He accordingly called Ptolemy into his presence and, taking him kindly by the hand, informed him of the wishes of the people of Egypt, and gave him permission to go.  Ptolemy, however, begged not to be sent away.  He professed the strongest attachment to Caesar, and the utmost confidence in him, and he very much preferred, he said, to remain under his protection.  Caesar replied that, if those were his sentiments, the separation would not be a lasting one.  “If we part as friends,” he said, “we shall soon meet again.”  By these and similar assurances he endeavored to encourage the young prince, and then sent him away.  Ptolemy was received by the Egyptians with great joy, and was immediately placed at the head of the government.  Instead, however, of endeavoring to promote a settlement of the quarrel with Caesar, he seemed to enter into it now himself, personally, with the utmost ardor, and began at once to make the most extensive preparations both by sea and land for a vigorous prosecution of the war.  What the result of these operations would have been can now not be known, for the general aspect of affairs was, soon after these transactions, totally changed by the occurrence of a new and very important event which suddenly intervened, and which turned the attention of all parties, both Egyptians and Romans, to the eastern quarter of the kingdom.  The tidings arrived that a large army under the command of a general named Mithradates, whom Caesar had dispatched into Asia for this purpose, had suddenly appeared at Pelusium, had captured that city and were now ready to march to Alexandria.

The Egyptian army immediately broke up its encampments in the neighborhood of Alexandria, and marched to the eastward to meet these new invaders, Caesar followed them with all the forces that he could safely take away from the city.  He left the city in the night, and unobserved, and moved across the country with such celerity that he joined Mithradates before the forces of Ptolemy had arrived.  After various marches and maneuvers, the armies met, and a great battle was fought.  The Egyptians were defeated.  Ptolemy’s camp was taken.  As the Roman army burst in upon one side of it, the guards and attendants of Ptolemy fled upon the other, clambering over the ramparts in the utmost terror and confusion.  The foremost fell headlong into the ditch below, which was thus soon filled to the brim with the dead and the dying; while those who came behind pressed on over the bridge thus formed, trampling remorselessly, as they fled, on the bodies of their comrades, who lay writhing, struggling, and shrieking beneath their feet.  Those who escaped reached the river.  They crowded together into a boat which lay at the bank and pushed off from the shore.  The boat was overloaded, and it sank as soon as it left the land.  The Romans drew the bodies which floated to the shore upon the bank again, and they found among them one, which, by the royal cuirass which was upon it, the customary badge and armor of the Egyptian kings, they knew to be the body of Ptolemy.