18. Again, of medicine, the aid of which in our present extravagant and luxurious way of life is incessantly required, the study is carried on with daily increasing eagerness; so that while the employment be of itself creditable, it is sufficient as a recommendation for any medical man to be able to say that he was educated at Alexandria. And this is enough to say on this subject. 19. But if any one in the earnestness of his intellect wishes to apply himself to the various branches of divine knowledge, or to the examination of metaphysics, he will find that the whole world owes this kind of learning to Egypt. 20. Here first, far earlier than in any other country, men arrived at the various cradles (if I may so say) of different religions. Here they still carefully preserve the elements of sacred rites as handed down in their secret volumes. 21. It was in learning derived from Egypt that Pythagoras was educated, which taught him to worship the gods in secret, to establish the principle that in whatever he said or ordered his authority was final, to exhibit his golden thigh at Olympia, and to be continually seen in conversation with an eagle. 22. Here it was that Anaxagoras derived the knowledge which enabled him to predict that stones would fall from heaven, and from the feeling of the mud in a well to foretell impending earthquakes. Solon too derived aid from the apophthegms of the priests of Egypt in the enactment of his just and moderate laws, by which he gave great confirmation to the Roman jurisprudence. From this source too Plato, soaring amid sublime ideas, rivalling Jupiter himself in the magnificence of his voice, acquired his glorious wisdom by a visit to Egypt. 23. The inhabitants of Egypt are generally swarthy and dark complexioned, and of a rather melancholy cast of countenance, thin and dry looking, quick in every motion, fond of controversy, and bitter exactors of their rights. Among them a man is ashamed who has not resisted the payment of tribute, and who does not carry about him wheals which he has received before he could be compelled to pay it. Nor have any tortures been found sufficiently powerful to make the hardened robbers of this country disclose their names unless they do so voluntarily. 24. It is well known, as the ancient annals prove, that all Egypt was formerly under kings who were friendly to us. But after Antony and Cleopatra were defeated in the naval battle at Actium, it became a province under the dominion of Octavianus Augustus. We became masters of the dry Libya by the last will of king Apion. Cyrene and the other cities of Libya Pentapolis we owe to the liberality of Ptolemy. After this long digression, I will now return to my original subject. [121] Ammianus uses the phrase "worship of _the gods_," in opposition to Christianity. [122] Pro Archias Poeta, cap. xxii. [123] The fable was that Hecuba was turned into a bitch, from which this place was called κονος σῆμα, a dog's tomb.