When Caesar reached Alexandria on 2 October 48 bc, he certainly did not expect to be greeted by the embalmed head of Pompey, but even less did he expect to be bogged down for all of nine months in a local conflict which almost cost him his life, until 28 June 47, when he finally sailed from Alexandria for Syria. Suetonius writes, correctly, that in that lengthy period Caesar found himself fighting

It was a paradoxical war, in effect a trap of gigantic proportions: the victor of unforgettable wars and battles was besieged, with no chance of rapid reinforcements, by a very well-advised client king. The most ancient kingdom of the Mediterranean was taking its revenge on the last of many Roman generals accustomed to telling the Alexandrians what to do. Certainly there was, in the minds of Ptolemy's shrewd ‘counsellors’, an ‘Egyptian’ perspective on the episode that the Romans regarded as an interminable and inexplicable interlude in the civil war.