their teachers in religion; and in the dog Cerberus, the judge Minos,
the boat of Charon, and the river Styx of their mythology, we see a
clear proof that it was in Egypt that the Greeks gained their faint
glimpse of the immortality of the soul, a day of judgment, and a future
state of rewards and punishments; and, now that Rome was in close
intercourse with Egypt, the Romans were equally ready to borrow thence
their religious ceremonies. They brought to Rome the Egyptian opinions
with the statues of the gods. They ran into the new superstition to
avoid the painful uneasiness of believing nothing, and, though the
Romans ridiculed their own gods, they believed in those of Egypt. So
fashionable was the worship of Isis and Serapis becoming in Italy, that
Augustus made a law that no Egyptian ceremonies should enter the city
or even the suburbs of Rome. His subjects might copy the luxuries, the
follies, and the vices of the Alexandrians, but not the gloomy devotion
of the Egyptians. But the spread of opinions was not so checked;
even Virgil taught the doctrine of the Egyptian millennium, or the
resurrection from the dead when the thousand years were ended; and the
cripple asking for alms in the streets of Rome would beg in the name of
the holy Osiris.

Egypt felt no change on the death of Augustus. The province was well
governed during the whole of the reign of Tiberius, and the Alexandrians
completed the beautiful temple to his honour, named the Sebaste, or
Caesar's Temple. It stood by the side of the harbour, and was surrounded
with a sacred grove. It was ornamented with porticoes, and fitted up
with libraries, paintings, and statues, and was the most lofty building
in the city. In front of this temple they set up two ancient obelisks,
which had been made by Thutmosis III. and carved by Ramses II., and
which, like the other monuments of the Theban kings, have outlived
all the temples and palaces of their Greek and Roman successors. These
obelisks are now generally known as "Cleopatra's Needles." One of them,
in 1878, was taken to London and set up on the Thames Embankment; the
other was soon afterward brought to New York, and is now in Central Park
in that city. It is sixty-seven feet high to its sharpened apex, and
seven feet, seven inches in diameter at its base. On its face are
deeply incised inscriptions in hieroglyphic character, giving the names
Thutmosis III., Ramses II., and Seti II.

[Illustration: 022b.jpg FRAG