Herodotus ascribes this pyramid to Cheops, a tyrannical and profligate sovereign. He barred the avenues to every temple, and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice to their gods; after which he compelled the people at large to perform the work of slaves. Some he condemned to hew stones out of the Arabian mountains, and drag them to the banks of the Nile; others were stationed to receive the same in vessels, and transport them to the edge of the Libyan Desert. In this service a hundred thousand men were employed, who were relieved every three months. Ten years were spent in the hard labour of forming the road on which these stones were to be drawn,--a work of no less difficulty and fatigue than the erection of the pyramid itself. This causeway is five stadia in length, forty cubits wide, and its greatest height thirty-two cubits; the whole being composed of polished marble, adorned with the figures of animals. Ten years were consumed in forming this pavement, in preparing the hill on which the pyramids are raised, and in excavating chambers under the ground. The burial-place which he intended for himself, he contrived to insulate within the building, by introducing the waters of the Nile. The pyramid itself was a work of twenty years; it is of a square form, every side being eight plethra in length and as many in height. The stones are very skilfully cemented, and none of them of less dimensions than thirty feet. Such is the account of Herodotus. Pliny and Diodorus Siculus agree in stating that not less than three hundred and sixty thousand men were employed in the work[363]. The pyramid next in size was erected by Cephrenus, and is thence called CEPHREN: he was the son of Cheops. These two princes, who were truly brothers by the similitude of their manners, seem to have striven which of them should distinguish himself most, by a barefaced impiety towards the gods, and a barbarous inhumanity to men. Cheops reigned fifty years, and his son Cephrenus fifty-six years after him. They kept the temples shut during the whole time of their long reigns, and forbade the offering of sacrifices under the severest penalties. On the other hand, they oppressed their subjects, by employing them in the most grievous and useless works; and sacrificed the lives of numberless multitudes of men, merely to gratify a senseless ambition of immortalising their names by edifices of an enormous magnitude and a boundless expense. It is remarkable, that those stately pyramids which have so long been the admiration of the whole world, were the effect of the irreligion and merciless cruelty of those princes.