Upon hearing this, the emperor answered: I heard of this speech of yours long ago from the mouths of many; but go to your home carefree, relieved of all fear by the mercy of your prince, who (as the philosopherSocrates; perhaps referring to the saying quoted by Stobaeus, , πόσῳ μᾶλλον χαριέστερον ἐποίησας, εἰ καὶ τοὑτους (= ἐχθρούς) εἰς φιλίαν μετετρόπωσας. advised) of his own accord and willingly strives to diminish the number of his enemies and increase that of his friends.

When he left there after completing the sacred rites, a letter was presented to him from the governor of Egypt, reporting that after laborious search for a new Apis bull, they had finally, after a time, been able to find one, which (in the belief of the people of that region) is an indication of prosperity, fruitful crops, and various blessings.

About this matter it will be in place to give a brief explanation. Among the animals consecrated by ancient religious observance, the better known are Mnevis and Apis.Cf. Diod. Sic. i. 21, 10; Hdt. iii. 27, 28; Strabo, xvii. 1, 31; Pliny, viii. 184 ff. MnevisOlder than Apis, but later neglected; his shrine was in Heliopolis. is consecrated to the Sun, but about him there is nothing noteworthy to be said; Apis to the moon.Later also to the Sun; Macrob. i. 21, 20. Apis, then, is a bull distinguished by natural marks of various forms,There were twenty-nine in all. and most of all conspicuous for the image of a crescent moon on his right side. When this bull, after its destined span of life,Twenty-five years. is plunged in the sacred fountIts location was a secret known only to the priests. and dies (for it is not lawful for him to prolong his life beyond the time prescribed by the secret authority of the mystic books), there is slain with the same ceremony a cow, which has been found with special marks and presented to him. After his death another Apis is sought amid public mourning; and if it has been possible to find one, complete with all its marks, it is taken to Memphis, famed for the frequent presence of the god Aesculapius.

And when he has been led into the city by a hundred priests and conducted to his chamber, he begins to be an object of worship; and it is said that by manifest signs he gives indications of coming events; and some of those who approach him he evidently rejects by unfavourable signs, as once (so we read)In A.D. 49 in Egypt. Soon after, Plancina, Piso’s wife, was suspected of poisoning him. Cf. Pliny, viii. 185. he turned away from Caesar Germanicus when he offered him food, and thus prophesied what soon after came to pass.

Accordingly, since the occasion seems to demand it, let us touch briefly on matters Egyptian, of which I discoursed at length in connection with the history of the emperors Hadrian and Severus,In lost books. telling for the most part what I myself had seen.

The Egyptian nation is the most ancient of all, except that in antiquity it vies with the Scythians.Cf. Justinus, ii. 1, 5. It is bounded on the southThe account of Ammianus is very confused and inexact. by the Greater Syrtes, the promontories Phycus and Borion, by the GaramantesA nomadic people of Libya. and various other nations. Where it looks directly east it extends to Elephantine and Meroë, cities of the Aethiopians, to the CatadupiAt the cataracts of the Nile. and the Red Sea, and to the Scenitic Arabs, whom we now call the Sercacens.Cf. xiv. 4, 1 ff. On the north it forms part of the boundless tract from which Asia and the provinces of Syria take their beginning. On the west its boundary is the Issiac Sea, which some have called the Parthenian.See xiv. 8, 10, note, and Index I., vol. i.

Now it will be in place to touch briefly on the most helpful of all rivers, the Nile, which Homer calls the Aegyptus,Cf. Odyss. iv. 477. On the Nile and its floods, see Hdt. ii. 19, 20; Diod. Sic. i. 36; Strabo, xvii. 1, 5; Pliny, v. 51 ff. and then to describe other remarkable things to be found in those lands.

The origin of the sources of the Nile (so at least I am wont to think) will be unknown also to future ages, as it has been up to the present. But, since the poets’ tales and dissenting geographers give varying accounts of this unknown subject, I shall succinctly set forth such of their views as in my opinion approach the truth.

Some natural philosophers affirm that in the tracts lying beneath the north, when the cold winters freeze everything, great masses of snow are congealed; that afterwards when these are melted by the heat of the blazing sun, they form clouds filled with flowing moisture, which are then driven towards the south by the Etesian winds,Periodic winds which blow yearly in the dog-days, according to Colum. xi. 2, 56, from August 1 to 30; cf. Pliny, ii. 124; xviii. 270 f. The , forerunners, mentioned below in section 7, begin eight days earlier. and when melted by the excessive warmth, are believed to cause the rich overflow of the Nile.

Others assert that it is by the Aethiopian rains, which are said to fall in abundance in those regions in the season of torrid heat, that its floods are raised at the appointed season of the year; but both these reasons seem to be out of harmony with the truth. For it is reported that in the land of the Aethiopians rains fall either not at all or at long intervals of time.

Another, more widespread opinion is, that when the Prodromoi blow and after them the Etesians for forty-five consecutive days, since they drive back the course of the river and check its speed, it swells with overflowing waves; and while the contrary wind blows against it, it increases more and more, since on the one side the force of the wind hurls it back and on the other the flow of its perennial springs forces it onward; and rising high it covers everything, and hiding the ground, over the low-lying plains it has the appearance of a sea.

But King Juba,The one whom Julius Caesar led in triumph; Octavian later made him his friend and restored his kingdom to him; Pliny, v. 16. relying upon the testimony of Punic books, thinks that the Nile rises in a mountain situated in Mauritania and looking down upon the ocean, and he says that this is proved by the fact that in those marshesThose from which the river flows. are found fishes, plants, and animals like those of the Nile.