42 (return) [ Hormisdas, a fugitive prince of Persia, observed to the emperor, that if he made such a horse, he must think of preparing a similar stable, (the Forum of Trajan.) Another saying of Hormisdas is recorded, “that one thing only had _displeased_ him, to find that men died at Rome as well as elsewhere.” If we adopt this reading of the text of Ammianus, (_displicuisse_, instead of _placuisse_,) we may consider it as a reproof of Roman vanity. The contrary sense would be that of a misanthrope.] 43 (return) [ When Germanicus visited the ancient monuments of Thebes, the eldest of the priests explained to him the meaning of these hiero glyphics. Tacit. Annal. ii. c. 60. But it seems probable, that before the useful invention of an alphabet, these natural or arbitrary signs were the common characters of the Egyptian nation. See Warburton’s Divine Legation of Moses, vol. iii. p. 69-243.] 44 (return) [ See Plin. Hist. Natur. l. xxxvi. c. 14, 15.] 45 (return) [ Ammian. Marcellin l. xvii. c. 4. He gives us a Greek interpretation of the hieroglyphics, and his commentator Lindenbrogius adds a Latin inscription, which, in twenty verses of the age of Constantius, contain a short history of the obelisk.] 46 (return) [ See Donat. Roma. Antiqua, l. iii. c. 14, l. iv. c. 12, and the learned, though confused, Dissertation of Bargæus on Obelisks, inserted in the fourth volume of Grævius’s Roman Antiquities, p. 1897- 1936. This dissertation is dedicated to Pope Sixtus V., who erected the obelisk of Constantius in the square before the patriarchal church of at. John Lateran.] 4611 (return) [ It is doubtful whether the obelisk transported by Constantius to Rome now exists. Even from the text of Ammianus, it is uncertain whether the interpretation of Hermapion refers to the older obelisk, (obelisco incisus est veteri quem videmus in Circo,) raised, as he himself states, in the Circus Maximus, long before, by Augustus, or to the one brought by Constantius. The obelisk in the square before the church of St. John Lateran is ascribed not to Rameses the Great but to Thoutmos II. Champollion, 1. Lettre a M. de Blacas, p. 32.—M]