38. Chap. 38.-Geometry And Architecture.

CHAP. 38.—GEOMETRY AND ARCHITECTURE.

M. Marcellus, too, at the taking of Syracuse, offered a remarkable homage to the sciences of geometry and mechanics, by giving orders that Archimedes was to be the only person who should not be molested; his commands, however, were disregarded, in consequence of the imprudence of one of the soldiers.[1] Chersiphron, also, the Cnossian,[2] was rendered fa- mous by the admirable construction of the temple of Diana at Ephesus; Philon, by the construction of the basin at Athens, which was capable of containing one thousand vessels;[3] Cte- sibius, by the invention of pneumatics and hydraulic machines; and Dinochares,[4] by the plan which he made of the city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander in Egypt. The same monarch, too, by public edict, declared that no one should paint his portrait except Apelles, and that no one should make a marble statue of him except Pyrgoteles, or a bronze one except Lysippus.[5] These arts have all been rendered glorious by many illustrious examples.

1. This is related more at large by Val. Maximus, B. viii. c. 7, and by Plutarch.—B.

2. Mentioned in B. xxxvi. c. 31.

3. Val. Maximus refers to Philon and his public works, in B. viii. c. 12. —B. He was an architect of eminence in the reign of the successors of Alexander. He built for Demetrius Phalereus, about B.C. 318, the portico of twelve Doric columns to the great temple at Eleusis. He also formed a basin in the Piræus, which was destroyed at the taking of Athens by the Romans under Sylla.

4. See B. v. c. 11, and B. xxxiv. c. 42.

5. Plutarch, in his life of Alexander, mentions the restriction made in favour of Lysippus, but does not extend it to Apelles; he does not speak of Pyrgoteles. We have an apposite allusion to this circumstance by Horace, Ep. B. i. 1. 239, 240. Boileau has elegantly imitated Horace, in his "Discours au Roi."—B. For further particulars of him, see B. xxxiv. c. 17 and 19. He was a native of Sicyon, and at first a simple worker in bronze, but eventually obtained the highest rank among the Grecian statuaries.