Transl. J. Hart 1749. Adapted from Herodian’s history of his own times, original book IV, chapters v–vi.
Antoninus thought it was proper to stay the night in the temple of the camp, to bind the army firmly to his interest and to make them his own by distributing large sums of money. The next day he went to the Senate house, attended by all the Praetorians, more heavily armed than usual when they only attended the Emperor in State. After the divine service was performed, he ascended the Imperial throne and delivered the following speech to the Senate.
‘I am not ignorant that every domestic murder is no sooner heard than detested, that the very name of parricide, the moment it strikes the ear, raises indignation and calumny. The unfortunate are always objects of compassion, the powerful of envy. In these cases, the vanquished party is thought to be injured, and he that gains the victory is always accused of having done wrong.
‘But if anyone will consider the case with reason, and not form his judgement from affection for the fallen person, and to maturely weigh and examine the motive and intent of both parties, he will see that it is sometimes not only reasonable but necessary for a man to defend himself, because to fall by injustice carries with it a strong suspicion of cowardice, while repelling violence with success has, besides the defending his safety, the added glory of a bold and manly spirit.
‘What frequent snares have been laid for my life, by poison and every other kind of covert treason, it is in your power to find out by torture. For I have ordered his ministers and servants to be present, that the truth of this might be discovered. Some have already been examined, and you may presently hear their confessions. In the meantime, let me inform you of his last wicked attempt on my life. He came to me in the presence of my mother, attended with armed men, with the intention of murder.
‘But having previous suspicion of his villainy, I boldly defeated his attempt and I viewed him not with the affection and nature of a brother, but as an avowed enemy. To punish such traitors is undeniably just, as shown by numerous examples. Romulus, the great founder of this city, would not bear his brother vilifying and deriding his work.
‘I pass over Germanicus and Titus without comment, the former being the brother of Tiberius and the latter the brother of Domitian. Marcus himself, that sage and meek philosopher, would not bear the arrogance of his son-in-law Lucius, but cut him off by secret treachery.
‘So too, I, while poisons were being prepared for my food, and the sword was already lifted to my throat, struck the blow and revenged myself on my enemy, for his actions sufficiently justify that name.
‘And therefore you should give thanks to the gods who have saved at least one of your emperors, and to cease henceforth your animosities and pass the remainder of your days in security and peace, looking only to one sovereign for protection. For as Jupiter reigns sole monarch of the gods, so he now gives the government of men into the hands of one supreme.’
These words were uttered with a strong and stern voice, after which having cast a look full of wrath and terror upon Geta’s friends, he left most of them trembling and pale, and returned with haste to the Imperial palace.
Here he soon let loose his fury against all in his brother’s service, whether ministers, counsellors, friends, officers or servants. Neither age nor sex was spared. Children and even infants were massacred, and their dead carcasses were thrown into carts with all the marks of indignity and contempt, and carried out of the city, burnt in huge heaps in the order they arrived.
No one who had the least familiarity or acquaintance with Geta escaped death. Wrestlers, charioteers, players, musicians, dancers and everyone he kept for the diversion of his eyes or ears shared the same fate. And those of the senators most distinguished by blood or wealth were, upon the weakest evidence or even surmise or hearsay, condemned and executed as sympathisers of Geta. He even put to death the eldest sister of Commodus, now an old woman, who was held in honour by all the former emperors, as she was the daughter of Marcus. He alleged, as a heinous charge against her, that she was found weeping in his mother’s apartment, and consoling her for the loss of her son. Plautian’s daughter, his divorced wife, who was now an exile in Sicily, his first cousin, named after his father Severus, Pertinax’s son, the son of Lucilla, Commodus’s sister – all the descendants of the former emperors, and those of the most illustrious families in the Senate, he cut down, as if he designed to extinguish the very relics of Imperial and patrician blood.
He then sent assassins to the provinces, and put to death the governors and procurators who were friends to his brother. Not a night passed without the frequent murder of men of every nation. The Vestal Virgins were buried alive for violating their oaths of virginity. And to complete all this, he committed an action so strange that it was almost without parallel. Some of the crowd at the races in the Circus mocked and laughed at one of his favourite charioteers. He took this to be a personal affront, and ordered the army to fall upon the spectators and to murder those who had the impudence to abuse the charioteer. The Praetorians, having being given the power of doing mischief, did not spend much time investigating who had so impudently affronted the Emperor, and it was impossible to find the persons among the numerous crowd of people, nor would any dare to confess the truth, so they seized all they could lay their hands on and either cut them to pieces or stripped them of all they had on them as a ransom for their lives, after which they reluctantly allowed them to escape.
