Res Gestae

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.

But Constantine,[*](That is, Constantine the Great.) making little account of that, tore the huge mass from its foundations; and since he rightly thought that he was committing no

After these provisions, the aforesaid emperor departed this life and the urgency of the enterprise waned, but at last the obelisk was loaded on the ship, after long delay, and brought over the sea and up the channel of the Tiber, which seemed to fear that it could hardly forward over the difficulties of its outward course to the walls of its foster-child the gift which the almost unknown Nile had sent. But it was brought to the vicus Alexandri[*](The origin of the name is unknown; it was obviously on the Tiber, below Rome.) distant three miles from the city. There it was put on cradles[*](Chamulcus, which occurs only here, is the Greek χαμουλκός glossed by Latin traha (cf. Virg. Georg. i. 164). Here, a kind of sledge or platform without wheels, on which ships were launched or drawn up on the shore.) and carefully drawn through the Ostian Gate and by the Piscina Publica[*](One of the regions of the city, a part of the Aventine Hill.) and brought into the Circus Maximus.