Beyond these, there are not many sculptors of high repute; for, in the case of several works of very great excellence, the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the several artists combined. Such is the case with the Laocoön,[243] for example, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art of painting or of statuary. It is sculptured from a single block, both the main figure as well as the children, and the serpents with their marvellous folds. This group was made in concert by three most eminent artists, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. CHAPTER XX. OBELISKS. Thebaic stone, which is sprinkled all over with spots like gold, is found in Africa, adjacent to Egypt; being peculiarly adapted, from its natural properties, for the manufacture of hones. In the neighborhood of Syene, too, in Thebais, there is a stone found that is now known as syenite, but was formerly called red-spotted granite. Monarchs have entered into a sort of rivalry with one another in forming elongated blocks of this stone, known as obelisks,[244] and consecrated to the divinity of the Sun. The blocks had this form given to them in resemblance to the rays of that luminary, which are so called[245] in the Egyptian language. Mesphres, who reigned in the City of the Sun, Heliopolis, was the first who erected one of these obelisks, being warned to do so in a dream: and there is an inscription upon the obelisk to this effect.