The battle, however, was not fought.  It was prevented by the occurrence of certain great and unforeseen events which at this crisis suddenly burst upon the scene of Egyptian history, and turned the whole current of affairs into new and unexpected channels.  The breaking out of the civil war between the great Roman generals Caesar and Pompey, and their respective partisans, has already been mentioned as having occurred soon after the death of Cleopatra’s father, and as having prevented Pompey from undertaking the office of executor of the will.  This war had been raging ever since that time with terrible fury.  Its distant thundering had been heard even in Egypt, but it was too remote to awaken there any special alarm.  The immense armies of these two mighty conquerors had moved slowly—­like two ferocious birds of prey, flying through the air, and fighting as they fly—­across Italy into Greece, and from Greece, through Macedon, into Thessaly, contending in dreadful struggles with each other as they advanced, and trampling down and destroying every thing in their way.  At length a great final battle had been fought at Pharsalia.  Pompey had been totally defeated.  He had fled to the sea-shore, and there, with a few ships and a small number of followers, he had pushed out upon the Mediterranean, not knowing whither to fly, and overwhelmed with wretchedness and despair.  Caesar followed him in eager pursuit.  He had a small fleet of galleys with him, on board of which he had embarked two or three thousand men.  This was a force suitable, perhaps, for the pursuit of a fugitive, but wholly insufficient for any other design.

Pompey thought of Ptolemy.  He remembered the efforts which he himself had made for the cause of Ptolemy Auletes, at Rome, and the success of those efforts in securing that monarch’s restoration—­an event through which alone the young Ptolemy had been enabled to attain the crown.  He came, therefore to Pelusium, and, anchoring his little fleet off the shore, sent to the land to ask Ptolemy to receive and protect him.  Pothinus, who was really the commander in Ptolemy’s army, made answer to this application that Pompey should be received and protected, and that he would send out a boat to bring him to the shore.  Pompey felt some misgivings in respect to this proffered hospitality, but he finally concluded to go to the shore in the boat which Pothinus sent for him.  As soon as he landed, the Egyptians, by Pothinus’s orders, stabbed and beheaded him on the sand.  Pothinus and his council had decided that this would be the safest course.  If they were to receive Pompey, they reasoned, Caesar would be made their enemy; if they refused to receive him, Pompey himself would be offended, and they did not know which of the two it would be safe to displease; for they did not know in what way, if both the generals were to be allowed to live, the war would ultimately end.  “But by killing Pompey,” they said, “we shall be sure to please Caesar and Pompey himself will lie still."