Syria.  From Pelusium, which Mithridates had the fortune to occupy on the day of his arrival, he took the great road towards Memphis, with the view of avoiding the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the Nile before its division; during which movement his troops received manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled in this part of Egypt.  The Egyptians, with the young king Ptolemy now at their head, whom Caesar had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the insurrection by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detain Mithridates on its farther bank.  The army fell in with the enemy even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews’ camp, between Onion and Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithridates, trained in the Roman fashion of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained the opposite bank at Memphis.  Caesar, on the other hand, as soon as he obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a part of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Morea to the west of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile to meet Mithridates advancing up the river.

The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it.  Caesar then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated, overthrew, notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front, the Egyptian vanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed the Egyptian camp itself.  It lay at the foot of a rising ground between the Nile—­from which only a narrow path separated it—­and marshes difficult of access.  Caesar caused the camp to be assailed simultaneously from the front and from the flank on the path along the Nile; and during this assault ordered a third detachment to ascend unseen the heights of the camp.  The victory was complete; the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who did not fall beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attempt to escape to the fleet on the Nile.  With one of the boats, which sank overladen with men, the young king also disappeared in the waters of his native stream.  Immediately after the battle Caesar advanced at the head of his cavalry from the land side straight into the portion of the capital occupied by the Egyptians.  In mourning attire, with the images of their gods in their hands, the enemy received him and sued for peace; and his troops, when they saw him return as victor from the side opposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed him with boundless joy.  The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had brought him within a hair’s-breadth of destruction, lay in Caesar’s hands; but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.  Caesar—­pointing to their city severely devastated and deprived of its granaries, of its world-renowned library, and of other important public buildings on the occasion of the burning of the fleet—­exhorted the inhabitants in future earnestly to cultivate the