th daily increasing eagerness; so that while the employment be of
itself creditable, it is sufficient as a recommendation for any medical
man to be able to say that he was educated at Alexandria. And this is
enough to say on this subject.

19. But if any one in the earnestness of his intellect wishes to apply
himself to the various branches of divine knowledge, or to the
examination of metaphysics, he will find that the whole world owes this
kind of learning to Egypt.

20. Here first, far earlier than in any other country, men arrived at
the various cradles (if I may so say) of different religions. Here they
still carefully preserve the elements of sacred rites as handed down in
their secret volumes.

21. It was in learning derived from Egypt that Pythagoras was educated,
which taught him to worship the gods in secret, to establish the
principle that in whatever he said or ordered his authority was final,
to exhibit his golden thigh at Olympia, and to be continually seen in
conversation with an eagle.

22. Here it was that Anaxagoras derived the knowledge which enabled him
to predict that stones would fall from heaven, and from the feeling of
the mud in a well to foretell impending earthquakes. Solon too derived
aid from the apophthegms of the priests of Egypt in the enactment of his
just and moderate laws, by which he gave great confirmation to the Roman
jurisprudence. From this source too Plato, soaring amid sublime ideas,
rivalling Jupiter himself in the magnificence of his voice, acquired
his glorious wisdom by a visit to Egypt.

23. The inhabitants of Egypt are generally swarthy and dark
complexioned, and of a rather melancholy cast of countenance, thin and
dry looking, quick in every motion, fond of controversy, and bitter
exactors of their rights. Among them a man is ashamed who has not
resisted the payment of tribute, and who does not carry about him wheals
which he has received before he could be compelled to pay it. Nor have
any tortures been found sufficiently powerful to make the hardened
robbers of this country disclose their names unless they do so
voluntarily.

24. It is well known, as the ancient annals prove, that all Egypt was
formerly under kings who were friendly to us. But after Antony and
Cleopatra were defeated in the naval battle at Actium, it became a
province under the dominion of Octavianus Augustus. We became masters of
the dry Libya by the last will of king Apion. Cyrene and the other