Book X

As soon as Caesar, following Pompey's head, reached land and trod those fatal sands, his fortune and the destiny of guilty Egypt contended whether the realm of Lagus should be conquered by Roman arms, or the Memphian sword should rid the world of the victor's head as well as of the loser's. The shade of Magnus did service; his ghost snatched his kinsman from the sword, that the Roman people might not, even after the death of Pompey, love the Nile. Thence free from care Caesar moved to the Egyptian capital, which was bound to his cause by the pledge of such a ruthless crime. But from the rage of the populace, who bore it ill that Roman rods and laws should invade their own, he learned that feeling was divided and allegiance wavering, and that not for his gain had Magnus fallen. Then undaunted, with looks that ever masked his fears, he visited the temples of the gods, and the ancient shrines of divinity which attest the former might of Macedonia. No thing of beauty attracted him, neither the gold and ornaments of the gods, nor the city walls; but in eager haste he went down into the vault hewn out for a tomb. There lies the mad son of Macedonian Philip, that fortunate ireebooter, cut off by a death that avenged the world. The limbs that should have been scattered over the whole earth they laid in a hallowed shrine; Fortune spared his dead body, and the destiny of his reign endured to the last. For if Freedom had ever made men their own masters again, his body would have been preserved for mockery — a man who was born to teach this bad lesson to the world, that so many lands may obey one lord. He left his own obscure realm of Macedonia; he spurned Athens which his father had conquered; driven by the impulse of destiny, he rushed through the peoples of Asia, mowing down mankind; he drove his sword home in the breast of every nation; he defiled distant rivers, the Euphrates and the Ganges, with Persian and Indian blood; he was a pestilence to earth, a thunderbolt that struck all peoples alike, a comet of disaster to mankind. He was preparing to launch his fleets on the Ocean by way of the outer sea. No obstacle to him was heat, or sea, or barren Libya, or the Syrtes, or the desert. Following the curve of the earth, he would have marched round to the West, and gone beyond both the poles, and drunk of the Nile at its source. But Death stood in his way, and Nature alone was able to bring his mad reign to this end: the power, by which he had seized the whole world, he carried away with him in his jealousy, and left no successor to inherit all his greatness, but exposed the nations to be torn asunder. He died, however, in Babylon he had conquered; and the Parthian feared him. Shame is it that the peoples of the East shrank more from contact with the phalanx than they shrink now from contact with the legion. Though Roman rule extends to the North and the home of the West wind, though we oppress the lands that lie behind the burning South wind, yet in the East we shall yield precedence to the lord of the Parthians. Parthia, that brought doom on the Crassij was a mere peaceful province of little Pella.

And now the boy-king came from the Pelusian mouth of the Nile and allayed the discontent of his unwarlike people; and, with him as a hostage for peace, Caesar was safe in the Macedonian court. But then Cleopatra, having bribed the guards to undo the chain across the harbour of Pharos, sailed in a small two-banked ship and entered the Macedonian palace without Caesar's knowledge — Cleopatra, the shame of Egypt, the fatal Fury of Latium, whose unchastity cost Rome dear. As the dangerous beauty of the Spartan queen overthrew Argos and Troy town, in like measure Cleopatra fanned the frenzy of Italy. Her rattle terrified the Capitol — can such things be? — she hurled unwarlike Canopus against Roman warriors, hoping to head an Egyptian triumph and lead a Caesar captive; and by the waters of Leucas it was a question whether the world should be ruled by a woman who was not even a Roman. Her insolence was due to that night which first brought the wanton daughter of the Ptolemies to the arms of a Roman general. Who can refuse pardon to the infatuation of Antony, when even the stubborn heart of Caesar took fire.' Even in the midst of his rage and fury, in that palace haunted by Pompey's ghost, while yet drenched with the blood of Pharsalia, he suffered adulterous love to mingle with his anxieties, and combined with war unlawful wedlock and spurious offspring. Shame on him! Forgetting Pompey, he gave Julia brothers by an abominable mother; he suffered the defeated party to rally in the remote realms of Libya; and he spent his time upon a shameful intrigue in Egypt, because he would rather give the country to another than conquer it for himself. Trusting in her beauty, Cleopatra approached him, in sorrow but not in tears: she had decked out her feigned grief, and her hair, as far as became her, was disordered, as if she had torn it; and thus she began: "Mighty Caesar, if birth counts for aught, I am the noble daughter of Lagus, king of Egypt; but I have been driven from my father's throne and shall be an exile for ever, unless your right hand restores me to my former destiny; and therefore I, a queen, embrace your feet. Appear as a benign star and assist our nation. I shall not be the first woman to rule the cities of the Nile: Egypt is accustomed to put up with a queen and make no distinction of sex. Read the last words of my dead father: he gave me an equal share of the royal power with my brother, and married me to him. The boy himself loves his sister, if only he were free; but his feelings and his soldiers are alike controlled by Pothinus. I do not myself ask to be admitted to any share of my father's power; I beg you only to free our house from such guilt and shame; destroy the dangerous strength of the favourite, and bid the king be a king indeed. What pride the menial cherislies in his heart! Having severed the head of Magnus, he now threatens you; but may fate turn this danger far from you I It was indignity enough for you, Caesar, and for mankind, that a Pothinus gained credit for the murder of a Pompey."

