Brutus

Many were his memorable achievements in meting out rewards or punishments to those who deserved them, but I shall here describe only that in which both he himself and the chief men of Rome took especial pleasure.

When Pompey the Great, after he had been stripped of his great power by Caesar, put in as a fugitive at Pelusium in Egypt, the guardians of the boy king were holding a council with their friends, at which opinions differed. Some thought they should receive Pompey, others that they should repulse him from Egypt.

But a certain Theodotus, of Chios, who was attached to the king as a paid teacher of rhetoric, and was at this time deemed worthy of a place in the council for lack of better men, declared that both were wrong, both those who would admit and those who would reject Pompey;

for there was but one advantageous course in view of the circumstances, and that was to receive him and put him to death.