Transl. Earnest Cary PhD, 1914, Adapted from an English translation of Dio’s Roman History, Epitome of book LXXVIII iii–xi.
Source: the Lacus Curtius website: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/78*.html
Antoninus, although it was evening, took possession of the legions, after crying out the whole way, as if he had been the object of a plot and his life were in danger. On entering the camp he exclaimed: ‘Rejoice, fellow-soldiers, for now I am in a position to do you favours.’ And before they heard the whole story he had stopped their mouths with so many and so great promises that they could neither think of nor say anything to show proper respect for the dead. ‘I am one of you,’ he said, ‘and it is because of you alone that I care to live, in order that I may confer upon you many favours; for all the treasuries are yours.’ And he further said: ‘I pray to live with you, if possible, but if not, at any rate to die with you. For I do not fear death in any form, and it is my desire to end my days in warfare. There should a man die, or nowhere.’ To the Senate on the following day he addressed various remarks, and then, after rising from his seat, he said as he reached the door: ‘Listen to an important announcement from me: that the whole world may rejoice, let all the exiles who have been condemned, on whatever charge or in whatever manner, be restored.’ Thus did he empty the islands of exiles and grant pardon to the basest of criminals; but before long he had the islands full again. Of the Imperial freedmen and soldiers who had been with Geta he immediately put to death some twenty thousand, men and women alike, wherever in the palace any of them happened to be; and he slew various distinguished men also, including Papinianus.
When the Praetorians accused Papinianus and Patruinus of certain things, Antoninus permitted them to kill the men, saying: ‘It is for you, and not for myself, that I rule; therefore, I defer to you both as accuser and judges.’ He rebuked the slayer of Papinianus for using an axe instead of a sword to kill him.
He also wished to take the life of Cilo, his tutor and benefactor, who had served as prefect of the city under his father, and whom he himself had often called ‘father.’ The soldiers who were sent to Cilo first plundered his silver plate, his robes, his money, and everything else of his, and then led him along the Sacred Way with the purpose of taking him to the palace and there putting him out of the way; he had only low slippers on his feet, since he had chanced to be in the bath when arrested, and was wearing a short tunic. The soldiers tore the clothing off his body and disfigured his face, so that the populace as well as the city troops began to make an outcry; accordingly, Antoninus, in awe and fear of them, met the party, and shielding Cilo with his cavalry cloak (he was wearing military dress), cried out: ‘Insult not my father! Strike not my tutor!’ As for the military tribune who had been bidden to slay him and the detail of soldiers sent with him, they were put to death, ostensibly because they had plotted Cilo’s destruction, but in reality because they had not killed him.
Antoninus pretended to love Cilo to such a degree that he declared, ‘Those who have plotted against him have plotted against me,’ and when commended for this by the bystanders, he continued: ‘Call me neither Hercules nor any other god’ – not that he did not wish to be termed a god, but because he did not want to do anything worthy of a god. He was naturally capricious in all things; for instance, he would bestow great honours upon people and then suddenly disgrace them quite without cause, and again he would spare the lives of those who least deserved it and punish those whom one would never have looked to see punished.
Julianus Asper, a man by no means to be despised either on account of his education or of his intelligence, was first exalted, together with his sons, by Antoninus, so that he paraded about surrounded by ever so many fasces at once, and then was suddenly insulted by him outrageously and sent back to his native town with abuse and in terrible fear.
Laenus was another whom he would have disgraced or even killed, had not the man been extremely ill. Antoninus before the soldiers called his illness wicked, because it did not permit him to display his own wickedness in the case of Laenus also.
He also made away with Thrasea Priscus, a man second to none either in birth or intelligence. There were many others, too, formerly friends of his, that he put to death.
‘All could I never recite near the names number over completely’ of the distinguished men that he killed without any justification. Dio, because the slain were very well known in those days, gives a list of their names; but for me it suffices to say that he made away with all the men he wished without distinction, ‘both guilty and guiltless alike,’ and he mutilated Rome by depriving it of its good men.
Antoninus belonged to three races; and he possessed none of their virtues at all, but combined in himself all their vices; the fickleness, cowardice, and recklessness of Gaul were his, the harshness and cruelty of Africa, and the craftiness of Syria, whence he was sprung on his mother’s side.
