Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

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,

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to whom the emperor had committed the investigation of the case, he drew his sword and fell upon it. He was (if I am right in so thinking) the poet Gallus, whom Vergil laments in a way in the latter part of the Bucolics[*](Eclogue, x.) and celebrates in gentle verse.

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.