For the tale of Pompey's demise and Caesar's doings in Alexandria, our sources are rich, though not always in agreement. Dio and Appian in their histories of Rome, Plutarch in his lives of Caesar and Pompey, Suetonius in his life of Caesar, Lucan in his epic poem Pharsalia, and Caesar in his memoir of the Civil War all recount various aspects of the tale. Pliny gives us exact measurements regarding the inundation of the Nile; this is the translation of H. Rackham: "The largest rise up to date was one of 27 feet… and the smallest 71/2 feet in the year of the war of Pharsalus, as if the river were trying to avert the murder of Pompey by a sort of portent."

From Strabo, writing in 25 B.C., we learn what little we know of the layout of ancient Alexandria, which remains unexcavated by modern archaeologists; the exact location of the Library and numerous other landmarks is unknown. The Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon by Achilles Tatius, who wrote in the second century a.d., provides a small clue about the uncertain location of the Tomb of Alexander. Lucan tells us that Caesar visited Alexander's remains. (So did several later Roman emperors; Dio tells us Augustus, wishing to adorn the mummy with a gold crown, inadvertently broke off its nose.)

Among modern historians, I found these books to be of particular interest: Jack Lindsay's Cleopatra (Constable amp; Company Ltd., London, 1971), Arthur Weigall's The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt

(G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York amp; London, 1924), Hans Volkmann's Cleopatra, A Study in Politics and Propaganda (Sagamore Press, New York 1958), Jean-Yves Empereur's Alexandria, Jewel of Egypt (Abrams, New York, 2002), and volume III of T. Rice Holmes's monumental The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire (The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1923). I derived great pleasure from Jane Wilson Joyce's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (Cornell University Press, Ithaca amp; London, 1993). Cleopatra of Egypt, from History to Myth (The British Museum Press, London, 2001), an exhibition catalogue edited by Susan Walker and Peter Higgs, contains a great wealth of images.

My thanks to Penni Kimmel, Rick Solomon, and Rick Lovin for reading the manuscript; to my tireless agent, Alan Nevins; and to my editor at St. Martin's Press, Keith Kahla.

I will close with this observation, which comes from Dio, writing about the volatile situation in Alexandria at the time of Caesar's visit: "The Egyptians," he says (again, in Foster's translation), "are the most excessively religious people on earth and wage wars even against one another on account of their beliefs, since their worship is not a unified system, but different branches of it are diametrically opposed one to another." The hardheaded, endlessly pragmatic Romans, with their affinity for realpolitik, did not know quite what to make of the otherworldly fanaticisms of the Egyptians. It may give us pause that Dio's observation is as true about the inhabitants of the region today as it was in the time of Cleopatra.