The camp was taken. Pharnaces escaped for the
moment, and made his way into his own country; but he was killed
immediately after, and Asia Minor was again at peace.
Caesar, calm as usual, but well satisfied to have ended a second awkward
business so easily, passed quickly down to the Hellespont, and had landed
in Italy before it was known that he had left Pontus.
[1] Supposed to have been a natural son of Mithridates the Great. The
reason for the special confidence which Caesar placed in him does not
appear. The danger at Alexandria, perhaps, did not appear at the
moment particularly serious.
[2] Roman scandal discovered afterward that Caesar had been fascinated by
the charms of Cleopatra, and allowed his politics to be influenced by
a love affair. Roman fashionable society hated Caesar, and any carrion
was welcome to them which would taint his reputation. Cleopatra
herself favored the story, and afterward produced a child, whom she
named Caesarion. Oppius, Caesar's most intimate friend, proved that
the child could not have been his--of course, therefore, that the
intrigue was a fable; and the boy was afterward put to death by
Augustus as an impostor. No one claims immaculate virtue for Caesar.
An amour with Cleopatra may have been an accident of his presence in
Alexandria.
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