ldness, paid all the taxes due from them before the
appointed day, without any demand being made upon them.

IV.

Sec. 1. While Julian was thus beginning to put Gaul into a better
condition, and while Orfitus was still governor of the second province,
an obelisk was erected at Rome, in the Circus Maximus, concerning which,
as this seems a convenient opportunity, I will mention a few
particulars.

2. The city of Thebes, in Egypt, built in remote ages, with enormous
walls, and celebrated also for entrances by a hundred gates, was from
this circumstance called by its founders +hekatompylos+
(_Hecatompylos_); and from the name of this city the whole district is
known as Thebais.

3. When Carthage began to rise in greatness, the Carthaginian generals
conquered and destroyed Thebes by a sudden attack. And after it was
rebuilt, Cambyses, the celebrated king of Persia, who throughout his
whole life was covetous and ferocious, overran Egypt, and again attacked
this city that he might plunder it of its wealth, which was enough to
excite his envy; and he spared not even the offerings which had been
made to the gods.

4. And while he was in his savage manner moving to and fro among his
plunderers, he got entangled in his own flowing robes, and fell on his
face, and by the fall his dagger, which he wore close to his thigh, got
loose from the scabbard, and he was mortally wounded and died.

5. And long afterwards, Cornelius Gallus, who was governor of Egypt at
the time when Octavianus was emperor of Rome, impoverished the city by
plundering it of most of its treasuries; and returning to Rome on being
accused of theft and of laying waste the province, he, from fear of the
nobles, who were bitterly indignant against him, as one to whom the
emperor had committed a most honourable task, fell on his own sword and
so died. If I mistake not, he is the same person as Gallus the poet,
whose loss Virgil deplores at the end of his Bucolics, celebrating his
memory in sweet verses.

6. In this city of Thebes, among many works of art and different
structures recording the tales relating to the Egyptian deities, we saw
several obelisks in their places, and others which had been thrown down
and broken; which the ancient kings, when elated at some victory or at
the general prosperity of their affairs, had caused to be hewn out of
mountains in distant parts of the world, and erected in honour of the
gods, to whom they solemnly consecrated t