se at hand; many of Gabinius' men were serving
in the Egyptian army. To receive the vanquished Pompey kindly was to make
the victorious Caesar a foe. I was to witness the terrible solution of
this dilemma. The infamous words of Theodotus, 'Dead dogs no longer
bite,' had turned the scale.

"My brother and I reached Mount Casius with our precious freight, and
pitched our tents to await a messenger, when a large body of armed men
approached from the city. At first we feared that we were pursued; but a
spy reported that the King himself was among the soldiery, and at the
same time a large Roman galley drew near the coast. It must be Pompey's.
So they had changed their views, and the King was coming in person to
receive their guest. The troops encamped on the flat shore on which stood
the Temple of the Casian Amon.

"The September sun shone brightly, and was reflected from the weapons.
From the high bank of the dry bed of the river, where we had pitched our
tent, we saw something scarlet move to and fro. It was the King's mantle.
The waves, stirred by the autumn breeze, rippled lightly, blue as
cornflowers, over the yellow sand of the dunes; but the King stood still,
shading his eyes with his hand as he gazed at the galley. Meanwhile,
Achillas, the commander of the troops, and Septimius, the tribune, who
belonged to the Roman garrison in Alexandria, and who, I knew, had served
under Pompey and owed him many favours, had entered a boat and put off to
the vessel, which could not come nearer the land on account of the
shallow water.

"The conference now began, and Achillas's offer of hospitality must have
been very warm and well calculated to inspire confidence, for a tall
lady--it was Cornelia, the wife of the Imperator--waved her hand to him
in token of gratitude."

Here the speaker paused, drew a long breath, and, pressing his hand to
his brow, continued "What follows--alas, that it was my fate to witness
the dreadful scene! How often a garbled account has been given, and yet
the whole was so terribly simple!

"Fortune makes her favourites confiding. Pompey was also. Though more
than fifty years old--he lacked two years of sixty--he sprang into the
boat quickly enough, with merely a little assistance from a freedman. A
sailor--he was a negro--shoved the skiff off from the side of the huge
ship as violently as if the pole he used for the purpose was a spear, and
the galley his foe. The boat, urged by his companions' oars