Delphi Complete Works of Pliny the Elder

by Pliny the Elder

  (11.) The third obelisk at Rome is in the Vaticanian Circus, which was constructed by the Emperors Caius and Nero; this being the only one of them all that has been broken in the carriage. Nuncoreus, the son of Sesoses, made it: and there remains another by him, one hundred cubits in height, which, by order of an oracle, he consecrated to the Sun, after having lost his sight and recovered it.

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  CHAP. 16. (12.)

  MARVELLOUS WORKS IN EGYPT. THE PYRAMIDS.

  We must make some mention, too, however cursorily, of the Pyramids of Egypt, so many idle and frivolous pieces of ostentation of their resources, on the part of the monarchs of that country. Indeed, it is asserted by most persons, that the only motive for constructing them, was either a determination not to leave their treasures to their successors or to rivals that might be plotting to supplant them, or to prevent the lower classes from remaining unoccupied. There was great vanity displayed by these men in constructions of this description, and there are still the remains of many of them in an unfinished state. There is one to be seen in the Nome of Arsinoïtes; two in that of Memphites, not far from the Labyrinth, of which we shall shortly have to speak; and two in the place where Lake Mœris was excavated, an immense artificial piece of water, cited by the Egyptians among their wondrous and memorable works: the summits of the pyramids, it is said, are to be seen above the water.

  The other three pyramids, the renown of which has filled the whole earth, and which are conspicuous from every quarter to persons navigating the river, are situate on the African side of it, upon a rocky sterile elevation. They lie between the city of Memphis and what we have mentioned as the Delta, within four miles of the river, and seven miles and a-half from Memphis, near a village known as Busiris, the people of which are in the habit of ascending them.

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  CHAP. 17.

  THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX.

  In front of these pyramids is the Sphinx, a still more wondrous object of art, but one upon which silence has been observed, as it is looked upon as a divinity by the people of the neighbourhood. It is their belief that King Harmaïs was buried in it, and they will have it that it was brought there from a distance. The truth is, however, that it was hewn from the solid rock; and, from a feeling of veneration, the face of the monster is coloured red. The circumference of the head, measured round the forehead, is one hundred and two feet, the length of the feet being one hundred and forty-three, and the height, from the belly to the summit of the asp on the head, sixty-two.

  The largest Pyramid is built of stone quarried in Arabia: three hundred and sixty thousand men, it is said, were employed upon it twenty years, and the three were completed in seventy-eight years and four months. They are described by the following writers: Herodotus, Euhemerus, Duris of Samos, Aristagoras, Dionysius, Artemidorus, Alexander Polyhistor, Butoridas, Antisthenes, Demetrius, Demoteles, and Apion. These authors, however, are disagreed as to the persons by whom they were constructed; accident having, with very considerable justice, consigned to oblivion the names of those who erected such stupendous memorials of their vanity. Some of these writers inform us that fifteen hundred talents were expended upon radishes, garlic, and onions alone.

  The largest Pyramid occupies seven jugera of ground, and the four angles are equidistant, the face of each side being eight hundred and thirty-three feet in length. The total height from the ground to the summit is seven hundred and twenty-five feet, and the platform on the summit is sixteen feet and a-half in circuit. Of the second Pyramid, the faces of the four sides are each seven hundred and fifty-seven feet and a-half in length. The third is smaller than the others, but far more prepossessing in appearance: it is built of Æthiopian stone, and the face between the four corners is three hundred and sixty-three feet in extent. In the vicinity of these erections, there are no vestiges of any buildings left. Far and wide there is nothing but sand to be seen, of a grain somewhat like a lentil in appearance, similar to that of the greater part of Africa, in fact.

