The mark he had left on the world had endured for centuries and even the Egyptian kings were descended from one of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy. If Pompey had not fled across the sea to escape him, Julius knew he might well have traveled there just to see the glories he had heard described as a boy. He remembered standing once at a broken statue of the Greek king and wondering if his own life could be used so well. Now he would step onto the soil of Egypt as ruler of the greatest empire in the world. He need not bow his head to any man, or any man’s memory.

The thought brought a wave of homesickness as he realized spring would have come in the forum in Rome. The orators would be addressing the crowds, teaching points of philosophy and law for small coins. Julius had spent only a few months in his birthplace in almost twenty years and grown old in her service. He had left his youth on foreign lands and lost more than Rome had ever given him.

What had he gained in comparison to the lives of men he called friends? It was strange to think that he had spent the years so freely. He had earned the right to be first in his city, but he could take no joy in it. Perhaps the path had changed him, but he had expected more.

The main entrance to the port of Alexandria was through a deep-water passage between enclosing arms of rock that made the experienced men frown. The gap through which they sailed was narrow enough to be easily blocked, and Julius could not escape the feeling that the harbor was a natural trap.

As the ships glided under sail toward the docks, the heat seemed to increase and Julius wiped sweat from his brow. The soldiers on deck gestured in amazement at a vast square column of white marble built at the edge of the port. It stood higher than any building in Rome and Julius was touched by nostalgia for the days when he had nothing more to fear than a whipping from his tutors. The Pharos lighthouse had seemed impossibly distant then. He had never expected to pass so close and he craned his neck with the others, lost in wonder. Somewhere in the city lay the greatest library in the world, containing all the works of philosophy and mathematics that had ever been written. It was somehow obscene to bring his killers into such a place of wealth and learning, but soon his vengeance would be over and he would be free to see the lands of gold.

The water was busy with hundreds of other craft carrying the trade of nations. Julius’s merchant captains had to work to avoid collision as they approached the spit of land reaching out into the perfect anchorage that had once attracted Alexander.