original scheme of the Acropolis had vanished, and their attention was caught by this solitary pillar. The Crusaders were no scholars but they had heard of Pompey, so they called the pillar after him, and said that his head was enclosed in a ball on the top. (_see_ Belon’s View p. 83). The error has been perpetuated and the visitor must remember, firstly that the pillar has nothing to do with Pompey and secondly that it is a subordinate monument that the accident of time has preserved: it is a part and a small one of the splendours of the Temple of Serapis. The following remains can be visited (_see_ Plan 144). (i). _“Pompey’s Pillar.”_ 84 feet high and about 7 thick; made of red granite from Assouan. An imposing but ungraceful object. Architecture has evolved nothing more absurd than the monumental column; there is no reason that it should ever stop nor much that it should begin, and this specimen is not even well proportioned. The substructure is interesting. It is made up of blocks that have been taken from older buildings. On the eastern face (nearest turnstile) is a block of green granite with an inscription in Greek in honour of Arsinoe, the sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus (p. 14). On the opposite face (upside down in a recess) is the figure and hieroglyph of Seti I (B.C. 1350), suggesting the great age of the settlement on Rhakotis. Why and when was the pillar put up? Probably to the Emperor Diocletian, about A.D. 297. There is a four line Greek inscription to him on the granite base on the western side, about 10 feet up. It is illegible and indeed invisible from the ground. Generations of scholars have worked at it with the following result:— “To the most just Emperor, the tutelary God of Alexandria, Diocletian the invincible: Postumus, prefect of Egypt.” The formidable Emperor (p. 46) had crushed a rebellion here and was a god to be propitiated; the pillar, erected in the precincts of Serapis, would celebrate his power and clemency and presumably bore his statue on the top.—There is another theory: that the column was dedicated after the triumph of the Christians in 391 and glorifies the new religion; if this is so it must itself have previously been pagan, for by this date the Alexandrians had not the means or the power to erect a new monument of such a size.