Caesar was only able to counter this by ordering his men to dig day and night until they struck ground water. He was to prove an innovative commander, earning Caesar’s grudging respect by polluting the subterranean water cisterns with saltwater. This left Ptolemy XIII isolated, and Ganymede in command of the army. Soon after, Pothinos’s treachery was discovered (Plutarch tells us that he was betrayed by Caesar’s barber) and he was executed, while Achillas was killed by the ambitious Ganymede. In November 48 the people of Alexandria proclaimed Arsinoë queen of Egypt: a rival to Cleopatra and a future wife for Ptolemy XIII, who was still the crowd’s favourite. Having escaped from the Palaces, and supported by her influential tutor Ganymede, she joined forces with Ptolemy’s general Achillas. Younger and less experienced, the fourteen-year-old Arsinoë was not content to bide her time. Just as Cleopatra had maintained a conspicuous silence during her elder sister’s ill-fated reign and its bloody aftermath, so she remained silent and, as far as we can tell, inactive throughout the Alexandrian Wars. Retrieved by the enemy, it was displayed as a war trophy. Forced to swim for his life, he kept his all-important military plans dry by holding them above his head, but lost his cloak to the sea. At one low point Caesar almost drowned in the Mediterranean. But things were not going well, and the Alexandrians managed to build a new fleet from scraps of wood recovered in the town. Eventually Caesar was able to take control of Pharos, and to keep the harbour open. When Caesar torched the Egyptian fleet in the harbour, the fire spread to the Palaces and part – maybe all – of the library was lost. Caesar’s own account of the struggles tells us that the city, built from stone and tile with very little wood, seemed virtually immune to fire. In fact four months of vicious land and sea battles combined with a guerrilla-style urban war brought devastation to Alexandria. … a most difficult campaign, awkward both in time and place, fought during winter within the city walls of a well-equipped and cunning enemy but though caught off his guard, and without military supplies of any kind, Caesar was victorious. Suetonius summarises and sanitises the Alexandrian Wars: Cleopatra and her siblings Ptolemy XIII, Arsinoë and Ptolemy XIV were all his guests – willing or unwilling – in the Palaces. Securing the Palaces, Caesar hastily sent for reinforcements. Caesar’s meagre band of soldiers soon found themselves outnumbered by Ptolemy’s far larger army of well-trained Gab-inians. In reality no one, Caesar excepted, was happy with the new power-sharing arrangement and, as Pothinos secretly summoned Ptolemy’s army from Pelusium, the Alexandrians started to arm their slaves. 2īut Lucan is writing the equivalent of modern tabloid journalism, and his entertaining account needs to be taken with more than the usual pinch of salt. She lay laden with all the Red Sea spoils on her neck and hair, faint beneath the weight of gems and gold. With pomp the Queen displayed her luxuries, as yet unknown to Roman fashions … There in her fatal beauty lay the Queen thickly daubed with unguents, content neither with her throne nor with her brother spouse. When Caesar had made an expensive peace between the pair, they celebrated with a banquet. …The wanton’s prayers prevailed and, by spending a night of ineffable shame with her judge, she won his favour. AD 65, tells us that Cleopatra threw a lavish banquet to celebrate this new beginning: With Cleopatra and Ptolemy officially reunited there was perhaps a faint chance that the threatened civil war might be averted. … The young queen had little to fear so long as she had at her side the greatest Roman of the moment.
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