  The most difficult problem is, to know how the materials for construction could possibly be carried to so vast a height. According to some authorities, as the building gradually advanced, they heaped up against it vast mounds of nitre and salt; which piles were melted after its completion, by introducing beneath them the waters of the river. Others, again, maintain, that bridges were constructed, of bricks of clay, and that, when the pyramid was completed, these bricks were distributed for erecting the houses of private individuals. For the level of the river, they say, being so much lower, water could never by any possibility have been brought there by the medium of canals. In the interior of the largest Pyramid there is a well, eighty-six cubits deep, which communicates with the river, it is thought. The method of ascertaining the height of the Pyramids and all similar edifices was discovered by Thales of Miletus; he measuring the shadow at the hour of the day at which it is equal in length to the body projecting it.

  Such are the marvellous Pyramids; but the crowning marvel of all is, that the smallest, but most admired of them — that we may feel no surprise at the opulence of the kings — was built by Rhodopis, a courtesan! This woman was once the fellow-slave of Æsopus the philosopher and fabulist, and the sharer of his bed; but what is much more surprising is, that a courtesan should have been enabled, by her vocation, to amass such enormous wealth.

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  CHAP. 18.

  THE PHAROS.

  There is another building, too, that is highly celebrated; the tower that was built by a king of Egypt, on the island of Pharos, at the entrance to the harbour of Alexandria. The cost of its erection was eight hundred talents, they say; and, not to omit the magnanimity that was shown by King Ptolemæus on this occasion, he gave permission to the architect, Sostratus of Cnidos, to inscribe his name upon the edifice itself. The object of it is, by the light of its fires at night, to give warning to ships, of the neighbouring shoals, and to point out to them the entrance of the harbour. At the present day, there are similar fires lighted up in numerous places, Ostia and Ravenna, for example. The only danger is, that when these fires are thus kept burning without intermission, they may be mistaken for stars, the flames having very much that appearance at a distance. This architect ‘is the first person that built a promenade upon arches; at Cnidos, it is said.

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  CHAP. 19. (13.)

  LABYRINTHS.

  We must speak also of the Labyrinths, the most stupendous works, perhaps, on which mankind has expended its labours; and not for chimerical purposes, merely, as might possibly be supposed.

  There is still in Egypt, in the Nome of Heracleopolites, a labyrinth, which was the first constructed, three thousand six hundred years ago, they say, by King Petesuchis or Tithöes: although, according to Herodotus, the entire work was the production of no less than twelve kings, the last of whom was Psammetichus. As to the purpose for which it was built, there are various opinions: Demoteles says that it was the palace of King Moteris, and Lyceas that it was the tomb of Mœris, while many others assert that it was a building consecrated to the Sun, an opinion which mostly prevails.

  That Dædalus took this for the model of the Labyrinth which he constructed in Crete, there can be no doubt; though he only reproduced the hundredth part of it, that portion, namely, which encloses circuitous passages, windings, and inextricable galleries which lead to and fro. We must not, comparing this last to what we see delineated on our mosaic pavements, or to the mazes formed in the fields for the amusement of children, suppose it to be a narrow promenade along which we may walk for many miles together; but we must picture to ourselves a building filled with numerous doors, and galleries which continually mislead the visitor, bringing him back, after all his wanderings, to the spot from which he first set out. This Labyrinth is the second, that of Egypt being the first. There is a third in the Isle of Lemnos, and a fourth in Italy.

  They are all of them
covered with arched roofs of polished stone; at the entrance, too, of the Egyptian Labyrinth, a thing that surprises me, the building is constructed of Parian marble, while throughout the other parts of it the columns are of syenites. With such solidity is this huge mass constructed, that the lapse of ages has been totally unable to destroy it, seconded as it has been by the people of Heracleopolites, who have marvellously ravaged a work which they have always held in abhorrence. To detail the position of this work and the various portions of it is quite impossible, it being sub- divided into regions and præfectures, which are styled nomes, thirty in number, with a vast palace assigned to each. In addition to these, it should contain temples of all the gods of Egypt, and forty statues of Nemesis in as many sacred shrines; besides numerous pyramids, forty ells in height, and covering six aruræ at the base. Fatigued with wandering to and fro, the visitor is sure to arrive at some inextricable crossing or other of the galleries. And then, too, there are banquetting rooms situate at the summit of steep ascents; porticos from which we descend by flights of ninety steps; columns in the interior, made of porphyrites; figures of gods; statues of kings; and effigies of hideous monsters. Some of the palaces are so peculiarly constructed, that the moment the doors are opened a dreadful sound like that of thunder reverberates within: the greater part, too, of these edifices have to be traversed in total darkness. Then again, without the walls of the Labyrinth, there rises another mass of buildings known as the “Pteron;” beneath which there are passages excavated leading to other subterranean palaces. One person, and only one, has made some slight repairs to the Labyrinth; Chæremon, an eunuch of King Necthebis, who lived five hundred years before the time of Alexander the Great. It is asserted, also, that while the arched roofs of squared stone were being raised, he had them supported by beams of thorn boiled in oil.

