he tears Pompey's pleading to pieces. An alliance with Parthia will be dishonour both to Pompey and Rome. Their warlike prowess is a myth; they have the oriental's courage and no more; nor will they venture to face a Cæsar flushed with victory. In committing himself into their hands Pompey at worst risks death; but what will be the fate of his wife Cornelia, the widow of a Crassus, in the harem of a barbarous king?* No treaty or truce with Parthians is possible till the disaster and disgrace of Carrhæ are avenged. If Juba and Numidia inspire no trust, let Pompey turn to Egypt, a land of great resources, with a monarch upon whose gratitude he has every claim : ""The boy of Egypt owes his crown to thee; "Twas in thy wardship, Pompey. Shadows, names- The veteran sceptre-wielder knows no shame. The conclave broke up, and Pompey proceeded to Paphos in Cyprus. Here he received the intelligence that the Syrian capital, Antioch, through which would lie his obvious route to Parthia, had issued a proclamation forbidding his party to approach it under peril of their lives. Here, then, he finally relinquished a project which a later historian, Dio Cassius, would not believe that he had ever entertained. So the little fleet set sail for Egypt. It seems to have consisted of some four or five triremes, together with transports, and it conveyed 2000 soldiers and a considerable military chest. It followed the coast of Cyprus as far as the promontory of Curias and then struck south across the open sea. Its objective was Alexandria; but a westerly gale was blowing, and, when Pompey made the Egyptian coast, e. 76, were advanced by Theophanes of Lesbos, Pompey's constant companion and domestic historian. This was the argument that, according to report, weighed most of all with Pompey (Plutarch, c. 76). he found himself at Pelusium on the easternmost arm of the Nile. Egypt was itself in the throes of a civil war. The settlement by which the son and daughter of Ptolemy Auletes were to mate and rule together had been set aside. The ministers of the young Ptolemy had procured the expulsion of his sister, the famous Cleopatra, from the kingdom. She had levied forces to regain her rights; and the two armies were facing each other on Mount Casius somewhat to the east of Pelusium. It was still afternoon when Pompey cast anchor off Pelusium; and a mounted scout of the king's rode rapidly along the shore with the tidings of the unwelcome arrival. Soon envoys from Pompey followed, to plead the cause of their chief before the Court and to ask the shelter and assistance which it was claimed were his due. Unfortunately for him, their zeal outran their discretion; and some attempts they made to enlist the sympathies of his ancient comrades, of whom a number had been left by Gabinius in Egypt and were now in the service of Ptolemy, gave colour to the insinuation that he wished to tamper with the allegiance of the royal troops. A council of state was summoned; among those who were present were the eunuch Pothinus, Ptolemy's tutor and prime minister; Achillas, the commander of his army; Acoreus, the aged high-priest of Memphis; and Theodotus, a Greek rhetorician and professor from Chios, whose charge was the education of the king. Acoreus, by right of years, spoke first, and urged the duty which the young king owed to his father's memory and to his 'guardian Pompey.* But his efforts were vain. Pothinus, Achillas and Theodotus were on the other side. In the account of Plutarch it is the Greek professor who advises the killing of the fugitive, winding up with the cynical apophthegm that 'the dead do not bite.' In Lucan this part is given to Pothinus for reasons that are easy to divine. Whosoever the counsel, it must not be supposed to have been offered out of sheer wantonness. The arrival of Pompey was a grave embarrassment, fraught with serious complications for the Egyptian Government; * In what sense Ptolemy was a ward of Pompey, a statement in which Lucan and Livy (contents of Book 112) agree, is not entirely clear; but we know from Cæsar that one copy of the will of Ptolemy Auletes which settled the Egyptian succession had been placed for safe custody with Pompey. and a dagger was the surest and handiest instrument for cutting the knot. The shameless cynicism of the speech assigned by Lucan to Pothinus (484-535) cannot but revolt us; but we must recognise the address with which it handles the essential facts of the situation and the power which it evinces of 'reading a tyrant's heart.' 