous Memphis, and the effeminate people of Egyptian Canopus, aspire so high as this? Does the curse of the civil war weigh thus on all the world, and has Rome fallen so low? What room is there for Egypt in our tragedy, and what part for the sword of Egypt? Thus far at least civil war should keep faith: it should provide Roman hands to fall by and keep foreign fiends far away. If the mighty name of Magnus entitled him to be Caesar's guilt, do you, Ptolemy, not dread the crash of that great name? do you, foul mockery of a man, dare to thrust in your sacrilegious hands when heaven is thundering? If Pompey were not a worldconqueror, not one who had thrice driven in triumph to the Capitol; if he were not the ruler of kings, the champion of the Senate, and the son-inlaw of Caesar, — he would be at least a Roman, and that might have been enough for a king of Egypt; why do you probe a Roman heart with your sword, presumptuous boy? You do not realise your own position: already you wear the crown of Egypt with no right to it, because he who gave it to you has been overthrown by civil warfare. — Now Magnus had robbed the wind of his sails and was using oars to bring him to the accursed coast, when the murderous band came alongside to meet him in a little twooared boat. Pretending that he was welcome to the kingdom of Egypt, they invited him to step into their little craft from the stern of his tall vessel, blaming the scanty anchorage, and the surf of two seas that broke upon the shallows and hindered foreign ships from access to the land. But for the law of destiny, and but for the approach of a tragic end inflicted by decree of the eternal order, which were drawing Magnus to the shore under sentence of death — every one of his companions felt a presentiment of the murder; for, if there were genuine loyalty, if the palace were thrown open with true devotion to Magnus who conferred the royal power upon it, then the Egyptian monarch would have come with all his fleet. But Pompey yielded to destiny and obeyed when asked to leave his ships, and chose to die rather than betray fear. Cornelia hastened to enter the hostile craft, the less willing to be left behind by her husband when he disembarked because she feared disaster. But he said: "Stay behind rash wife, and you, my son, I pray; watch from afar what befalls me on shore, and use my head to test the loyalty of the king." But Cornelia, deaf to his refusal, wifdly stretched out both her hands: "Whither are you departing and cruelly leaving me behind? am I deserted a second time, I who was kept away from the horrors of Pharsalia? Ill-omened ever are our partings. You might, when you fled across the sea, have sailed straight on and left me in my hiding-place at Lesbos, if you intended to exclude me from every shore. Is my company displeasing to you except at sea.'" When she had poured forth this remonstrance in vain, yet in her agony she hung over the end of the ship, and panic fear prevented her either from turning her eyes away or from looking steadily at Magnus. The ships lay there at anchor, uneasy for the fortunes of their leader; they feared not murderous weapons, but that Pompey might bow with humble petitions before the sceptre his own hand had bestowed. As he prepared to step across, a Roman soldier hailed him from the Egyptian boat. This was Septimius, who — shame on the gods! — had laid down the pilum and carried the unworthy weapons of the king whose minion he was: a savage, wild, and cruel man, and bloodthirsty as any wild beast. Who would not have thought that Fortune showed mercy to mankind when she banished a sword so guilty far from Pharsalia, and when his hand took no part in the battle? No: she scatters her assassins, that murder of Roman by Roman may be wrought in every part of earth to please her. Disgrace to Caesar himself, a tale that will always bring reproach on Heaven — a Roman sword obeyed such a behest of the king, and the head of Magnus was cut off with his own sword by the Macedonian boy. With what infamy will posterity hand the name of Septimius down to future ages? What name will those who called the deed of Brutus a sin apply to this crime? — Now the limit of his last hour had come; he was borne off in the Egyptian boat and had already lost the power of free action. Next, the king's assassins begin to bare the steel. When Pompey saw the blades come close, he covered his face and head, disdaining to expose them bare to the stroke of doom; then he closed tight his eyes and held his breath, that he might have no power of utterance and might not mar his immortal glory by tears. But when murderous Achillas had driven the point through his side, he did not acknowledge the blow by any cry or take heed of the horror, but remained motionless, and tested his strength in the hour of death; and these thoughts passed through his mind: "Future ages, that will never forget the tragedy of Rome, are watching now, and from every quarter of the world time coming gazes at this boat and the treachery of Egypt; think now of fame. Through a long life the tide of your success never slackened; men do not know, unless you prove it by your death, whether you were able to endure adver sity. Sink not beneath the shame, nor resent the instrument of doom: whatever the hand that slays you, believe it to be the hand of your kinsman. Though men scatter and mutilate my limbs, nevertheless, ye gods, I am a fortunate man, and of this no god can deprive me. For life brings change to prosperity, but death can make no man wretched. Cornelia and my son see this murder done; therefore I call on my resentment to stifle its complaints all the more steadfastly; my wife and son love me dead the more, if my death win their admiration." Such control had Magnus over his thoughts, such mastery over his mind, when he was dying.

