Res Gestae

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.