'Out of the palace ye that would be good! Then, apostrophising Pompey (523–535): 'Canst doubt that I must harm thee when I may? The council determined that Pompey must die; and Achillas was appointed to carry out the sentence. The Pompeian vessels were now at anchor off the promontory of Casius. The Egyptian troops were lining the sandy and surf-beaten strand, the king in royal purple conspicuous in their midst. A small fishing boat put off from shore, making for the commander's galley. Besides the general and the necessary rowers and attendants, three or four at most, it had on board only two Roman officers from the Egyptian army, and these specially chosen to avert suspicions, Salvius and Septimius, of whom Septimius had been a centurion of Pompey in the war against the Pirates. When the boat came alongside, Septimius greeted his old commander with the highest title that a Roman soldier knew-Haue imperator'; and Achillas, with all expressions of respect, invited him to descend into the boat, for whose smallness he offered the apology that landing from larger vessels was not possible in those shallow waters. The explanation was not such as altogether to reassure. Pompey's wife and the friends who had collected on his trireme, uneasy at the character of his reception, had besought him, while still possible, to retreat. Nor was he himself wholly free from misgivings. But he was sick of the suspense and perhaps apprehensive of the consequences which might ensue if he were suspected of distrust. He noticed too with anxiety that some of the king's ships were even now being got ready for sea. Accordingly he bade adieu to his wife and son, and, preceded by two of his own centurions, by Philippus, his freedman, and a servant called Scythes, he stepped into the boat. As he did so, he repeated a couplet of Sophocles, which has been thus translated: 'He that once enters at a tyrant's door 6 It was some distance to land; but Achillas and his centurions maintained a stony silence. Pompey addressed Septimius: Surely I am right in thinking you were once a comrade of mine?' Septimius nodded but vouchsafed no further reply. So Pompey turned to read the notes of the speech which he had composed in Greek to deliver before the king. They presently neared the shore; and the anxious watchers on the trireme's deck observed a great company ready to receive them. Pompey took the hand of Philippus to help him to rise, when Septimius stabbed him in the back, and Salvius first and then Achillas plunged their swords in his side. A shriek of horror burst from the trireme, and Cornelia fainted. But Pompey died without a cry, with no attempt at resistance, covering his eyes as he fell. The thoughts of one thus struck out of existence it is beyond man's power to divine. We may believe only that their succession in the last few moments of consciousness is incredibly rapid and intense.* But Lucan assuredly never intended his readers to take the utterance of the reflexions which he has ascribed to the dying * See a remarkable description of the end by hanging of a civilian in the American Civil War in Ambrose Bierce's 'In the Midst of Life' (1892), pp. 31 sqq. Pompey as any real soliloquy. With the ancients a speech was a recognised literary form for conveying the import and lessons of a situation rather than for rendering with literal or psychological exactness what was actually thought or said. With every shape of violent and compulsory death, sudden or protracted, the Romans of the Early Empire had become familiar. The illustrious victims, who starved or bled themselves to death under the tyrannies of a Seianus, a Caligula or a Nero, were careful so to order their last hours that they should furnish monition and example to posterity. The same motives and spirit are to be sought in the verses of Lucan, though they may, not unnaturally, seem stiff and theatrical to a generation whose artificialities have been those of levity rather than of gravity. The lines (622-635) begin with the reflection that future ages are watching to see if Pompey, after all his felicity, can bear misfortunes worthily. He must not fret that he falls to an ignoble hand, but deem that he owes his death to Cæsar. Nor must he grieve if worse indignities await him: "Yea, let them hack and scatter. Still, ye powers, 'Tis life shifts fortune; death makes wretched none. So patient, pain, and close lock up thy moan. Wife, son will love if they revere the slain." Such strait watch Pompey kept upon his thoughts, The butchers' work was not finished yet; a trophy must be secured. So Septimius tore the covering from the face, hacked the head from the trunk and flung the body on the shoals. The poet continues (679-686): "That a base boy might look on Pompey's face, |