But Cornelia, less patient to behold that cruel outrage than to endure it herself, filled the air with pitiful cries: "Dear husband, I am guilty of your death: your fatal delay was caused by the remoteness of Lesbos, and Caesar has reached the shore of Egypt before you; none else could have power to command this crime. But whoever you are who have been sent by Heaven against that life, whether serving the anger of Caesar or your own, you know not, ruthless man, where the very heart of Magnus lies; in haste you shower your blows where he, in his defeat, welcomes them. Let him pay a penalty not less than death by seeing my head fall first. I am not blameless in respect of the war; for I was the only matron who followed him on sea and in camp; I was deterred by no disasters, but harboured him in defeat, which even kings were afraid to do. And is this my reward from my husband, to be left behind in the safety of the ship? Would you spare me, faithless husband. Did I deserve to live when you went to your death? I shall die, nor owe it to King Ptolemy. Suffer me, ye sailors, either to leap headlong, or to fit a noose of twisted rope round my neck; or let some friend of Pompey prove worthy of Pompey by driving home his sword in my body He may do it for Pompey's sake and yet claim it as a service to Caesar's cause. Cruel men, do you check my haste to die? Though you, my husband, are still alive, Cornelia has already ceased to be free: they forbid me to summon death, and I am kept alive for Caesar." Thus she spoke, and was carried away, swooning, in friendly arms, while the ship made haste to fly.

But those who saw the severed head of Magnus admit that, when the steel clashed on his back and breast, the majestic beauty of those sacred features, and the face that frowned at Heaven, suffered no change; and that the utmost death could do made no alteration in the bearing and countenance of the hero. The head was severed; for savage Septimius, in the very doing of his crime, devised a crime still worse. He slit the covering and unveiled the sacred features of the dying man; he seized the still breathing head and laid the drooping neck across a thwart. Next, he severed the muscles and veins and hacked long at the knotted bones; it was not yet a knack to send a head spinning with a sword-cut. But when the neck was severed and parted from the body, the Egyptian minion claims this privilege — to carry it in his right hand. A Roman soldier sinks so low as to take a second part: he cuts off the sacred head of Pompey with his cursed sword in order that another may carry it! What a depth of ignominy was his! That the sacrilegious boy might recognise Magnus, those manly locks that kings revered and the hair that graced his noble brow were gripped by the hand; and, while the features still showed life and the sobbing breath drove sound through the lips, and the stark eyes stiffened, the head was stuck on an Egyptian pike — that head, whose call to war ever banished peace; the head, which swayed the Senate, the Campus, and the Rostrum; that was the face which the Fortune of Rome was proud to wear. The sight of it was not enough for the infamous king: he wislied proof of his guilt to remain. Thereupon, by their hideous art the blood was drained from the head, the brain torn out, and the skin dried; the corrupting moisture was drawn out from the inmost parts, and the features were hardened by the infusion of drugs.

Last scion of the line of Lagus, doomed and degenerate king; who must surrender your crown to your incestuous sister, though you preserve the Macedonian in consecrated vault and the ashes of the Pharaohs rest beneath a mountain of masonry, though the dead Ptolemies and their unworthy dynasty are covered by pyramids and mausoleums too good for them, Pompey is battered on the shore, and his headless body is tossed hither and thither in the shallows. Was it so troublesome a task to keep the whole body for his kinsman to see.' So true to her bargain, did Fortune continue to the end the prosperity of Magnus; so true to her bargain, she summoned him at his death from his pinnacle of glory, and ruthlessly made him pay in a single day for all the disasters from which she protected hnn for many years; and Pompey was the only man who never experienced good and evil together: his prosperity no god disturbed, and on his misery no god had mercy. Fortune held her hand for long and then overthrew him with one blow. He is tossed on the sands and mangled on the rocks, while his wounds drink in the wave; he is the plaything of Ocean, and, when all shape is lost, the one mark to identify Magnus is the absence of the severed head.

