LXXX.  Those in the ships seeing the murder uttered a shriek which could be heard even to the land, and quickly raising their anchors, took to flight:  and a strong breeze aided them in their escape to the open sea, so that the Egyptians, though desirous of pursuing, turned back.  They cut off the head of Pompeius, and throwing the body naked out of the boat, left it for those to gaze at who felt any curiosity.  Philippus stayed by the body, till the people wore satisfied with looking at it, and then washing it with sea-water he wrapped it up in a tunic of his own; and as he had no other means, he looked about till he found the wreck of a small fishing-boat, which was decayed indeed, but enough to make a funeral pile in case of need for a naked body, and that not an entire corpse.  As he was collecting these fragments and putting them together, a Roman, now an old man[393] who had served his first campaigns in his youth under Pompeius, stood by him and said:  “Who are you, my friend, that are preparing to perform the funeral rites to Pompeius Magnus?” Philippus replying that he was a freedman, the man said:  “But you shall not have this honour to yourself:  allow me too to share in this pious piece of good fortune, that I may not altogether have to complain of being in a strange land, if in requital for many sufferings I get this honour at least, to touch and to tend with my hands the greatest of the Roman generals.”  Such were the obsequies of Pompeius.  On the next day Lucius Lentulus who was on his voyage from Cyprus, not knowing what had happened, was coasting along the shore, when he saw the pile and Philippus standing by it before he was seen himself and said, “Who is resting here after closing his career?” and after a slight interval, with a groan, he added, “perhaps it is you, Pompeius Magnus.”  Presently he landed, and being seized was put to death.  This was the end of Pompeius.  Not long after Caesar arriving in Egypt, which was filled with this horrid deed, turned away from the man who brought him the head of Pompeius, as from a murderer, and when he received the seal of Pompeius, he shed tears; the device was a lion holding a sword.  He put to death Achillas and Potheinus, and the king himself being defeated in battle was lost somewhere near the river.  Theodotus the sophist escaped the vengeance of Caesar, for he fled from Egypt and wandered about in a miserable state, the object of detestation; but Brutus Marcus, after he had killed Caesar and got the power in his hands, finding Theodotus in Asia, put him to death with every circumstance of contumely.  Cornelia obtained the remains of Pompeius and had them carried to his Alban villa and interred there.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 189:  This line is from the Prometheus Loosed ([Greek:  luomenos] ) of Aeschylus which is lost.  Prometheus Bound ([Greek:  desmotes]) is extant.  Hermann is of opinion that the Prometheus Loosed did not belong to the same Tetralogy as the Prometheus Bound.]