[738] The quotation is from the Hercules Ἡρακλῆς μαινόμενος of Euripides (v. 173), one of the extant plays.
[739] See Life of Cæsar, c. 72.
[740] Another allusion to the Anticato. It is difficult to see what probable charge Cæsar could make of this circumstance. The meaning of Plutarch may easily be conjectured (Drumann, Porcii, p. 192).
[741] See the Life of Pompeius, c. 65; and the Life of Cæsar, c. 39.
[742] Cn. Pompeius, the elder son of Pompeius Magnus is meant. It is conjectured that the word "young" (νέον) has fallen out of the text (compare c. 58). He had been sent by his father to get ships, and he arrived with an Egyptian fleet on the coast of Epirus shortly before the battle of Pharsalus. On the news of the defeat of Pompeius Magnus, the Egyptians left him (Dion Cassius, 42. c. 12).
[743] He must also have seen Cornelia, for Sextus was with her. Life of Pompeius, c. 78.
[744] These people are described by Herodotus (iv. 173) as having been all destroyed by the sands of the deserts, and their country, which was on the Syrtis, being occupied by the Nasamones.
Lucan (Pharsalia, ix. 891) has made the Psylli occupy a conspicuous place in the march of Cato.
"Gens unica terras
Incolit a sævo serpentum innoxia morsu,
Marmaridæ Psylli: par lingua potentibus herbis,
Ipse cruor tutus, nullumque admittere virus
Vel cantu cessante potest."
Seven days is much too little for the march from Cyrene to the Carthaginian territory, and there is either an error in Plutarch's text or a great error in his geography.