But before Caesar could reach the sands of Egypt, Fortune devised a hasty burial for Pompey, that he might not lack a tomb, or that he might not have a better. In fear and haste Cordus came down from his hiding-place to the sea; as quaestor he had made the ill-starred voyage with Magnus from the Icarian shore of Cyprus, where Cinyras once reigned. Under cover of darkness he dared to come, and forced his fear, mastered by duty, to seek the body amid the waves, and draw it to land and drag Magnus to the shore. A sad moon shed but scanty light through thick clouds; but the headless body was visible by its different colour in the foaming waves. He grasped his leader tight against the snatching of the sea; then, unequal to that mighty burden, he waited for a wave and then pushed on the body with the sea to help him. When it came to rest above the water-line, he cast himself upon Magnus, pouring tears into every wound; and thus he addressed Heaven and the dim stars: "No costly pyre with heaped -up incense does your favourite, Pompey, ask of you. Fortune; he does not ask that the rich smoke should carry to the stars Eastern perfumes from his limbs; that devoted Romans should bear on their shoulders the dear father of his country; that the funeral procession should display his former trophies; that the Forum should be filled with mournful music; or that a whole army, with dropped arms, should march mourning round the burning pile. But grant to Magnus the paltry bier of a pauper's burial, to let down the mutilated body on the unfed fires; let not the hapless corpse lack wood or a mean hand to kindle it. Be content with this, ye gods, that Cornelia does not lie prostrate with dishevelled hair — does not embrace her husband and bid the torch be applied; that his unhappy wife, though still not far distant from the shore, is not here to pay her last tribute to the dead." When the youth had spoken thus, he saw at a distance a feeble fire that was burning a corpse uncared for and unguarded. Thence he took fire in haste and drew the charred logs from beneath the body." Whoever you are," he said, "uncared for and unloved by any of your kin, but yet more fortunate after death than Pompey, pardon the stranger hand that robs your pyre once laid. If aught of feeling survives death, you willingly resign your pyre and permit this robbery of your grave; and you are ashamed, when the body of Pompey is divided, to find cremation yourself." Thus he spoke, and having filled his lap with the burning embers he flew back to the body, which, as it hung upon the shore, had nearly been carried back by a wave. He scraped away the surface of the sand, and hastily laid in a narrow trench the pieces of a broken boat which he had gathered at a distance. No wood supports that famous corpse, on no pile are the limbs laid; the fire that receives Magnus is not laid beneath him but beside him. Sitting near the fire, Cordus said: "Mighty captain and unequalled glory of the Roman people, if this pyre is more distressful to you than to be tossed by the sea, or than no burial at all, then turn away your spirit and your mighty ghost from the service I render; the wrong of Fate makes this right; that no sea monster or beast or bird or wrath of cruel Caesar may make bold, accept all that is possible for you — this scanty flame; a Roman hand has kindled your corpse. If Fortune grant us a return to Italy, not here will these sacred ashes rest; but Cornelia will recover you, Magnus, and will transfer them from my hand to an urn. Meanwhile, let me mark the place on the shore with a small stone to be a token of your grave; if any man haply desires to make atonement to your spirit and give you your due of funeral honours, let him find the ashes of the body, and recognise the strand to which he must restore your head." Having spoken thus, he brightens the feeble flame with a fresh supply of fuel. Slowly the body of Magnus is consumed and melts into the fire, feeding the flame with the dissolving flesh. But by now the daylight which precedes the dawn had smitten the stars; and he broke off the rites and sought in terror his hiding-place upon the shore. What punishment do you dread, poor fool, for your crime, because of which the voice of Fame has made you welcome for all time to come? His unnatural kinsman will approve the burial of Pompey's bones. Nay go, secure of pardon, confess that you buried him, and demand the head. — Duty compels him to complete his service. He snatched the charred bones not yet entirely parted from the muscles, and quenched them, full of the scorched marrow, with sea water; then he piled them together and hid them beneath a handful of earth. Next, lest a light breeze should bare and scatter the ashes, he planted a stone in the sand; and that no sailor might disturb the tomb by mooring his