Vain would have been lier appeal to the stern ear of Caesar; but her face supported her petition, and her wicked beauty gained lier suit. Her judge was bribed, and slie spent the whole night in infamy. When Caesar's favour was gained and bought by mighty gifts, so joyful an event was followed by a feast; great was the bustle, as Cleopatra displayed her magnificence — magnificence which Roman society had not yet adopted. The place itself was the size of a temple, such a temple as a corrupt age would hardly rear; the panels of the ceiling displayed wealth, and the rafters were hidden beneath a thick coating of gold. The walls shone with marble; nor were they merely overlaid with a thin surface of it; and agate stood there on its own account, no useless ornament, and porphyry. Alabaster was laid all over the hall to tread on; and the ebony of Meroe, no mere covering for the great doors, took the place of common wood — a support and no mere decoration of the dwelling. Ivory clothed the entrance-hall; and Indian tortoise-shell, artificially coloured, was inlaid upon the doors, and its spots were adorned with many an emerald. Jewels glittered on the couches; the cups, tawny with jasper, loaded the tables, and the sofas were bright with coverlets of divers colours — most had long been steeped in Tyrian dye and took their hue from repeated soakings, while others were embroidered with bright gold, and others blazed with scarlet, as the Egyptian manner is of mingling leashes' in the web. There was also a swarm of attendants, and a multitude to serve the banqueters, differing from one another in race or age. Some had the hair of Africa, and others were so fair-headed that Caesar said he had never seen hair so red in the Rhine country; some had dark skins and woolly heads, with hair receding from the forehead. There too were hapless boys who had lost their manhood by the knife; and opposite them stood youths, whose cheeks, in spite of their age, were scarce darkened by any down.

There the sovereigns sat down, and with them Caesar, greater than they. Cleopatra, not content with a crown of her own and her brother for husband, was there, with her baleful beauty painted up beyond all measure: covered with the spoils of the Red Sea, carried a fortune round her neck and in her hair, and was weighed down by her ornaments. Her white breasts were revealed by the fabric of Sidon, which, close-woven by the shuttle of the Seres, the Egyptian needleworker pulls out, and loosens the thread by stretching the stuff. Then they placed upon snowy tusks round tables cut in Moorish forests, such tables as Caesar did not see even after he conquered Juba. What blindness, what madness for display, to reveal their wealth to the general in a civil war, and to kindle the avarice of a guest in arms! Even if it were not Caesar, in his impious warfare greedy to get wealth by the havoc of a world — place here the ancient leaders whose names adorn an age of poverty, a Fabricius and stern Curius; or let the consul, summoned unwashed from his plough in Etruria, take his place at this table, and he will pray to celebrate for his country a triumph as splendid.

