aged in war with his
sister Cleopatra, whom a few months before, by the assistance of his
relatives and friends, he had expelled from the kingdom; and her camp
lay at a small distance from his. To him Pompey applied to be
permitted to take refuge in Alexandria, and to be protected in his
calamity by his powerful assistance, in consideration of the
friendship and amity which had subsisted between his father and him.
But Pompey's deputies, having executed their commission, began to
converse with less restraint with the king's troops, and to advise
them to act with friendship to Pompey, and not to think meanly of his
bad fortune. In Ptolemy's army were several of Pompey's soldiers, of
whom Gabinius[56] had received the command in Syria, and had brought
them over to Alexandria, and at the conclusion of the war had left
with Ptolemy the father of the young king.

The king's friends, who were regents of the kingdom during the
minority, being informed of these things, either induced by fear, as
they afterward declared, lest Pompey should corrupt the king's army,
and seize on Alexandria[57] and Egypt, or despising his bad fortune,
as in adversity friends commonly change to enemies, in public gave a
favorable answer to his deputies, and desired him to come to the king;
but secretly laid a plot against him, and dispatched Achillas, captain
of the king's guards, a man of singular boldness, and Lucius
Septimius, a military tribune, to assassinate him. Being kindly
addrest by them, and deluded by an acquaintance with Septimius,
because in the war with the pirates the latter had commanded a company
under him, he embarked in a small boat, with a few attendants, and was
there murdered by Achillas and Septimius. In like manner, Lucius
Lentulus was seized by the king's order, and put to death in
prison....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: Cicero, whose praise of Caesar as a writer has been
shared by many readers since his time, described Caesar's works as
"unadorned, straightforward, and elegant, their ornament being stript
off as it were a garment." Caesar did his work so well that "he has
deterred all men of sound taste from touching him."]

[Footnote 34: From Book IV of the "Commentaries on the Gallic War."
Translated by McDivett and W. S. Bohn. The site of this bridge is
believed to be in the neighborhood of Cologne.]

[Footnote 35: The Suevi were migratory Germans who, in Caesar's time,
occupied the eastern banks of the Rhine in an