couraged him, saying that he
should suffer no evil if he went forth to meet the army of the Arabians;
for he would himself send him helpers. Trusting in these things seen
in sleep, he took with him, they said, those of the Egyptians who were
willing to follow him, and encamped in Pelusion, for by this way the
invasion came: and not one of the warrior class followed him, but
shop-keepers and artisans and men of the market. Then after they came,
there swarmed by night upon their enemies mice of the fields, and ate up
their quivers and their bows, and moreover the handles of their shields,
so that on the next day they fled, and being without defence of arms
great numbers fell. And at the present time this king stands in the
temple of Hephaistos in stone, holding upon his hand a mouse, and by
letters inscribed he says these words: "Let him who looks upon me learn
to fear the gods."

So far in the story the Egyptians and the priests were they who made
the report, declaring that from the first king down to this priest of
Hephaistos who reigned last, there had been three hundred and forty-one
generations of men, and that in them there had been the same number of
chief-priests and of kings: but three hundred generations of men are
equal to ten thousand years, for a hundred years is three generations
of men; and in the one-and-forty generations which remain, those I mean
which were added to the three hundred, there are one thousand three
hundred and forty years. Thus in the period of eleven thousand three
hundred and forty years they said that there had arisen no god in human
form; nor even before that time or afterwards among the remaining kings
who arise in Egypt, did they report that anything of that kind had come
to pass. In this time they said that the sun had moved four times from
his accustomed place of rising, and where he now sets he had thence
twice had his rising, and in the place from whence he now rises he had
twice had his setting; and in the meantime nothing in Egypt had been
changed from its usual state, neither that which comes from the earth
nor that which comes to them from the river nor that which concerns
diseases or deaths. And formerly when Hecataios the historian was in
Thebes, and had traced his descent and connected his family with a god
in the sixteenth generation before, the priests of Zeus did for him much
the same as they did for me (though I had not traced my descent). They
led me into the sanctuar