I’ve been wanting to post these little translations I do for my dictionary, partly for feedback on quality, partly to talk about the texts themselves. In his Natural History, 36.16, Pliny gives us his opinion of the pyramids:
Dicantur obiter et pyramides in eadem Ægypto, regum pecuniæ otiosa ac stulta ostentatio.
And the pyramids, also in Egypt, should be mentioned in passing, a useless and foolish exhibition of the wealth of their kings.
The eadem in Ægypto apparently refers to the previous sections on obelisks. The other translations I checked didn’t seem to care to render it.
[More on pyramis.]
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