They served on gold a banquet of every dainty that earth or air, the sea or the Nile affords, all that extravagance, unspurred by hunger and maddened by idle love of display, has sought out over all the earth. Many birds and beasts were served that are divine in Egypt; crystal ewers supplied Nile water for their hands; the wine was poured into great jewelled goblets — no wine of Egyptian grapes, but generous Falernian, to which Meroe brings ripeness in a few years forcing its stubborn nature to ferment. They put on wreaths, twined of blooming nard and ever-flowering roses; they drenched their hair with cinnamon, which had not yet grown faint from foreign air nor lost the scent it had at home, and with cardamom, plucked not far away and freshly imported. Caesar learns to squander the wealth of a plundered world; he is ashamed to have made war against one so poor as Pompey, and desires a pretext for war with the Egyptians.

When sated enjoyment set a limit to feasting and wine, Caesar began to prolong the night with discourse long drawn out; and thus he accosted in friendly speech aged Acoreus, who lay, dressed in his linen robe, upon the highest seat." Sir, devoted as you are to the service of heaven, and, as your age proves, not unprotected by the gods, expound to me the origins of the Egyptian nation, the features of the land, the manners of the common people, your forms of worship, and the shapes of your gods; reveal all that is engraved upon your ancient shrines, and disclose your gods who are willing that they should be known. If your ancestors taught their religion to Plato the Athenian, was ever guest of yours more worthy than I to hear these things, was ever a mind more able to contain the world's secrets? It is true that the report concerning my kinsman brought me to your cities; but your fame attracted me too: in the midst of war I ever found time to study the world above us and the starry and celestial zones; and the Julian year shall not be outdone by the calendar of Eudoxus. But, though such intellectual vigour and love of truth flourish in my breast, yet there is nothing I would rather learn than the causes, concealed through such long ages, that account for the Nile, and the secret of its source. Give me an assured hope to set eyes on the springs of the river, and I will abandon civil war." He ended his speech, and thus the holy priest, Acoreus, began his reply:

"To me, Caesar, it is permitted to disclose the secrets of our great ancestors — secrets hitherto unknown to the herd. Let others think it pious to conceal such great marvels; but I believe it the will of heaven that this fabric of theirs should be published abroad and that all mankind should learn their sacred laws. The primal ordinance of the universe assigned different powers to those stars which alone rule the rapid movement of the sky, and move in opposition to the heavens. The sun divides time into periods, and changes day for night; and the power of his rays forbids the planets to go forward, and delays their wanderings with stationary periods. The changes of the moon bring sea and land in contact. To Saturn has been assigned freezing ice in the snowy zone; Mars is lord of the winds and of thunder that has no fixed season; under the rule of Jupiter is temperate climate and air that is always bright; fruitful Venus is mistress of the seeds of all things that exist; and Mercury controls the vast element of water. When Mercury has reached that part of the sky where Leo and Cancer are in contact, where Sirius blazes forth and where lies the circle which changes the year and contains Capricorn and Cancer, whereunder are the hidden founts of the Nile; and when the ruler of the element of water has shone down vertically on these — then the source of the river is opened, and, as the Ocean is lifted up by the waxing moon, so the Nile answers the bidding, and does not narrow his flood again until night has got back from day the hours it lost in summer.

