The Historians' History of the World 05

The Rhodian vessels which had betaken themselves to Cæsar’s side were now of great service to him in establishing a communication with these reinforcements. The islanders of Rhodes had succeeded to the nautical skill of Athens and Corinth, and were among the expert mariners of the time. Combined with the small flotilla which Cæsar had brought with him, and the ships which had lately arrived, these new allies presented a formidable force. The Egyptians, however, though the royal fleet had been destroyed, possessed considerable resources for the equipment of a naval armament. They collected from every quarter all the vessels they could muster, and hastily constructed others, till they found themselves in a condition to dispute once more the approach to the harbour. Nor were they less vigorous in the attack they made upon the enemy’s defences by land. The crisis of danger called forth all Cæsar’s energies; he never exposed his person more boldly, or encountered more imminent peril. At one moment he was so hard pressed as to be forced to leap from his vessel into the sea, and swim for his life, carrying his most valuable papers in his hand above the water, and leaving his cloak in the possession of the assailants, who retained it as a trophy, as the Arverni had preserved his sword.

The Egyptians indeed were ultimately worsted in every encounter, but they could still return to the attack with increased numbers; and Cæsar’s resources were so straitened that he was not disinclined to listen to terms of accommodation, the insincerity of which was transparent. The Alexandrian populace declared themselves weary of the rule of their young princess, and disgusted with the tyranny of Ganymedes. Their rightful sovereign once restored to them, they would unite heartily with the republic, and defy the fury of the upstart and the usurper. It cannot be supposed that the Roman general was deceived by these protestations; the bad faith of the Alexandrians was already proverbial in the West. But he expected perhaps that the rivalry of Ptolemy and Arsinoe would create dissension in their camps; he may have preferred coping with the young king in open war, to keeping a guard over him, and watching the intrigues with which he beguiled his captivity; possibly the surrender was made in concession to a pressure he could not resist, and was adopted as a means of gaining time. But when Ptolemy was restored to his subjects, and immediately led them to another attack upon the Roman position, the soldiers are said to have felt no little satisfaction at the reward of what they deemed their general’s weak compliance.

Cleopatra, whose blandishments were still the solace of the Roman general throughout his desperate adventure, rejoiced to see her brother thus treacherously array himself in rash hostility to her protector. The toils were beginning to close around the young king. Mithridates of Pergamus, an adherent in whose fidelity and conduct Cæsar placed great reliance, was advancing with the reinforcements he had been commissioned to collect in Syria and the adjacent provinces. He reduced Pelusium, the key of Egypt by land as Pharos was by sea, and crossed the Nile at the head of the Delta, routing a division of the king’s troops which attempted to check his progress. Ptolemy led forth his army to give battle to the new invader, and was followed by Cæsar. The Romans came up with the Egyptians, crossed the river in the face of their superior numbers, and attacked them in their entrenchments, which, from their knowledge both of the Macedonian and the Roman art of war, were probably not deficient in scientific construction. But the shock of the veterans was irresistible. The Egyptians fled, leaving great numbers slaughtered within the lines, and falling into their own ditches in confused and mangled heaps. The fugitives rushed to the channel of the Nile, where their vessels were stationed, and crowded into them without order or measure. One of them in which Ptolemy had taken refuge was thus overladen and sank.