Veering from murder to sport, he showed the same thirst for blood in this field, too. It was nothing, of course, that an elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and hippotigris were slain in the arena, but he took pleasure in seeing the blood of as many gladiators as possible; he forced one of them, Bato, to fight three men in succession on the same day, and then, when Bato was slain by the last one, he honoured him with a brilliant funeral.
He was so enthusiastic about Alexander that he used certain weapons and cups which he believed had once been his, and he also set up many likenesses of him both in the camps and in Rome itself. He organised a phalanx, composed entirely of Macedonians, 16,000 strong, named it ‘Alexander’s phalanx,’ and equipped it with the arms that warriors had used in his day; these consisted of a helmet of raw ox-hide, a three-ply linen breastplate, a bronze shield, long pike, short spear, high boots, and sword. Not even this, however, satisfied him, but he must call his hero ‘the Augustus of the East’; and once he actually wrote to the Senate that Alexander had come to life again in the person of the Augustus, that he might live on once more in him, having had such a short life before. Towards the philosophers who were called Aristotelians he showed bitter hatred in every way, even going so far as to desire to burn their books, and in particular he abolished their common messes in Alexandria and all the other privileges that they had enjoyed; his grievance against them was that Aristotle was supposed to have been concerned in the death of Alexander. Such was his behaviour in these matters; nay more, he even took about with him numerous elephants, that in this respect, also, he might seem to be imitating Alexander, or rather, perhaps, Dionysus.
On Alexander’s account, then, he was very fond of the Macedonians. Once, after commending a Macedonian tribune for the agility with which he had leapt upon his horse, he asked him first: ‘From what country are you?’ Then, learning that he was a Macedonian, he asked again: ‘What is your name?’ And hearing that it was Antigonus, he further inquired: ‘And what was your father’s name?’ When the father’s name was found to be Philip, he declared: ‘I have all my desire,’ and promptly advanced him through all the other grades of the military career, and before long appointed him a senator with the rank of an ex-praetor. Again, there is the incident of a certain man who had no connection with Macedonia but had committed many crimes and for this reason was being tried by the emperor on an appeal. His name changed to be Alexander, and when the orator who was accusing him kept saying, ‘the bloodthirsty Alexander, the god-detested Alexander,’ Antoninus became angry, as if he himself were being called these bad names, and said: ‘If you cannot be satisfied with plain “Alexander,” you may consider yourself dismissed.’
Now this great admirer of Alexander, Antoninus, was fond of spending money upon the soldiers, great numbers of whom he kept in attendance upon him, alleging one excuse after another and one war after another; but he made it his business to strip, despoil, and grind down all the rest of mankind, and the senators by no means least. In the first place, there were the gold crowns that he was repeatedly demanding, on the constant pretext that he had conquered some enemy or other; and I am not referring, either, to the actual manufacture of the crowns – for what does that amount to? – but to the vast amount of money constantly being given under that name by the cities for the customary ‘crowning’, as it is called, of the emperors. Then there were the provisions that we were required to furnish in great quantities on all occasions, and this without receiving any remuneration and sometimes actually at additional cost to ourselves, all of which supplies he either bestowed upon the soldiers or else peddled out; and there were the gifts which he demanded from the wealthy citizens and from the various communities; and the taxes, but the new ones which he promulgated and the 10 per cent tax that he instituted in place of the 5 per cent tax applying to the emancipation of slaves, to bequests, and to all legacies; for he abolished the right of succession and exemption from taxes which had been granted in such cases to those who were closely related to the deceased. This was the reason why he made all the people in his Empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honouring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, inasmuch as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes. But apart from all these burdens, we were also compelled to build at our own expense all sorts of houses for him whenever he set out from Rome, and costly lodgings in the middle of even the very shortest journeys; yet he not only never lived in them, but in some cases was not destined even to see them. Moreover, we constructed amphitheatres and race-courses wherever he spent the winter or expected to spend it, all without receiving any contribution from him; and they were all promptly demolished, the sole reason for their being built in the first place being, apparently, that we might become impoverished.
