332 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXX 1 



reigning at the time of the capture of Troy, erected one, a 

 hundred and forty cubits high. Having quitted the spot 

 where the palace of Muevis' j; stood, this monarch erected 

 another obelisk,^ one hundred and twenty cubits in height, 

 Imt of prodigious thickness, the sides being no less than 

 eleven cubits in breadth. (9.) It is said that one hundred 

 and twenty thousand men were employed upon this work ; w 

 and that the king, when it was on the point of being elevated, 

 being apprehensive that the machinery employed might not 

 prove strong enough for the weight, with the view of increas- 

 ing the peril that might be entailed by duo want of precaution 

 on the part of the workmen, had his own son fastened to the 

 summit; in order that the safety of the prince might at this 

 same time ensure the safety of the mass of stone. It was in his 

 admiration of this work, that, when King Cambyses took the 

 city by storm, and the conflagration had already reached the 

 very foot of the obelisk, li? ordered the fire to be extinguished ; 

 lie entertaining a respect for this stupendous erection which 

 he had not entertained for the city itself. 



There are also two other obelisks, one of them erected by 

 Zmarres,* and the other by Phius;* 7 both of them without 

 inscriptions, and forty-eight cubits in height. Ptolemams 

 Philadelphia had one erected at Alexandria, eighty cubits 

 high, which had been prepared by order of King Nectbebis:* 1 

 it was without any inscription, and cost far more trouble in 

 its carriage and elevation, than had been originally expended 

 in quarrying it. Some writers inform us that it was con- 

 veyed on a raft, under the inspection of the architect Satyrus ; 

 but CallixenUb w gives the name of Phcei.ix. For this pur- 



* 4 The name of the bull divinity "worshipped by the people of On, or 

 Ildiopolis ; while by the people ol Memphis it was known as Apis. 



5(5 This, Ilardouin says, was the same obelisk that was afterwords erect- 

 ed by Constantius, son of Constantino the Great, in the Circus Maximus 

 at Rome ; whence it was removed by Pope JScxtus V., in the year loSS, 

 to the Basilica of the I>ateran. 



* This name is probably mutilated : there arc about twenty different 

 readings of it. 



^ This name is also very doubtful. One reading is " Eraph," and Ilar- 

 douin attempts to identify him with the Pharaoh llophra of Jeremiah, xliv. 

 30, the Ouafrcs of the Chronicle of Eusebius, and the Aprirs of Herodotus. 



* % The Nectanabis, probably, of Plutarch, in his Life of Agosiluiis, and 

 the Nectnuthus of Xepos, in the Life of C'habrias. 



** Ciillixcnus of Khodes was u contemporary of Ptolemy Philadclphus, 