bark there, he used a charred stick to write the sacred name upon it: "Here Magnus lies." Is it the will of Fortune to call this the grave of Pompey— this grave which Caesar preferred for his son-in-law to no burial at all? Rash hand, why do you thrust a tomb on Magnus, and imprison the spirit that roams free? His burial-place extends as far as the most distant land that floats on the circling stream of Ocean; the Roman name and all the Roman empire are the limit of Pompey's grave. Away with that stone, eloquent in reproach of Heaven! If all Oeta belongs to Hercules, and the hills of Nysa own no lord but Bacchus alone, why is there but a single stone in Egypt for Magnus? He can fill all the kingdom of Lagus, if his name were fixed upon no grave. Then mankind would be in doubt, and, from fear to tread on the ashes of Magnus, we should avoid altogether the sands of Nile. But, if you think the stone worthy of that sacred name, then add his great achievements and the records of his mighty deeds; add the rising of fierce Lepidus and the Alpine war; the victory over Sertorius, when the consul was recalled, and the triumph which he celebrated while yet a knight;. write of commerce made safe for all nations, and of the Cilicians scared from the sea. Tell how he subdued the barbarian world, and nomad peoples, and all the rulers of East and North. Say that ever after war he donned again the citizen's gown, and that, content with three triumphal pageants, he excused his country many triumphs. What tomb has room for all this? There rises a pitiful gravestone, rich with no records or long roll of offices; and the name of Pompey, which men were wont to read upon lofty temples of the gods and upon arches reared with spoils of our foes, — that name is little raised above the lowly sand and set so low upon the grave that a stranger must stoop to read it, and a visitor from Rome would pass it by if it were not pointed out.

O land of Egypt, guilty of the destinies of civil war, with good reason did the Sibyl of Cumae warn us in her verse, that no Roman soldier should visit the mouths of the Nile in Eorypt, and those banks which the summer floods. What curse can I invoke upon that ruthless land in reward for so great a crime? May Nile reverse his waters and be stayed in the region where he rises; may the barren fields crave winter rains; and may all the soil break up into the crumbling sands of Ethiopia. Though we have admitted to Roman temples your Isis and your dogs half divine, the rattle which bids the worshipper wail, and the Osiris whom you prove to be mortal by mourning for him, yet you, Egypt, keep our dead a prisoner in your dust. Rome too, though she has already given a temple to the cruel tyrant, has not yet claimed the ashes of Pompey, and his ghost still lies in exile. If the first generation dreaded Caesar's threats, now at least let her welcome the bones of her beloved Magnus, if they still remain in that hated land and are not yet washed away by the sea. Who will fear to trouble the tomb, and dread to remove the dead so worthy of worship? Oh, that Rome would bid me do this wrong, and deign to make use of my arms! Happy, too happy, should I be, if it were mine to unearth the remains and convey them to Italy, and to violate a tomb so unworthy of them. Perhaps, when Rome shall pray from Heaven a cure for barren fields or pestilential winds or excessive heats or earthquake, then, at the advice and bidding of the gods, you will pass, Magnus, to your loved city, and the chief Pontiff will bear your ashes. Even now, if any man travels to Syene, parched by flaming Cancer, and to Thebes, unwetted even under the rain-bearing Pleiads, in order to behold the Nile; if any man seeks the quiet waters of the Red Sea or the ports of Arabia to traffic in Eastern wares — that gravestone, and those ashes, perhaps disturbed and lying on the surface of the sand, will call him aside to worship, and bid him appease the spirit of Magnus, and give it the preference over Casian Jupiter. That grave will never mar his fame; the dead would be less precious if buried in temples and gold. Fortune, lying in this tomb, is now at last a supreme deity; prouder than all Caesar's altars is the sea-beaten stone on the shore of Africa. Many, who deny to the deities of the Capitol the incense which is their due, worship the thunderbolt fenced in by the augur's turf. One day it will prove a gain that no lofty pile of massive marble was raised here to last for ever. For a short space of time will scatter the little heap of dust; the grave will fall in; and all proof of Pompey's death will be lost. A happier age will come, when those who point out that stone will be disbelieved, and perhaps our descendants will consider Egypt as false in her tale of Pompey's tomb as Crete when she claims the tomb of Jupiter.