The emperor himself kept spending the money upon the soldiers, as we have said, and upon wild beasts and horses; for he was for ever killing vast numbers of animals, both wild and domesticated, forcing us to furnish most of them, though he did buy a few. One day he slew a hundred boars at one time with his own hands. He also used to drive chariots, wearing the Blue costume. In everything he was very hot-headed and very fickle, and he furthermore possessed the craftiness of his mother and the Syrians, to which race she belonged. He would appoint some freedman or other wealthy person to be director of the games in order that the man might spend money in this way also; and he would salute the spectators with his whip from the arena below and beg for gold pieces like a performer of the lowest class. He claimed that he used the Sun-god’s method in driving, and plumed himself upon it. To such an extent was the entire world, so far as it owned his sway, devastated throughout his whole reign, that on one occasion the Romans at a horse-race shouted in unison this, among other things: ‘We shall do the living to death, that we may bury the dead.’ Indeed, he often used to say: ‘Nobody in the world should have money but me; and want it to bestow upon the soldiers.’ Once when Julia chided him for spending vast sums upon them and said, ‘There is no longer any source of revenue, just or unjust, left to us,’ he replied, exhibiting his sword, ‘Be of good cheer, Mother: for as long as we have this, we shall not run short of money.’ Moreover to those who flattered him he distributed both money and goods.
Julius Paulus, a man of consular rank, was a gossip and jester, sparing not even the emperors themselves, and Severus caused him to be placed in free custody. When he still continued, even under guard, to jest at the expense of the sovereigns, Severus sent for him and swore that he would cut off his head. But Paulus replied: ‘Yes, you can cut it off, but as long as I have it, neither you nor I can restrain it.’ So Severus laughed and let him off.
He bestowed on Junius Paulinus a million sesterces because the man, who was a jester, had been led to crack a joke at the emperor’s expense without meaning to do so. For Paulinus had said that Antoninus looked as if he were angry, the fact being that the emperor was wont to assume a somewhat savage expression. Indeed, he had no regard whatever for the higher things, and never even learned anything of that nature, as he himself admitted; and hence he actually held in contempt those of us who possessed anything like education. Severus, to be sure, had trained him in absolutely all the pursuits that tended to excellence, whether of body or of mind, so that even after he became emperor he went to teachers and studied philosophy most of the day. He used to be rubbed dry with oil, and would ride on horseback as much as a hundred miles; and he had practised swimming even in rough water. In consequence of these pursuits he was vigorous enough in a fashion, but he forgot his intellectual training as completely as if he had never heard of such a thing. And yet he was not lacking either in ability to express himself or in good judgement, but showed a very shrewd understanding of most matters and talked very readily. For, thanks to his authority and his impetuosity, as well as to his habit of blurting out recklessly everything alike that came into his head and of feeling no shame at all about airing all his thoughts, he often stumbled upon a happy phrase.
But this same emperor made many mistakes because of the obstinacy with which he clung to his own opinions; for he wished not only to know everything but to be the only one to know anything, and he desired not only to have all power but to be the only one to have power. Hence he asked no one’s advice and was jealous of those who had any useful knowledge. He never loved anyone, but he hated all who excelled in anything, most of all those whom he pretended to love most; and he destroyed many of them in one way or another. Many he murdered openly; but others he would send to uncongenial provinces whose climate was injurious to their state of health and thus, while pretending to honour them greatly, he quietly got rid of them by exposing those whom he did not like to excessive heat or cold. Hence, even if there were some whom he refrained from putting to death, yet he subjected them to such hardships that his hands were in fact stained with their blood.
Transl. Jones H.L., Loeb Classical Library 1917–1932. Strabo’s Geography, XVII.1.6–10.
Source: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/home.html
Lightly edited by the author.