  As for the Cretan Labyrinth, what I have already stated must suffice for that. The Labyrinth of Lemnos is similar to it, only that it is rendered more imposing by its hundred and fifty columns; the shafts of which, when in the stone-yard, were so nicely balanced, that a child was able to manage the wheel of the lathe in turning them. The archi- tects were, Smilis, Rhœcus, and Theodorus, natives of the island, and there are still in existence some remains of it; whereas of the Cretan Labyrinth and of that in Italy not a vestige is left.

  As to this last, which Porsena, King of Etruria, erected as his intended sepulchre, it is only proper that I should make some mention of it, if only to show that the vanity displayed by foreign monarchs, great as it is, has been surpassed. But as the fabulousness of the story connected with it quite exceeds all bounds, I shall employ the words given by M. Varro himself in his account of it:— “Porsena was buried,” says he, “beneath the city of Clusium; in the spot where he had had constructed a square monument, built of squared stone. Each side of this monument was three hundred feet in length and fifty in height, and beneath the base, which was also square, there was an inextricable labyrinth, into which if any one entered without a clew of thread, he could never find his way out. Above this square building there stand five pyramids, one at each corner, and one in the middle, seventy-five feet broad at the base, and one hundred and fifty feet in height. These pyramids are so tapering in their form, that upon the summit of all of them united there rests a brazen globe, and upon that a petasus; from which there hang, suspended by chains, bells, which make a tinkling when agitated by the wind, like what was done at Dodona in former times. Upon this globe there are four other pyramids, each one hundred feet in height; and above them is a single platform, on which there are five more pyramids,” — the height of which Varro has evidently felt ashamed to add; but, according to the Etruscan fables, it was equal to that of the rest of the building. What downright madness this, to attempt to seek glory at an outlay which can never be of utility to any one; to say nothing of exhausting the resources of the kingdom, and after all, that the artist may reap the greater share of the praise!

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  CHAP. 20.

  HANGING GARDENS. A HANGING CITY.

  We read, too, of hanging gardens, and what is even more than this, a hanging city, Thebes in Egypt: it being the practice for the kings to lead forth their armies from beneath, while the inhabitants were totally unconscious of it. This, too, is even less surprising than the fact that a river flows through the middle of the city. If, however, all this had really been the case, there is no doubt that Homer would have mentioned it, he who has celebrated the hundred gates of Thebes.

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  CHAP. 21. (14.)

  THE TEMPLE OF DIANA AT EPHESUS.

  The most wonderful monument of Græcian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration, is the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, which took one hundred and twenty years in building, a work in which all Asia joined. A marshy soil was selected for its site, in order that it might not suffer from earthquakes, or the chasms which they produce. On the other hand, again, that the foundations of so vast a pile might not have to rest upon a loose and shifting bed, layers of trodden charcoal were placed beneath, with fleeces covered with wool upon the top of them. The entire length of the temple is four hundred and twenty-five feet, and the breadth two hundred and twenty-five. The columns are one hundred and twenty-seven in number, and sixty feet in height, each of them presented by a different king. Thirty-six of these columns are carved, and one of them by the hand of Scopas. Chersiphron was the architect who presided over the work.

