Taking with him such cohorts as could be spared from his
lines, Caesar had joined Mithridates before the Alexandrians had arrived.
Together they forced the passage; and Ptolemy came only for his camp to be
stormed, his army to be cut to pieces, and himself to be drowned in the
Nile, and so end his brief and miserable life.
Alexandria immediately capitulated. Arsinoe, the youngest sister, was sent
to Rome. Cleopatra and her surviving brother were made joint sovereigns;
and Roman rumor, glad to represent Caesar's actions in monstrous
characters, insisted in after years that they were married. The absence of
contemporary authority for the story precludes also the possibility of
denying it. Two legions were left in Egypt to protect them if they were
faithful, or to coerce them if they misconducted themselves. The
Alexandrian episode was over, and Caesar sailed for Syria. His long
detention over a complication so insignificant had been unfortunate in
many ways. Scipio and Cato, with the other fugitives from Pharsalia, had
rallied in Africa, under the protection of Juba. Italy was in confusion.
The popular party, now absolutely in the ascendant, were disposed to treat
the aristocracy as the aristocracy would have treated them had they been
victorious. The controlling hand was absent; the rich, long hated and
envied, were in the power of the multitude, and wild measures were
advocated, communistic, socialistic, such as are always heard of in
revolutions, meaning in one form or another the equalization of wealth,
the division of property, the poor taking their turn on the upper crest of
fortune and the rich at the bottom.
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