"The ancients erred when they believed that the Nile is helped to overflow the fields by the snows in Ethiopia. For there is no North star nor North wind in those mountains. The mere colour of the Ethiopians, who are blackened by the sun, and their hot scorching winds, may convince you of this. Moreover, every river-head which is set running by the melting of ice begins to rise at the coming of spring, when the snow first thaws; but the Nile does not arouse its water before the shining of the Dogstar, nor confine its stream within the banks until the day becomes equal to the night, with Libra as arbitress. Hence also the Nile knows not the laws that govern other rivers: it does not rise in winter, when the sun is far away and the waters have no function to discharge; but, having orders to mitigate an oppressive climate, he issues forth in the torrid zone at midsummer; and, in order that fire may not dissolve the earth, Nile comes to help the world, rising against the burning mouth of Leo, and answering the prayer of Syene, when its lord. Cancer, is consuming it; nor does he free the plains from his waters, until the sun slopes down towards autumn and Meroe casts a shadow. Who can explain the reasons? Mother Nature ordained that the Nile should overflow thus, and the world requires that so it should be. — The ancients were wrong again, when they accounted for this inundation by West winds which blow day after day at a fixed season, and whose empire over the air lasts long. These winds were supposed to work in one of two ways: either they drive the clouds down from the western sky across the South and force the rain to descend on the Nile; or else, when the river breaks the shore with so many mouths, they strike it and bring it to a halt by the steady pressure of the sea; and thus the stream overflows the fields, because its course is hindered and a barrier interposed by the sea. Some think that there are air-passages in the earth, and great fissures in its hollow frame. In these, far below the surface, water travels and moves to and fro invisibly, and is summoned from the cold North to the Equator, whenever the sun is directly above Meroe and the parched earth attracts water thither; the (janges and the Po are thus conveyed through a hidden region of the world; and then the Nile, discharging all rivers from a single source, carries them by many mouths to the sea. There is a tale that the Nile bursts forth from the distant flood of Ocean which bounds every land, and that the brine grows fresh owing to the long distance it travels. Further, we believe that the sun and sky are fed by the Ocean; the sun, when he has reached the claws of fiery Cancer, sucks up the Ocean, and more water is raised than the air can digest; and this overplus the nights repay and pour down upon the Nile. But I myself, if I have the right to decide so great a dispute, hold this opinion, Caesar: certain waters, long after the world was created, burst forth in consequence of earthquakes, with no special purpose on the part of the deity; but certain others, at the very formation of the world, had their beginning along with the universe; and the latter the creator and artificer of all things restrains under a law of their own.

"Your desire, Roman, to explore the Nile was felt by the kings of Egypt and Persia and Macedon; and every generation has wished to enrich posterity with this knowledge, but has been defeated up till now by its native power of concealment. Alexander, greatest of kings, was jealous of the Nile which Memphis worships, and he sent chosen explorers through the utmost parts of Ethiopia; but they were stopped by the blazing zone of parched sky; they but saw the Nile steaming with heat. Sesostris made his way to the West and to the limits of the world, and drove his Egyptian chariot with kings under the yoke; but he drank of your rivers, the Rhone and the Po, before he drank from the sources of the Nile. The madman Cambyses penetrated the East as far as the land of the long-lived people; food ran short, and he had to feed on his own men; but he returned with no knowledge of the Nile. Even lying legend has not ventured to tell of its sources. Wherever the river is seen, it is a puzzle to men; and no nation can boast that it takes pride in the Nile as its own possession. But will expound its course, in so far as the deity who conceals its stream has granted me knowledge of it. — The Nile rises at the Equator, boldly raising his channel in the face of burning Cancer; and his waters proceed due North towards the centre of Bootes; yet his current bends and twists towards West and East, at one time favouring the peoples of Arabia, at another the sands of Libya. The first nation to behold him are the Seres, but they also have no certain knowledge of him; with foreign waters he strikes the plains of the Ethiopians, and the globe knows not to whom it is indebted for him. Nature has revealed to none his hidden source, nor has it been permitted to mankind to see the stripling Nile; she has concealed his hiding-places, preferring that the nations should marvel at them rather than know them. He is privileged to rise at midsummer, to be flooded by a winter out of season, and to bring with him a rainy season of his own; and he alone is permitted to stray through both hemispheres. In one hemisphere his source is unknown, in the other his final goal. His waters part widely to surround Meroe — Meroe fertile for the black race that till her soil, and rich in the foliage of the ebony-tree; but, though she has leaves on many a tree, she has no shade to temper the summer heat, because a line drawn from that spot to the sky strikes Leo vertically. Next he moves past the realm of Phoebus with no loss of volume, and long traverses barren sands, at one time with all his wealth of water gathered into a single stream, at another straying from his course and scattering the bank that readily gives way to his pressure. Then once more his many separate streams are recalled by the sluggish channel where Philae, the gate of the Egyptian kingdom, divides the fields of Egypt from the peoples of Arabia. Later, as he cleaves the desert where commerce unites our sea with the Red Sea, a gentle flow leads him on. Who could believe that the river which here runs so smoothly could ever rouse the whole fury of his turbulent stream? Yet, when his flow comes to a broken channel and headlong cataracts, and when he resents that any cliffs should bar the stream that found free passage everywhere, then he challenges the stars with his spray, the region roars with his waves, the cliff rumbles loudly, and the river whitens with foam under the constraint of his flood. Next comes the island which our hallowed tradition calls Abatos; it is smitten first and first feels the uproar. Here too are the rocks which are commonly called the springs of the river, because they give the first clear indication when the water begins to rise. From this point Nature has surrounded the wandering stream with mountains, which rob Libya of the Nile; and between the mountains the river flows, tamed now and silent, through a deep valley. Memphis first offers plains and open country for it to spread over, and forbids the channel to set a limit to its expansion."

