ABSTRACT
In the consulship of Marcus Silanus and Lucius NorbanU3, Germanicus set out (A.D. 19) for Egypt to study its antiquities. His ostensible motive, however, was solicitude for the province. He sailed up the Nile from the city of Can opus, which was founded by the Spartans because Canopus, pilot of one of their ships, had been buried there, when Menelaus on his return to Greece was driven into a distant sea and to the shores of Libya. " Next he visited the vast ruins of ancient Thebes. There yet remained on the towering piles Egyptian inscriptions, with a complete account of the city's past grandeur.
