Res Gestae

Finally, contrary to precedent, Caesar by entreaty had obtained this favour from the prefect, that he should be entrusted with the administration of the province of Second Belgium, which was overwhelmed by many kinds of calamities, and indeed with the proviso that no agent either of the prefect or of the governor should force anyone to pay the tax. So every one whom he had taken under his charge was relieved by this comforting news, and without being dunned they brought in their dues before the appointed date.

During these first steps towards the rehabilitation of Gaul, and while Orfitus was still conducting his second praefecture, an obelisk was set up at Rome in the Circus Maximus; and of it, since this is a suitable place, I shall give a brief account.

The city of Thebes, founded in primitive times and once famous for the stately structure of its walls and for the hundred approaches formed by its gates, was called by its builders from that feature Hecatompylos,[*]( Iliad, ix. 383 ff.; Mela, i. 9.) or Hundred-gated Thebes; and from this name[*](I.e. Thebes.) the province is to this day called the Thebaid.

When Carthage was in its early career of wide expansion, Punic generals destroyed Thebes by an unexpected attack; and when it was afterwards rebuilt, Cambyses, that renowned king of Persia, all his life covetous of others’ possessions, and cruel, overran Egypt and attacked Thebes, in the hope of carrying off therefrom its enviable wealth, since he did not spare even gifts made to the gods.

But while he was excitedly running about among the plundering troops, tripped by the looseness of his garments he fell headlong; and his own dagger, which he wore fastened to his right thigh, was unsheathed by the sudden force of the fall and wounded him almost mortally.

Again, long afterwards, when Octavian was ruling Rome, Cornelius Gallus, procurator[*](Gallus was praefectus Aegypti (not procurator) from 30 to 26 B.C.) of Egypt, drained the city by extensive embezzlements; and when on his return he was accused of peculation and the robbery of the province, in his fear of the bitterly exasperated nobility,

In this city, amid mighty shrines and colossal works of various kinds, which depict the likenesses of the Egyptian deities, we have seen many obelisks, and others prostrate and broken, which kings of long ago, when they had subdued foreign nations in war or were proud of the prosperous condition of their realms, hewed out of the veins of the mountains which they sought for even among the remotest dwellers on the globe, set up, and in their religious devotion dedicated to the gods of heaven.

Now an obelisk is a very hard stone, rising gradually somewhat in the form of a turning-post[*](A meta was one of the three conical columns on the end of the spina of a circus.) to a lofty height; little by little it grows slenderer, to imitate a sunbeam; it is four-sided, tapers to a narrow point, and is polished by the workman’s hand.

Now the infinite carvings of characters called hieroglyphics, which we see cut into it on every side, have been made known by an ancient authority of primeval wisdom.[*](Cf. Diod. Siculus, iii. 3, 5, who says that hieroglyphics were understood by the priests alone, and that the knowledge was handed down from father to son.)

For by engraving many kinds of birds and beasts, even of another world, in order that the memory of their achievements might the more widely reach generations of a subsequent age, they registered the vows of kings, either promised or performed.

For not as nowadays, when a fixed and easy series of letters

The principle of this thing for the time it will suffice to illustrate with these two examples: by a vulture they represent the word nature, because, as natural history records, no males can be found among these birds;[*](The females were said to be impregnated by the south or the east winds; Aelian, Hist. Anim. ii. 46; cf. Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 93.) and under the figure of a bee making honey they designate a king, showing by this imagery that in a ruler sweetness should be combined with a sting as well;[*](Seneca, De Clem. i. 19, 2 ff., compares a king to a bee.) and there are many similar instances.

And because sycophants, after their fashion, kept puffing up Constantius and endlessly dinning it into his ears that, whereas Octavianus Augustus had brought over two obelisks from the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, one of which was set up in the Circus Maximus, the other in the Campus Martius, as for this one recently brought in, he neither ventured to meddle with it nor move it, overawed by the difficulties caused by its size-let me inform those who do not know it that that early emperor, after bringing over several obelisks, passed by this one and left it untouched because it was consecrated as a special gift to the Sun God, and because being placed in the sacred part of his sumptuous temple, which might not be profaned, there it towered aloft like the peak of the world.

But Constantine,[*](That is, Constantine the Great.) making little account of that, tore the huge mass from its foundations; and since he rightly thought that he was committing no