[472] Said to have been a Stoic, and much admired by Augustus (Dion Cass. li. 16; Sueton. Aug. 89).
[473] Probably the same that is mentioned in the Life of Cato the Younger, c. 57.
[474] The circumstances of the death of Antyllus and Cæsarion are not told in the same way by Dion Cassius (li. 15). Antyllus had been betrothed to Cæsar’s daughter Julia in B.C. 36.
[475] The words are borrowed from Homer (Iliad, ii. 204):—
Οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη.
There could be no reason for putting Cæsarion to death as a possible competitor with Cæsar at Rome, for he was not a Roman citizen. As it was Cæsar’s object to keep Egypt, Cæsarion would have been an obstacle there.
[476] There were, as usual in such matters, various versions of this interview: it was a fit subject for embellishment with the writers of spurious history. The account of Plutarch is much simpler and more natural than that of Dion Cassius (li. 12), which savours of the rhetorical.
[477] He was the son of P. Cornelius Dolabella, once the son-in-law of Cicero, and one of Cæsar’s murderers. His son P. Cornelius Dolabella was consul A.D. 10.
[478] The word “companions” represents the Roman “comites,” which has a technical meaning. Young men of rank, who were about the person of a commander, and formed a kind of staff, were his Comites. See Horat. I. Ep. 8.
[479] The story of Dion (li. 14) is that Cæsar, after he had seen the body, sent for the Psylli, serpent charmers, to suck out the poison (compare Lucan, Pharsal. ix. 925). If a person was not dead, it was supposed that the Psylli could extract the poison and save the life.