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CHAPTER VI. 
OF CTESIPHON'S CONTRIVANCE FOR REMOVING 
GREAT WEIGHTS. 
Ir will be useful to explain the ingenious contrivance of 
Ctesiphon. When he removed from the quarry the 
shafts of the columns which he had prepared for the 
temple of Diana at Ephesus, not thinking it prudent to 
trust them on carriages, lest their weight should sink 
the wheels in the soft roads over which they would have 
to pass, he devised the following scheme. He made a 
frame of four pieces of timber, two of which were equal 
in length to the shafts of the columns, and were held to- 
gether by the two transverse pieces. In each end of the 
shaft he inserted iron pivots, whose ends were dovetailed 
thereinto, and run with lead. The pivots worked in 
gudgeons fastened to the timber frame, whereto were 
attached oaken shafts. The pivots having a free revolu- 
tion in the gudgeons, when the oxen were attached and 
drew the frame, the shafts rolled round, and might have 
been conveyed to any distance. The shafts having been 
thus transported, the entablatures were to be removed, 
when Metagenes the son of Ctesiphon, applied the prin- 
ciple upon which the shafts had been conveyed to the 
removal of those also. He constructed wheels about 
twelve feet diameter, and fixed the ends of the blocks of 
stone whereof the entablature was composed into them : 
pivots and gudgeons were then prepared to receive them 
in the manner just described, so that when the oxen 
drew the machine, the pivots turning in the gudgeons, 
caused the wheels to revolve, and thus the blocks, being 
enclosed like axles in the wheels, were brought to the 
work without delay, as were the shafts of the columns. 
An example of this species of machine may be seen in 
the rolling stone used for smoothing the walks in pa-