Book 2
13.90
When his soldiers arrived by sea he punished Pothinus and Achillas with death for their crime against Pompey.Caesar says that he put Pothinus to death for corresponding with the enemy while he was in Caesar’s custody, during the Alexandrian war. (iii. 112.) Hirtius, who wrote the Alexandrian War, says (i.4) that Achillas was put to death by Arsinoë, the younger sister of Cleopatra, who attempted to bring about a counter revolution and to secure the throne for herself. Plutarch contradicts himself in this matter. In his Life of Pompey (80) he says that Caesar put both Pothinus and Achillas to death and implies that he did so to punish them for the murder of Pompey. In his Life of Cœsar (49) he says distinctly that Pothinus was put to death on account of a palace conspiracy against Caesar in which both himself and Achillas were concerned, but that Achillas escaped. (Theodotus escaped and was afterward crucified by Cassius, who found him wandering in Asia.Plutarch, at the conclusion of his Life of Pompey, says that Theodotus was put to death with torture by Brutus, who found him leading a vagabond life in Asia.) The Alexandrians thereupon rose in tumult, and the king’s army marched against Caesar and various battles took place around the palace and on the neighboring shores. In one of these Caesar escaped by leaping into the sea and swimming a long distance in deep water. The Alexandrians captured his cloak and hung it up as a trophy. He fought the last battle against the king on the banks of the Nile, in Y.R. 707 which he won a decisive victory. He consumed nine B.C. 47 months in this strife, at the end of which he established Cleopatra on the throne of Egypt in place of her brother. He ascended the Nile with 400 ships, exploring the country in company with Cleopatra and enjoying himself with her in other ways. The details of these events are related more particularly in my Egyptian history. Caesar could not bear to look at the head of Pompey when it was brought to him, but ordered that it be buried, and set apart for it a small plot of ground near the city which was dedicated to Nemesis, but in my time, while the Roman emperor Trajan was exterminating the Jewish race in Egypt, it was devastated by them in the exigencies of the war.
