The first statue of massive gold, without any hollowness within, and anterior to any of those statues of bronze even, which are known as “holosphyratæ,”912 is said to have been erected in the Temple of the goddess Anaïtis. To what particular region this name belongs, we have already913 stated, it being that of a divinity914 held in the highest veneration by the nations in that part of the world. This statue was carried off during the wars of Antonius with the people of Parthia; and a witty saying is told, with reference to it, of one of the veterans of the Roman army, a native of Bononia. Entertaining on one occasion the late Emperor Augustus at dinner, he was asked by that prince whether he was aware that the person who was the first to commit this violence upon the statue, had been struck with blindness and paralysis, and then expired. To this he made answer, that at that very moment Augustus was making his dinner off of one of her legs, for that he himself was the very man, and to that bit of plunder he had been indebted for all his fortune.915

As regards statues of human beings, Gorgias of Leontini916 was the first to erect a solid statue of gold, in the Temple at Delphi, in honour of himself, about the seventieth917 Olympiad: so great were the fortunes then made by teaching the art of oratory!