Pothinus, however, thought he had done enough for Cæsar in offering him the head of Pompey. He urged him, therefore, to reëmbark and to go whither he was called by much more important matters than the disputes of Ptolemy and Cleopatra: to Pontus, whence Pharnaces was driving his lieutenant Domitius, to Rome where Cœlius was exciting the plebeians. To the claims of Cæsar, he replied that the treasury was empty; to his offers of arbitration between the heirs of Ptolemy, he objected that it was not proper for a foreigner to interfere in this quarrel, that such an interference would rouse all Egypt. In support of his words, he reminded him that the people of Alexandria, regarding the fasces borne before Cæsar as an outrage on the royal dignity, were enraged at it; that daily new riots arose, that every night Roman soldiers were assassinated, that the Alexandrian population was very numerous, and that the army of Cæsar (numbering only three thousand two hundred legionaries and eight hundred cavalry) was very small. But his refusals, his counsels, his implied menaces availed nought against the will of Cæsar. His prayers exhausted, he commands. Pothinus is ordered formally to invite in his name Ptolemy and Cleopatra to disband their armies and to present themselves before his consular tribunal to settle their differences. The eunuch was forced to yield, but, as cunning as Cæsar was persistent, he hoped to turn this intervention, which he at first dreaded, to secure the success of his designs. With this purpose he sent to Cleopatra Cæsar’s command to disband her troops, but without telling her she was expected at Alexandria, and he wrote to Ptolemy to repair at once to Cæsar but still to keep his soldiers under arms. Pothinus calculated by these means to free himself from Cleopatra’s army and to secure to the young king the favor of Cæsar, since Ptolemy alone of the two heirs of Auletes summoned by the consul paid due attention to his invitation. A few days after, Ptolemy actually arrived in Alexandria. He offered to Cæsar the warmest protestations of friendship, in which he was joined by Pothinus, Achillas, and the other ministers; he explained the disputes between himself and Cleopatra, laying all the blame on her. Cæsar, however, was not so easily duped. Pothinus had supposed that the absence of Cleopatra would irritate Cæsar against her, but Cæsar could not believe that the young queen had, through contempt, declined his invitation to repair to Alexandria. He thought it more probable that some machination of Pothinus had prevented her coming. In order to satisfy himself of this he secretly despatched a messenger to Cleopatra, whom he knew to be still at Pelusium.