easily gets the mastery of him, but if he does not do so he has much
trouble.

The river-horse is sacred in the district of Papremis, but for the
other Egyptians he is not sacred; and this is the appearance which he
presents: he is four-footed, cloven-hoofed like an ox, flat-nosed, with
a mane like a horse and showing teeth like tusks, with a tail and voice
like a horse and in size as large as the largest ox; and his hide is
so exceedingly thick that when it has been dried shafts of javelins are
made of it. There are moreover otters in the river, which they consider
to be sacred: and of fish also they esteem that which is called the
_lepidotos_ to be sacred, and also the eel; and these they say are
sacred to the Nile: and of birds the fox-goose.

There is also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I did not
myself see except in painting, for in truth he comes to them very
rarely, at intervals, as the people of Heliopolis say, of five hundred
years; and these say that he comes regularly when his father dies; and
if he be like the painting he is of this size and nature, that is to
say, some of his feathers are of gold colour and others red, and in
outline and size he is as nearly as possible like an eagle. This bird
they say (but I cannot believe the story) contrives as follows:--setting
forth from Arabia he conveys his father, they say, to the temple of the
Sun (Helios) plastered up in myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the
Sun; and he conveys him thus:--he forms first an egg of myrrh as large
as he is able to carry, and then he makes trial of carrying it, and when
he has made trial sufficiently, then he hollows out the egg and places
his father within it and plasters over with other myrrh that part of the
egg where he hollowed it out to put his father in, and when his father
is laid in it, it proves (they say) to be of the same weight as it was;