LIII. I am fully persuaded, that if the case on which the council of king Ptolemy deliberated, had been referred to the politicians of our Europe, and in our age, that not one of them would have advised the putting to death of Pompey; but it is likely there would have been very few of them so generous, as to recommend the receiving and protecting him. In truth, although not only generous, but hazardous resolutions, may be appendages to the punctilios of princes, and may spring from that source, they are very rarely suggested to them by their counsellors. Thus, if a point of this sort was to be discussed by the council of a king now-a-days, the consideration of the danger of protecting Pompey on the one hand, and the scandal of sacrificing him to the resentment of Cæsar on the other, would most probably have determined them to pursue the middle way, of neither entertaining nor injuring him, and would have left to his own election, the choice of another asylum, and to his fortune, the good or bad exit from his troubles; nor do I doubt but that in the court of Ptolemy there were some, and possibly the major part, of this opinion. Notwithstanding this, if I had been a member of that council, I should have given my vote for the most benign, not only as the most honest, but the most useful and beneficial resolve they could have fallen upon; and I even think, it would have had great weight with the king, if any one of those who assisted at it, had recommended to him the protection of Pompey, for the reasons, supported with some such arguments as follow, which altogether I shall call A declamation on behalf of Pompey.