Some two or three years after the death of Auletes, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus,[18] the pro-consular Governor of Syria, sent his two sons to Alexandria to order the Roman troops stationed in that city to join his army in his contemplated campaign against the Parthians. These Alexandrian troops constituted the Army of Occupation, which had been left in Egypt by Gabinius in B.C. 55 as a protection to Auletes. They were for the most part, as has been said, Gallic and German cavalry, rough men whose rude habits and bulky forms must have caused them to be the wonder and terror of the city. These _Gabiniani milites_ had by this time settled down in their new home, and had taken wives to themselves from the Greek and Egyptian families of Alexandria. In spite of the presence amongst them of a considerable body of Roman infantry veterans who had fought under Pompey, the discipline of the army was already much relaxed; and when the Governor of Syria’s orders were received there was an immediate mutiny, the two unfortunate sons of Bibulus being promptly murdered by the angry and probably drunken soldiers. When the affair was reported to the palace, Cleopatra issued orders for the immediate arrest of the murderers; and the army, realising that their position as mutinous troops was untenable, handed over the ringleaders apparently without further trouble. The prisoners were then sent by the Queen in chains to Bibulus; but he, being possessed of the best spirit of the old Roman aristocracy, sent back these murderers of his two sons to her with the message that the right of inflicting punishment in such cases belonged only to the Senate. History does not tell us what was the ultimate fate of these men, and the incident is not of great importance except in so far as it shows the first recorded act of Cleopatra’s reign as being one of tactful deliberation and fair dealing with her Roman neighbours.
Shortly after this, in the year B.C. 49, Pompey sent his son, Cnæus Pompeius, to Egypt to procure ships and men in preparation for the civil war which now seemed inevitable; and the Gabinian troops, feeling that a war against Julius Cæsar offered more favourable possibilities than a campaign against the ferocious Parthians, cheerfully responded to the call. Fifty warships and a force of 500 men left Alexandria with Cnæus, and eventually attached themselves to the command of Bibulus, who was now Pompey’s admiral in the Adriatic. It is said that Cnæus Pompeius was much attracted by Cleopatra’s beauty and charm, and that he managed to place himself upon terms of intimacy with her; but there is absolutely nothing to justify the suggestion that there was any sort of serious intrigue. I am of opinion that the stories of this nature which passed into circulation were due to the fact that the possibility of a marriage between Cleopatra and the young Roman had been contemplated by Alexandrian politicians. The great Pompey was master of the Roman world, and a union with his son, on the analogy of that between Berenice and the High Priest of Komana, was greatly to be desired. The proposal, however, does not seem to have obtained much support, and the matter was presently dropped.