6. Since Alexandria and its neighbourhood constitute the largest and most important part of this subject, I shall begin with them. The sea-coast, then, from Pelusium, as one sails towards the west, as far as the Canopic mouth, is about 1,300 stadia – the ‘base’ of the Delta, as I have called it; and thence to the island Pharos, 150 stadia more. Pharos is an oblong isle, is very close to the mainland, and forms with it a harbour with two mouths; the shore of the mainland forms a bay, since it thrusts two promontories into the open sea, and between these is situated the island, which closes the bay, for it lies lengthwise parallel to the shore. Of the extremities of Pharos, the eastern one lies closer to the mainland and to the promontory opposite it (the promontory called Lochias), and thus makes the harbour narrow at the mouth; and in addition to the narrowness of the intervening passage there are also rocks, some under the water, and others projecting out of it, which at all hours roughen the waves that strike them from the open sea. And likewise the extremity of the isle is a rock, which is washed all round by the sea and has upon it a tower that is admirably constructed of white marble with many stories and bears the same name as the island. This was an offering made by Sostratus of Cnidus, a friend of the kings, for the safety of mariners, as the inscription says, for since the coast was harbourless and low on either side, and also had reefs and shallows, those who were sailing from the open sea thither needed some lofty and conspicuous sign to enable them to direct their course to the entrance of the harbour. And the western mouth is also not easy to enter, although it does not require so much caution as the other. And it likewise forms a second harbour, that of Eunostus, which lies in front of the closed harbour which was dug by the hand of man. For the harbour which affords the entrance on the side of the above-mentioned tower of Pharos is the Great Harbour, whereas these two lie continuous with that harbour in their innermost recess, being separated from it only by the embankment called the Heptastadium. The embankment forms a bridge extending from the mainland to the western portion of the island, and leaves open only two passages into the harbour of Eunostus, which are bridged over. However, this work formed not only a bridge to the island but also an aqueduct, at least when Pharos was inhabited. But in these present times it has been laid waste by the deified Caesar in his war against the Alexandrians, since it had sided with the kings. A few seamen, however, live near the tower. As for the Great Harbour, in addition to its being beautifully enclosed both by the embankment and by nature, it is not only so deep close to the shore that the largest ship can be moored at the steps, but also is cut up into several harbours. Now the earlier kings of the Egyptians, being content with what they had and not wanting foreign imports at all, and being prejudiced against all who sailed the seas, and particularly against the Greeks (for owing to scarcity of land of their own the Greeks were ravagers and coveters of that of others), set a guard over this region and ordered it to keep away any who should approach; and they gave them as a place of abode, Rhacotis, as it is called, which is now that part of the city of the Alexandrians which lies above the ship-houses, but was at that time a village; and they gave over the parts round about the village to herdsmen, who likewise were able to prevent the approach of outsiders. But when Alexander visited the place and saw the advantages of the site, he resolved to fortify the city on the harbour. Writers record, as a sign of the good fortune that has since attended the city, an incident which occurred at the time of tracing the lines of the foundation: when the architects were marking the lines of the enclosure with chalk, the supply of chalk gave out; and when the king arrived, his stewards furnished a part of the barley-meal which had been prepared for the workmen, and by means of this the streets also, to a larger number than before, were laid out. This occurrence, then, they are said to have interpreted as a good omen.
7. The advantages of the city’s site are various; for, first, the place is washed by two seas, on the north by the Egyptian Sea, as it is called, and on the south by Lake Mareia, also called Mareotis. This is filled by many canals from the Nile, both from above and on the sides, and through these canals the imports are much larger than those from the sea, so that the harbour on the lake was in fact richer than that on the sea; and here the exports from Alexandria also are larger than the imports; and anyone might judge, if he were at either Alexandria or Dicaearchia and saw the merchant vessels both at their arrival and at their departure, how much heavier or lighter they sailed to or fro. And in addition to the great value of the things brought down from both directions, both into the harbour on the sea and into that on the lake, the salubrity of the air is also worthy of remark. And this likewise results from the fact that the land is washed by water on both sides and because of the timeliness of the Nile’s risings; for the other cities that are situated on lakes have heavy and stifling air in the heats of summer, because the lakes then become marshy along their edges because of the evaporation caused by the sun’s rays, and, accordingly, when so much filth-laden moisture rises, the air inhaled is noisome and starts pestilential diseases, whereas at Alexandria, at the beginning of summer, the Nile, being full, fills the lake also, and leaves no marshy matter to corrupt the rising vapours. At that time, also, the Etesian winds blow from the north and from a vast sea, so that the Alexandrians pass their time most pleasantly in summer.
