|
He too left a pyramid, but much inferior in size to his father's.
It is a square, each side of which falls short of three plethra by
twenty feet, and is built for half its height of the stone of
Ethiopia. Some of the Greeks call it the work of Rhodopis the
courtesan, but they report falsely. It seems to me that these persons
cannot have any real knowledge who Rhodopis was; otherwise they would
scarcely have ascribed to her a work on which uncounted treasures, so
to speak, must have been expended. Rhodopis also lived during the
reign of Amasis, not of Mycerinus, and was thus very many years
later than the time of the kings who built the pyramids. She was a
Thracian by birth, and was the slave of Iadmon, son of
Hephaestopolis, a Samian. Aesop, the fable-writer, was one of
her fellow-slaves. That Aesop belonged to Iadmon is proved by many
facts - among others, by this. When the Delphians, in obedience to
the command of the oracle, made proclamation that if any one claimed
compensation for the murder of Aesop he should receive it, the person
who at last came forward was Iadmon, grandson of the former Iadmon,
and he received the compensation. Aesop therefore must certainly have
been the former Iadmon's slave.
|
|