Res Gestae

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.