Pompey

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. V. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1917.

Then Achillas saluted him in Greek, and invited him to come aboard the boat, telling him that the shallows were extensive, and that the sea, which had a sandy bottom, was not deep enough to float a trireme. At the same time some of the royal ships were seen to be taking their crews aboard, and men-at-arms were occupying the shore, so that there seemed to be no escape even if they changed their minds; and besides, this very lack of confidence might give the murderers an excuse for their crime.

Accordingly, after embracing Cornelia, who was bewailing his approaching death, he ordered two centurions to go into the boat before him, besides Philip, one of his freedmen, and a servant named Scythes, and while Achillas was already stretching out his hand to him from the boat, turned towards his wife and son and repeated the verses of Sophocles:—

  1. Whatever man unto a tyrant takes his way,
  2. His slave he is, even though a freeman when he goes.
[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag.2 p. 316. The recitation of these verses is a feature common also to the accounts of the tragedy in Appian (Bell. Civ. ii. 84) and Dio Cassius (xlii. 4.).)