Battle of the Nile (47 BC)

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Battle of the Nile (47 BC)

The Battle of the Nile (47 BC) saw the combined Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
-Egyptian

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
armies of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

'Gaius Julius Caesar' , July 13, 100 BC ? March 15, 44 BC,) was a Roman Republic military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
and Cleopatra VII defeat those of the rival Queen Arsinoe IV and King Ptolemy XIII and secure the throne of Egypt.

After pursuing his rival Pompey

Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, commonly known as Pompey /'p?mpi/, Pompey the Great or Pompey the Triumvir , was a distinguished military and political leader of the late Roman Republic....
to Egypt, Caesar became intertwined in the Alexandrine civil war after his rival, Pompey

Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, commonly known as Pompey /'p?mpi/, Pompey the Great or Pompey the Triumvir , was a distinguished military and political leader of the late Roman Republic....
Magnus, was killed in an attempt to please Caesar, the arriving victor of Caesar's civil war

Caesar's civil war

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The Battle of the Nile (47 BC) saw the combined Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
-Egyptian

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
armies of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, commonly known as Pompey /'p?mpi/, Pompey the Great or Pompey the Triumvir , was a distinguished military and political leader of the late Roman Republic....
Magnus, was killed in an attempt to please Caesar, the arriving victor of Caesar's civil war

Caesar's civil war

The Roman civil war of 49 BC, sometimes called Caesar's Civil War, is one of the last conflicts within the Roman Republic. It was a series of political and military confrontations between Julius Caesar, his political supporters, and his Roman legion, against the traditionalist conservative faction in the Roman Senate, sometimes known as the O...
.

From August, 48 BC until January, 47 BC, Julius Caesar was besieged in Alexandria, Egypt with about 4,000 men. He was attempting to adjudicate the Egyptian Civil War between Ptolemy XIII and his sister Cleopatra. When Caesar began to appear to favor Cleopatra over him, Ptolemy fled, or was released, by Caesar and gathered his army, to besiege the Romans in a small portion of Alexandria.

The Egyptians were never able to completely cut the Romans off from reinforcements and resupply but had begun to get the upper hand by January. Caesar had requested reinforcements from his ally, Mithridates of Pergamum

Mithridates I of the Bosporus

Mithridates I of the Bosporus was a leading citizen of Pergamon and possibly one of the many bastard sons of the famous King Mithridates VI of Pontus....
, who marched overland from Asia Minor to assist him. Arriving on the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
delta in January, Mithridates defeated one Egyptian force sent to stop him. Caesar, getting a message that his allies were close, left a small garrison in Alexandria and hurried to meet them. The combined force, about 20,000 strong, met the Egyptians in February, 47 BC at the Battle of the Nile. The Egyptian army, equipped in the Greek manner, was probably about the same size.

Caesar attacked the Egyptians, in the traditional Roman manner, under a shower of pila

Pila

Pila [] is a town in northwestern Poland. It had 77,000 inhabitants as of 2001. It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship , previously capital of Pila Voivodeship ....
(plural of the Roman spear, pilum

Pilum

The pilum was a heavy javelin commonly used by the Military history of ancient Rome#Roman army in ancient times. It was generally about two meters long overall, consisting of an iron shank about 7 mm in diameter and 60 cm long with pyramidal head....
). The pike armed Egyptians were overwhelmed once the Romans used their shields and got past the pike’s point, where they began laying about with their short swords (gladius

Gladius

Gladius is a Latin word for sword. Early Ancient Rome swords were similar to those used by the Greeks. From the 3rd century BC, the Romans adopted swords similar to those used by the Celtiberians and others during the early part of the conquest of Hispania....
). The Roman legions destroyed an Egyptian fort, and after heavy fighting stormed Ptolemy's camp. Thousands fled, including Ptolemy, who reportedly drowned when his ship capsized. Egypt was now in the hands of Julius Caesar, who placed Cleopatra on the throne with another of her brothers, Ptolemy XIV. He then uncharacteristically lingered in Egypt until April, enjoying a liaison with the youthful queen.