Thus midnight went by, and they spent the time without fear, as if in peace and safety. But the frenzied bosom of Pothinus, once stained with sacrilegious murder, was never again free from guilty excitement: after the slaughter of Magnus he no longer counts any deed a crime; his breast is haunted by the ghost of his victim, and the avenging goddesses madden him to commit fresh horrors. Once again he aspires to shed blood by base-born hands — that blood with which Fortune intended to drench the defeated Senators; and the vengeance of the Senate, that penalty for civil war, was almost permitted to a menial hand. Ye destinies, banish far this wrong, that Caesar's head should fall and Brutus not be there! Thus the punishment of the Roman tyrant goes to swell the guilt of Egypt, and the warning is lost. With boldness Pothinus lays a plot doomed to failure: not trying to entrust the murder to secret guile, he attacks the unconquered leader with open war. His evil deeds emboldened him to decree that Caesar's head should be struck off, and that the fate of Magnus should be shared by his father-in-law; and he bade his faithful henchmen carry this message to Achillas, his partner in Pompey's murder. The unwarlike boy-king, reserving no authority for himself, had set Achillas over all his forces, and given him the sword to use against all, the king himself included." Is this the time," said Pothinus, "to lie soft upon your bed and sleep sound and long, when Cleopatra has seized the palace, and Egypt has been not merely betrayed but given away. Do you alone hang back, when all others hasten to the bed of the princess? The wicked sister is marrying her brother — the Roman general she has married already; hastening from one husband to another, she possesses Egypt and is playing the harlot for Rome. She was able to conquer the older man's heart by drugs; if you put your trust in the boy, I pity you. If a single night brings them together, if he once submits to her embraces with incestuous heart and drinks in unlawful passion on pretence of natural affection, then he will grant her your head and mine, each perhaps in return for a kiss. We shall pay the penalty on the gallows or at the stake, if she prove beautiful in her brother's sight. No refuge remains for us in any quarter: the royal husband threatens us on one side, and the paramour Caesar on the other. And indeed, to confess the truth, guilty we are at the bar of so cruel a judge; Cleopatra considers every man of us guilty, if he has not defiled her. By the crime which we committed together and committed in vain, by our alliance sealed with the blood of Magnus, I charge you to come forward; stir up war with sudden uproar, attack with speed. While it is night, let us break off marriage by death and slay our cruel mistress in her very bed, be her bedfellow who he may. Nor should we be frightened from the attempt by the lucky star which has lifted up the Roman general and set him over the world: we share his distinction, and the death of Magnus exalts us also. Look at yonder shore, which gives us confidence for evil; ask the bloodstained sea what power we have; look at Pompey's grave, made out of a handful of dust and not covering all his body. The man you dread was Pompey's peer. Our blood is not noble — what matters that? — and we do not control kingdoms or the power of nations; but for crime fate has given us immense capacity. Fortune draws these great men within our grasp; see! another and a nobler victim is here. By a second murder let us make our peace with the Western nation: to take Caesar's life can do me this service — the Roman people will love those who are guilty of Pompey's murder. Why dread we the great name of Caesar, and his army? Now that he has left it behind, we shall find him only a soldier like other soldiers. This night shall end the civil war; it shall make funeral offerings for mankind, and send down to the shades that head which the world still claims as its due. Go forth, all of you, bravely against Caesar's life; let the Egyptian soldiers thus serve their king, and let the Romans serve themselves. Lose no time, Achillas. You will find him sated with feasting, drunken with wine, and ripe for amorous dalliance; be bold, and Heaven will vouchsafe to you what a Cato and a Brutus have so often prayed for." Achillas was not slow to obey the call to crime. He gave the order, but without the customary noise, for the soldiers to march, and no blare of the trumpet betrayed the movement; in haste he assembled all the equipment of cruel war. Most of the men belonged to the populace of Rome; but they were degenerate and denationalised, and such forgetfulness had mastered their minds, that those who should have scouted the command of an Egyptian king served under his slave and at the bidding of a henchman. Men who follow the camp have no loyalty, no sense of duty: their swords are for sale; the cause that offers immediate reward is the good cause; serving for scanty pay, they attack Caesar's life to gratify others. Oh, law divine! Where does the hapless destiny of our empire fail to find civil war.'' Kept away from Pharsalia, the soldiers are distracted on the banks of the Nile with the frenzy of their nation. What more could the house of Lagus have dared, if it had harboured Magnus.'' The truth is that every hand pays its debt to the gods, and no Roman is permitted by them to stand idle. It has pleased the gods to split up thus the body of Rome: the great nations are not divided in favour of Caesar or his son-in-law; but a mere henchman has stirred up civil war, and Achillas has usurped the part of a Roman; and, unless fate averts their hands from Caesar's blood, their side will win. Each of the pair was quickly on the spot; the palace, busied with the banquet, was open to every treachery; and it was possible that the blood of Caesar might be shed over the king's drinking-cups, and his head fall upon the table. But the conspirators feared the haste and confusion of war by night; bloodshed, carried on with disorder and left to chance, might take off Ptolemy as well. Such was their reliance on their swords, that they did not hurry on the crime; they despised the easiness of their great design; to let slip that chance of slaying Caesar seemed to these slaves a loss they could soon make good. So he was spared, to suffer in the light of day; a single night was granted him; and Caesar, thanks to Pothinus, gained a respite from death till sunrise.

