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.
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