  The great marvel in this building is, how such ponderous Architraves could possibly have been raised to so great a height. This, however, the architect effected by means of bags filled with sand, which he piled up upon an inclined plane until they reached beyond the capitals of the columns; then, as he gradually emptied the lower bags, the architraves insensibly settled in the places assigned them. But the greatest difficulty of all was found, in laying the lintel which he placed over the entrance-doors. It was an enormous mass of stone, and by no possibility could it be brought to lie level upon the jambs which formed its bed; in consequence of which, the architect was driven to such a state of anxiety and desperation as to contemplate suicide. Wearied and quite worn out by such thoughts as these, during the night, they say, he beheld in a dream the goddess in honour of whom the temple was being erected; who exhorted him to live on, for that she herself had placed the stone in its proper position. And such, in fact, next morning, was found to be the case, the stone apparently having come to the proper level by dint of its own weight. The other decorations of this work would suffice to fill many volumes, but they do not tend in any way to illustrate the works of Nature.

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  CHAP. 22. (15.)

  MARVELS CONNECTED WITH OTHER TEMPLES.

  There still exists, too, at Cyzicus, a temple of polished stone, between all the joints of which the artist has inserted a thread of gold; it being his intention to erect an ivory statue of Jupiter within, with Apollo in marble crowning him. The result is, that the interstices quite glisten with their fine, hair-like threads; and the reflection of the gold, obscured as it is, gently falling upon the statues, besides proclaiming the genius of the artist, heightens their effect, and so teaches us to appreciate the costliness of the work.

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  CHAP. 23.

  THE FUGITIVE STONE. THE SEVEN-FOLD ECHO. BUILDINGS ERECTED WITHOUT THE USE OF NAILS.

  In the same city also, there is a stone, known as the “Fugi- tive Stone;” the Argonautæ, who used it for the purposes of an anchor, having left it there. This stone having repeatedly taken flight from the Prytanæum, the place so called where it is kept, it has been fastened down with lead. In this city also, near the gate which is known as the “Trachia,” there are seven towers, which repeat a number of times all sounds that are uttered in them. This phenomenon, to which the name of “Echo,” has been given by the Greeks, depends upon the peculiar conformation of localities, and is produced in valleys m
ore particularly. At Cyzicus, however, it is the effect of accident only; while at Olympia, it is produced by artificial means, and in a very marvellous manner; in a portico there, which is known as the “Heptaphonon,” from the circumstance that it returns the sound of the voice seven times.

  At Cyzicus, also, is the Buleuterium, a vast edifice, constructed without a nail of iron; the raftering being so contrived as to admit of the beams being removed and replaced without the use of stays. A similar thing, too, is the case with the Sublician Bridge at Rome; and this by enactment, on religious grounds, there having been such difficulty experienced in breaking it down when Horatius Cocles defended it.

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  CHAP. 24.

  MARVELLOUS BUILDINGS AT ROME, EIGHTEEN IN NUMBER.

  But it is now time to pass on to the marvels in building displayed by our own City, and to make some enquiry into the resources and experience that we have gained in the lapse of eight hundred years; and so prove that here, as well, the rest of the world has been outdone by us: a thing which will appear, in fact, to have occurred almost as many times as the marvels are in number which I shall have to enumerate. If, indeed, all the buildings of our City are considered in the aggregate, and supposing them, so to say, all thrown together in one vast mass, the united grandeur of them would lead one to suppose that we were describing another world, accumulated in a single spot.

  Not to mention among our great works, the Circus Maximus, that was constructed by the Dictator Cæsar, one stadium in width and three in length, and occupying, with the adjacent buildings, no less than four jugera, with room for two hundred and sixty thousand spectators seated; am I not to include in the number of our magnificent constructions, the Basilica of Paulus, with its admirable Phrygian columns; the Forum of the late Emperor Augustus; the Temple of Peace, erected by the Emperor Vespasianus Augustus — some of the finest works that the world has ever beheld — the roofing, too, of the Vote-Office, that was built by Agrippa? not to forget that, before his time, Valerius of Ostia, the architect, had covered in a theatre at Rome, at the time of the public Games celebrated by Libo?