obeliscus
obeliscus, an obelisk
- An obelisk: trabes ex Syenite marmore fecere reges, obeliscos vocantes Solis numini sacratos, Plin. 36, 8, 14, § 64 sq.; cf. Amm.17, 4, 17; Isid. Orig. 18, 31; Tac. A. 3, 60.—
- II A rose-bud (post-class.), Aus. Idyll. 14, 27.—
- III A mark in books placed against suspected passages, an obelisk (†), Aug. Ep. 10, 2 (cf. obelus).
quadrati rotundus, obolisci globus
ut flammantis pyrae cacumina minacem obolisci proceritatem ‥ praecellerent
oboliscus, lapis quadratus
obolisci, genus lapidis
obolisci,stanrocces
telum vel ~us,flaa
obelus ‥, quod est signum grammaticum ad modum sagitte, confodiens et auferens superfluum in textu aliquo, quo multum utuntur theologi, corripitur; nam Virgilius corripit penultimam in suo diminutivo quod est ~us. et obelos scribitur in Greco per e breve, quod est sagitta
~os sepulchris tot adhiberi quot ex hostibus occiderant
- , ὀβελίσκος, an obelisk, Ta.
OBELISCUS(ὀβελίσκος) is a diminutive of Obelus (ὀβελός), which properly signifies a sharpened thing, a skewer or spit, and is the name given to certain works of Egyptian art.
Herodotus (Hdt. 2.111) uses ὀβελὸς in the sense of an obelisk.
A detailed description of such works would be inconsistent with the plan of this work, but some notice of them is required by the fact that several of them were transported to Rome under the emperors. Ammianus Marcellinus (Ammian. 17.4) says that an obelisk is a very rough stone in the shape of a kind of land-mark or boundary stone, rising with a small inclination on all sides to a great height; and in order that it may imitate a solar ray by a gradual diminution of its bulk, it terminates in a prolongation of four faces united in a sharp point. It is very carefully smoothed. Most ancient writers consider obelisks as emblematic of the sun's rays. (Comp. Plin. Nat.36.64.)An obelisk is properly a single block of stone, cut into a quadrilateral form, the sides of which diminish gradually, but almost imperceptibly from the base to the top of the shaft, but do, not terminate in an apex upon the top, which is crowned by a small pyramid, consisting of four sides terminating in a point. The Egyptian obelisks were mostly made of the red granite of Syene, from which place they were carried to the different parts of Egypt. They were generally placed in pairs at the entrance to a temple, close to other monuments of proportionate size. But the Romans, as Mr. Burn remarks, viewed them only as trophies, and, except those at the Mausoleum of Augustus, they stood apart from anything of equal height, presenting a naked and forlorn appearance. (Rome and Campagna, p. xliv.)
Obelisks were first transported to Rome under Augustus, who caused one to be erected in the Circus and another in the Campus Martius. (Plin. Nat.36.71; Mon. Ancyr. iv.) The former was restored in 1589, and is called at present the Flaminian obelisk. Its whole height is about 116 feet, and without the base about 78 feet: it now stands in the Piazza del Popolo. The obelisk in the Campus Martius was set up by Augustus as a sun-dial. It stands at present ,on the Monte Citorio, where it was placed in 1792. (Burn's Rome and Campagna, p. 333.) Its whole height is about 110 feet, and without the base about 71 feet. Another obelisk was brought to Rome by Caligula, and placed on the Vatican in the spina of the Circus of Caligula. (Plin. Nat.36.74, 16.201-Z2.) In drawings of the 16th century it is represented as still standing in its original place. It stands at present in front of St. Peter's, where it was placed in 1586, and its whole height is about 132 feet, and without the base and modern ornaments at top about 83 feet. But the largest obelisk at Rome is that which was originally transported from Heliopolis to Alexandria by Constantine, and conveyed to Rome by his son Constantius, who placed it in the Circus Maximus (Ammian. 17.4). Its present position is before the north portico of the Lateran church, where it was placed in 1588. Its whole height is about 149 feet. and without the base about 105 feet. (See Gibbon, Hist. of Rome, vol. 2. p. 400.)
There are nine other obelisks at Rome besides those mentioned above, but none of them are of historical importance. Three, however, which were found under and near the church of S. Stefano del Cacco, one as late as 1882, are interesting as remains of the temples of Isis and Serapis on that site. They are now in the Piazza della Rotonda, the Piazza della Minerva, and the Piazza del Collegio Romano. (See Middleton's Rome, p. 392.) There are also obelisks in various other places, as at Constantinople, Arles, Florence, Catana in Sicily, &c., some of which are works of Egyptian art, and others only imitations.
The preceding brief account is chiefly taken from Long's Egyptian Antiquities, vol. i. cc. 14, 15.
[W.S] [G.E.M](ὀβελίσκος). Literally, a small spit, diminutive of ὀβελός; whence applied to other things which possess a sharp or pointed extremity, like a spit; and especially to the tall, slender, rectangular columns, upon a narrow base, and terminating in a point at the top, which were originally invented by the Egyptians, and retain their ancient name with us (Pliny , Pliny H. N. xxxvi. 13; Ammian. xvii. 4, 6). The obelisk served in Egyptian art the same purpose as the στήλη of the Greeks and the columna of the Romans, marking the triumphs or the honours of some prince. They are monoliths, cut in four faces, and are broader at the base than at the top, near which the sides form the base of a pyramid in which the obelisk terminates. The sides are very slightly concave, in order to increase the impression of height, which varies from 25 1/2 inches to a hundred feet. Upon them are usually cut inscriptions in hieroglyphics and pictures recording the names and titles of kings. They were transported in rafts from their quarries at the time of the inundation of the Nile, and raised by means of inclined planes aided by machinery. Some of the obelisks give evidences of having originally had their tips covered with gilded bronze or gold. The use of obelisks antedates history, and has continued to modern times. Most of the Egyptian obelisks date from the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties (B.C. 1800-1300). The most famous two once stood at Heliopolis, whence they were brought by Rameses II. to Alexandria. These are the ones popularly known as “Cleopatra 's Needles,” of which one was taken to London in 1878 and set up on the Thames Embankment, and the other to New York in 1881, where it is now one of the ornaments of Central Park. There are several at Rome—in the Piazza della Trinità, the Piazza di Monte Citorio, the Piazza del Quirinale, the Piazza dell' Esquilino, the Piazza della Minerva, the Circo Agonale (Piazza Navona), the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, the Piazza del Popolo, and the Piazza di San Pietro, and others of no historical importance. The last named was brought from Heliopolis by Caligula, and is the only one at Rome that has never been broken. Its height is 132 feet. There are also ancient obelisks at Florence, Constantinople, Arles, Catana, and Paris, and one (Lepsius's) at Berlin, this being at once the oldest and the smallest of all, having a height of only 2 feet 1 1/2 inches. Of these small obelisks other specimens are to be seen in various European museums. No ancient obelisk ever attained the height of the modern American obelisk at Washington, though this, of course, is not a monolith. See Birch, Notes upon Obelisks (London, 1853); and Gorringe, Egyptian Obelisks (New York, 1885).