The vessel conveyed him to Amphipolis, a city of Macedonia near the sea, and to the northward and eastward of the place where he had embarked.  When Pompey arrived at the port he sent proclamations to the shore, calling upon the inhabitants to take arms and join his standard.  He did not, however, land, or take any other measures for carrying these arrangements into effect.  He only waited in the river upon which Amphipolis stands long enough to receive a supply of money from some of his friends on the shore, and stores for his voyage, and then get sail again.  Whether he learned that Caesar was advancing in that direction with a force too strong for him to encounter, or found that the people were disinclined to espouse his cause, or whether the whole movement was a feint to direct Caesar’s attention to Macedon as the field of his operations, in order that he might escape more secretly and safely beyond the sea, can not now be ascertained.

[Sidenote:  Pompey’s wife Cornelia.] [Sidenote:  Her beauty and accomplishments.]

Pompey’s wife Cornelia was on the island of Lesbos, at Mitylene, near the western coast of Asia Minor.  She was a lady of distinguished beauty, and of great intellectual superiority and moral worth.  She was extremely well versed in all the learning of the times, and yet was entirely free from those peculiarities and airs which, as her historian says, were often observed in learned ladies in those days.  Pompey had married her after the death of Julia, Caesar’s daughter.  They were strongly devoted to each other.  Pompey had provided for her a beautiful retreat on the island of Lesbos, where she was living in elegance and splendor, beloved for her own intrinsic charms, and highly honored on account of the greatness and fame of her husband.  Here she had received from time to time glowing accounts of his success all exaggerated as they came to her, through the eager desire of the narrators to give her pleasure.

[Sidenote:  Pompey’s arrival at Mitylene.] [Sidenote:  His meeting with Cornelia.]

From this high elevation of honor and happiness the ill-fated Cornelia suddenly fell, on the arrival of Pompey’s solitary vessel at Mitylene, bringing as it did, at the same time, both the first intelligence of her husband’s fall, and himself in person, a ruined and homeless fugitive and wanderer.  The meeting was sad and sorrowful.  Cornelia was overwhelmed at the suddenness and violence of the shock which it brought her, and Pompey lamented anew the dreadful disaster that he had sustained, at finding how inevitably it must involve his beloved wife as well as himself in its irreparable ruin.

[Sidenote:  Pompey gathers a little fleet.]