Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

As he did so, suddenly, a Roman renegade drew a sword and ran him through the back. More blades were drawn. The blows rained down. “And Pompey, drawing his toga over his face with both hands, endured them all, nor did he say or do anything unworthy, only gave a faint groan.”12 And so perished Pompey the Great. Cornelia, stranded on the deck of the trireme, saw it all. But there was nothing she or any of the crew could do, not even when they saw the Egyptians decapitate the man who had so recently been the greatest in the Roman Republic, and leave his naked body as jetsam on the shore. Instead, his followers had to turn and escape to open sea, leaving only one of Pompey’s freedmen, who had accompanied his former master in the fishing boat, to prepare a pyre. In this labor, according to Plutarch’s weird and haunting account, he happened to be joined by an old soldier, a veteran of Pompey’s first campaigns; and together the two men completed their pious task. Once the body had been burned a stone cairn was raised to mark the site, but the dunes soon engulfed it and the memory of it was lost. Nothing beside remained. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretched far away.