8. The shape of the area of the city is like a chlamys cloak; the long sides of it are those that are washed by the two waters, having a diameter of about thirty stadia, and the short sides are the isthmuses, each being seven or eight stadia wide and pinched in on one side by the sea and on the other by the lake. The city as a whole is intersected by streets practicable for horse-riding and chariot-driving, and by two that are very broad, extending to more than a plethrum in breadth, which cut one another into two sections and at right angles. And the city contains the most beautiful public precincts and also the royal palaces, which constitute one-fourth or even one-third of the whole circuit of the city; for just as each of the kings, from love of splendour, was wont to add some adornment to the public monuments, so also he would invest himself at his own expense with a residence, in addition to those already built, so that now, to quote the words of the poet, ‘there is building upon building.’ All, however, are connected with one another and the harbour, even those that lie outside the harbour. The Museum is also a part of the royal palaces; it has a public walk, an exedra with seats, and a large house, in which is the common mess-hall of the men of learning who share the Museum. This group of men not only hold property in common, but also have a priest in charge of the Museum, who formerly was appointed by the kings, but is now appointed by Caesar. The Sema also, as it is called, is a part of the royal palaces. This was the enclosure which contained the burial-places of the kings and that of Alexander; for Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, forestalled Perdiccas by taking the body away from him when he was bringing it down from Babylon and was turning aside towards Aegypt, moved by greed and a desire to make that country his own. Furthermore, Perdiccas lost his life, having been slain by his soldiers at the time when Ptolemy attacked him and hemmed him up in a desert island. So Perdiccas was killed, having been transfixed by his soldiers’ sarissae when they attacked him; but the kings who were with him, both Aridaeus and the children of Alexander, and also Rhoxanê, Alexander’s wife, departed for Macedonia; and the body of Alexander was carried off by Ptolemy and placed in Alexandria, where it still now lies – not, however, in the same sarcophagus as before, for the present one is made of glass, whereas the one wherein Ptolemy laid it was made of gold. The latter was plundered by the Ptolemy nicknamed ‘Cocces’ and ‘Pareisactus,’ who came over from Syria but was immediately expelled, so that his plunder proved unprofitable to him.
9. In the Great Harbour at the entrance, on the right hand, are the island and the tower Pharos, and on the other hand are the reefs and also the promontory Lochias, with a royal palace upon it; and on sailing into the harbour one comes, on the left, to the inner royal palaces, which are continuous with those on Lochias and have groves and numerous lodges painted in various colours. Below these lies the harbour that was dug by the hand of man and is hidden from view, the private property of the kings, as also Antirrhodos, an isle lying off the artificial harbour, which has both a royal palace and a small harbour. They called it this to show it was a rival of Rhodes. Above the artificial harbour lies the theatre; then the Poseidium – an elbow, as it were, projecting from the Emporium, as it is called, and containing a temple of Poseidon. To this elbow of land Antony added a mole projecting still farther, into the middle of a harbour, and on the extremity of it built a royal lodge which he called Timonium. This was his last act, when, forsaken by his friends, he sailed away to Alexandria after his misfortune at Actium, having chosen to live the life of a Timon at the end of his days, which he intended to spend in solitude from all those friends. Then one comes to the Caesarium and the Emporium and the warehouses; and after these to the ship-houses, which extend as far as the Heptastadium. So much for the Great Harbour and its surroundings.
10. Next, after the Heptastadium, one comes to the harbour of Eunostus, and, above this, to the artificial harbour, which is also called Cibotus; it too has ship-houses. Farther in there is a navigable canal, which extends to Lake Mareotis. Now outside the canal there is still left only a small part of the city; and then one comes to the suburb Necropolis, in which are many gardens and groves and halting-places fitted up for the embalming of corpses, and, inside the canal, both to the Sarapium and to other sacred precincts of ancient times, which are now almost abandoned on account of the construction of the new buildings at Nicopolis; for instance, there are an amphitheatre and a stadium at Nicopolis, and the quinquennial games are celebrated there; but the ancient buildings have fallen into neglect. In short, the city is full of public and sacred structures; but the most beautiful is the Gymnasium, which has porticoes more than a stadium in length. And in the middle are both the court of justice and the groves. Here, too, is the Paneium, a ‘height,’ as it were, which was made by the hand of man; it has the shape of a fir-cone, resembles a rocky hill, and is ascended by a spiral road; and from the summit one can see the whole of the city lying below it on all sides. The broad street that runs lengthwise extends from Necropolis past the Gymnasium to the Canobic Gate; and then one comes to the Hippodrome, as it is called, and to the other streets that lie parallel, extending as far as the Canopic canal. Having passed through the Hippodrome, one comes to Nicopolis, which has a settlement on the sea no smaller than a city. It is thirty stadia distant from Alexandria. Augustus Caesar honoured this place because it was here that he conquered in battle those who came out against him with Antony; and when he had taken the city at the first onset, he forced Antony to put himself to death and Cleopatra to come into his power alive; but a little later she too put herself to death secretly, while in prison, by the bite of an asp or (for two accounts are given) by applying a poisonous ointment; and the result was that the empire of the sons of Lagus, which had endured for many years, was dissolved.