This advice being approved of, the execution of it was committed to Achillas. In consequence of which he took with him Septimius, who had formerly been one of Pompey's officers, and Salvius, who had also acted under him as a centurion, with three or four assistants, and made up to Pompey's ship, where his principal friends and officers had assembled to see how the affair went on. When they perceived there was nothing magnificent in their reception, nor suitable to the hopes which Theophanes had conceived, but that a few men only in a fishing-boat came to wait upon them, such want of respect appeared a suspicious circumstance, and they advised Pompey, while he was out of the reach of missive weapons, to get out to the main sea. Meantime, the boat approaching, Septimius spoke first, addressing Pompey in Latin by the title of Imperator. Then Achillas saluted him in Greek, and desired him to come into the boat, because the water was very shallow towards the shore, and a galley must strike upon the sands. At the same time they saw several of the king's ships getting ready, and the shore covered with troops, so that if they would have changed their minds it was then too late; besides, their distrust would have furnished the assassins with a pretence for their injustice. He therefore embraced Cornelia, who lamented his sad exit before it happened; and ordered two centurions, one of his enfranchised slaves, named Philip, and a servant called Scenes, to get into the boat before him. When Achillas had hold of his hand, and he was going to step in himself, he turned to his wife and son, and repeated that verse of Sophocles-- Seek'st thou a tyrant's door? Then farewell freedom! Though FREE as air before. These were the last words he spoke to them. As there was a considerable distance between the galley and the shore, and he observed that not a man in the boat showed him the least civility, or even spoke to him, he looked at Septimius, and said, "Methinks, I remember you to have been my fellow-soldier;" but he answered only with a nod, without testifying any regard or friendship. A profound silence again taking place, Pompey took out a paper, in which he had written a speech in Greek that he designed to make to Ptolemy, and amused himself with reading it.