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foreign to his nature.
    It is something to do with the landscape. Even though Rome is so great a city, we Romans are by instinct and inheritance country-dwellers. We are comforted by trees, mountains, rivers, lakes, and the sea. Our rivers are friendly things compared to the brooding presence of the Nile. We are happiest, and most at ease, in our country villas. The gods of our country districts are friendly beings; every grove and spring has its tutelary spirit, and it is easy to live in harmony with such beings: easy and pleasant. There is no country, no landscape, in Egypt: instead, a waste of sands interrupted only by monuments to the dead. We Romans have a proper reverence for our ancestors, and proudly display the masks of those who have achieved renown in the service of the Republic. The Egyptians, intoxicated by the idea of death, abase themselves before the wary spirits of their dead. The land is in thrall to the idea of death.
    Of course, Alexandria is a great city, the most wonderful in the world. Alexandria, being Greek in its foundation, is not characteristic of Egypt: with its libraries, law-courts, miles of warehouses, harbours busy with the shipping of all nations of the civilised world, there is much to delight, little - it might seem - to dismay the visitor. Yet, even Alexandria has been infected by the poison of Egypt. There was an old woman in the marketplace who was said to be two hundred years old; she sold magic potions to ensure longevity. My cousin Marcus Brutus wished her to be prosecuted for fraud; Caesar only laughed. "She does no harm," he said; erroneously. Our arrival was horrid.
    After the victory at Pharsalus, where Pompey's chief army was utterly destroyed, the Great One had fled to Egypt. The country is of course nominally independent, but Roman influence has long been considerable there, and Pompey had formerly championed the cause of King Ptolemy when he was driven out of his country by rebels. Ptolemy had come to Rome, where Pompey had spoken for him in the Senate, and the King had employed lavish bribery to win still more support; he had further contrived to assassinate various members of the opposing party who had also come to Rome to plead their case. No Egyptian thinks anything of assassination, and it was said that the King's success in this enterprise regained much of the respect which he had lost. Even so, he was not successful in his main endeavour, for at that time Pompey had many enemies himself in the Senate, who feared that the restoration of Ptolemy by Roman arms would only add to Pompey's power, since Ptolemy, understanding little about our Constitution, would feel indebted to the Great One rather than to the Senate. So nothing was done on his behalf, until, as a result of the famous meeting between Pompey, Caesar and the millionaire booby Marcus Crassus at Lucca, the three of them formed what Cicero (in private) described as "a criminal conspiracy to share sovereignty and dominate the Republic". Then, as a result of their new ascendancy, Pompey's policy was put into practice, and Gabinius was ordered to lead his army from Syria and restore King Ptolemy. This he did, for he was an efficient officer, despite being also a habitual drunkard; and in any case the Egyptian army was no match for Roman legions. King Ptolemy was now dead, but had been succeeded by his two children, a boy also called Ptolemy, and a daughter Cleopatra.
    In the Egyptian fashion, these were married to each other. It is very strange. As you may know, the Egyptian royal family is really Greek, the first Ptolemy having been one of Alexander the Great's generals, but they have so far adapted themselves to the base customs of the country they rule as to be quite happy to practise incest. Normally Greeks, however degenerate, are as averse to incest as we Romans are. The prohibition of incest is apparently of great antiquity, and I would have thought it innate in mankind; and yet the Egyptians appear to find it