The morning-star looked forth from Mount Casius and sent the daylight over Egypt, where even sunrise is hot; and then, at a distance from the walls, an army was seen — not stragglers with disorderly ranks, but such a force as marches with level front against a foe worthy of their steel: on they charge, ready to endure and to wage close combat. Caesar, on his part, distrusted the city walls and defended himself by closing the gates of the palace, thus submitting to an unworthy hiding-place. Hemmed in as he was, the whole palace was not at his disposal: he had gathered his forces in one corner of it. His pride was touched by rage and fear — fear of attack, and wrath at his own fear. Thus some noble beast, penned in a narrow cage, roars and bites the bars till he breaks his furious teeth; and even so, if any hand were to seal up the summit of Etna, the fire of Vulcan would rage in the craters of Sicily. Not long ago, beneath the height of Mount Haemus in Thessaly, Caesar had boldly defied all the magnates of Rome, and the Senate in battle array under the leadership of Pompey; and, though the badness of his cause was adverse to his hopes, yet he was sanguine of undeserved success. But now he dreaded the wickedness of slaves, and crouched within walls while missiles rained upon him. Alanians, or Scythians, or Moors who mock the stranger by fixing him as a target for their arrows would have done Caesar no harm; yet he, for whom the whole Roman world is too small, who would not be satisfied to rule at once India and Phoenician Gades, seeks safety within a house, like a defenceless child or a woman when her city is taken; he relies for his life upon a closed door; he hastes from room to room, wandering in uncertainty. Yet he has the king for companion and takes him everywhere with him: he means to get satisfaction from Ptolemy and consolation, if he himself must die; and, if missiles and firebrands are lacking, he will hurl against the slaves the head of their king. So, we are told, the foreign woman from Colchis, fearing vengeance for her treason and her flight, waited her father's coming with her sword in one hand and her brother's head in the other. Yet Caesar was forced by his desperate plight to explore the possibility of peace; and a courtier was sent, to rebuke the warlike slaves in a message from their absent king, and to ask who gave them leave to fight. But the law of nations was of no avail, nor could the rights respected by all peoples preserve the king's ambassador, the mediator of peace, from falling by the sword. Yet who considers such a deed worthy to find a place in the list of Egypt's crimes, that land guilty of so many atrocities? Neither the land of Thessaly, nor the barren realm of Juba, nor Pontus with the unnatural warfare of Pharnaces, nor the region round which cold Hiberus flows, nor the savage Syrtis — no country has ventured on such crimes as Egypt, with all her luxury, has committed. War besets Caesar on every side; already missiles are falling upon the palace and battering the dwelling. The besiegers have no ram to shatter the gates and break open the building with one blow, and no engines of war; nor do they trust fire to do their work; but with no plan they split up into parties and surround the vast circuit of the walls; and at no point does the host attack in full strength. Fate is against them, and Fortune performs the office of a wall.

