"His choices were those of a desperate man, between bad and worse. He chose bad. Would they have preferred worse?" Chap. 1, p. 5

"Common Roman soldiers had laid hands on the King of Egypt and treated him like any naughty village boy. I must not lose Caesar's favor, lest they do the same to me." Chap. 12, p. 100

"Indeed, before the day was over, Ptolemy had been received by his troops and raised up on a royal sedan chair, denounced Caesar and me in such vitriolic language that the spy who reported it had to stammer, 'The - word unfit for repetition - tyrannical, unprincipled, greedy Julius Caesar and his whore, the - another word unfit for repetition - pleasure-soaked, lustful Cleopatra must be destroyed, and the evil - yet another word unfit for repetition - gluttonous Romans stopped in their tracks as they seek to devour us,' the...