Res Gestae

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