They assailed the palace also by means of ships, at the point where the splendid pile projected with bold frontage right over the water. But Caesar was present everywhere in defence, driving back some attacks with the sword and others with fire; and such was his courage, that while besieged he did the work of a besieger. He ordered brands steeped in resin to be hurled at the sails of the crowded ships; and the fire coursed swiftly along the ropes of tow and the decks running with wax, till the rowers' benches and the towering yards blazed up together. Soon the ships, almost half-consumed, sank beneath the surface, and soon the assailants and their weapons were swamped. Nor did the fire fall upon the vessels only: the houses near the sea caught fire from the spreading heat, and the winds fanned the conflagration, till the flames, smitten by the eddying gale, rushed over the roofs as fast as the meteors that often trace a furrow through the sky, though they have nothing solid to feed on and burn by means of air alone. This calamity for a time called off the crowd from the close-barred palace to rescue the city. Caesar did not waste in slumber the time granted by the fire, but sprang on board ship in the darkness of night. He had ever made successful use of haste in warfare, and now with all speed he seized Pharos, which gives access to the sea. Once, in the time of the seer Proteus, it was an island out at sea, but now it stands close to the walls of Alexandria. To Caesar it was doubly useful in his warfare. For, when he had prevented the enemy from sailing out to sea by the narrow passage and saw the harbour open for reinforcements, he postponed no longer the punishment of death which Pothinus had so richly earned. But Caesar's wrath did not destroy him by fitting means — the gallows, or the stake, or the teeth of wild beasts: he died the death of Magnus. Moreover, Arsinoe was carried off secretly by a trick of Ganymede, her chamberlain, and conveyed to Caesar's enemies. There, as a daughter of Lagus, she ruled the army in the absence of the king and pierced with righteous sword Achillas, the dreadful instrument of Ptolemy. Thus a second victim was offered to the shade of Magnus; but Fortune is not content with this. Perish the thought that his vengeance should end here! Ptolemy himself and all the house of Lagus are not enough to quit the score: until the swords of his own countrymen pierce the heart of Caesar, Magnus will remain unavenged. But the madness did not cease with the death of its originator: again, led by Ganymede, the people rush to arms and are often victorious in battle. Because of Caesar's utmost danger, a single day might have become for ever famous.

Round him stood his soldiers in the narrow space of the mole; and he was preparing to embark his men on the empty ships, when he was suddenly surrounded by all the tearfulness of war: on one side the shore was lined with close-packed ships; on the other, the infantry assaulted his rear. There was no path of safety either in flight or in valour; he could scarcely hope even for an honourable death. To conquer Caesar then, no rout of an army and no heaps of dead were needed, nor any bloodshed at all. Made helpless by the nature of his position, he stood perplexed; and, even as he doubted whether to fear death or pray for it, he saw Scaeva in the serried ranks, that Scaeva who had already won immortal glory on the plains of Epidamnus; for there, when the walls were breached and Magnus trod the ramparts underfoot, Scaeva single-handed beleaguered Magnus.