[-4-] Now at this time Septimius and Achillas, the commander-in-chief, and others who were with them declared they would readily receive Pompey,--to the end, of course, that he might be the more easily deceived and ensnared. Some of them sent on his messengers ahead, bidding them be of good cheer, and the natives themselves next embarked on some small boats and sailed out to him. After many friendly greetings they begged him to come over to their vessels, saying that by reason of its size and the shallow water a trireme could not closely approach their land and that they were very eager to see Pompey himself more quickly. He thereupon changed ships, although all his fellow voyagers urged him not to do it, trusting in his hosts and saying merely: "Whoever to a tyrant wends his way, His slave is he, e'en though his steps be free." [72] Now when they drew near the land, fearing that if he even met Ptolemy he might be saved, by the king himself or by the Romans who dwelt with him or by the Egyptians, who regarded him with great affection, they killed him before sailing into harbor. He said not a word and uttered no complaint, but as soon as he perceived their plot and recognized that he would not be able to ward them off nor escape, he veiled his face. [-5-] Such was the end of the famous Pompey the Great, wherein once more the weakness and the strange fortune of the human race are proved. He was no whit deficient in foresight, but was deceived by having been always absolutely secure against any force of harmful potency. He had won many unexpected victories in Africa, and many in Asia and Europe, both by land and by sea ever since boyhood; and was now in the fifty-eighth year of his age defeated without good reason. He who had subdued the entire Roman sea perished on it: and whereas he had once, as the story goes, been master of a thousand ships, he was destroyed in a tiny boat near Egypt and really by that same Ptolemy whose father he had once restored from exile to that land and to his kingdom. The man whom at that time Roman soldiers were still guarding, soldiers left behind by Gabinius as a favor to Pompey and on account of the hatred felt by the Egyptians for the young prince's father, seemed now to have put him to death by the hands of those Romans and those Egyptians. Pompey, who was previously considered the dominant figure among the Romans so that he even had the nickname of _Agamemnon_, was now slain like any of the lowest of the Egyptians themselves, near Mount Casius and on the anniversary of the day on which he had celebrated a triumph over Mithridates and the pirates. Even in this point, therefore, there was nothing similar in the two parts of his career. Of yore on that day he had experienced the most brilliant success, whereas he now suffered the most grievous fate: again, following a certain oracle he had been suspicious of all the citizens named Cassius, but instead of being the