Full text: Vitruvius: The architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in ten books

238 
læstræ. But the method would not have been practicable 
for any considerable distance. From the quarries to the 
temple is a length of not more than eight thousand feet, 
and the interval is a plain without any declivity. Within 
our own times, when the base of the colossal statue of 
Apollo in the temple of that god, was decayed through 
age: to prevent the fall and destruction of it, a contract 
for a base from the same quarry was made with Pæonius. 
It was twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and six feet 
high. Pæonius, driven to an expedient, did not use the 
same as Metagenes did, but constructed a machine for 
the purpose, by a different application of the same prin- 
ciple. He made two wheels about fifteen feet diameter, 
and fitted the ends of the stone into these wheels. To 
connect the two wheels he framed into them, round their 
circumference, small pieces of two inches square not 
more than one foot apart, each extending from one wheel 
to the other, and thus enclosing the stone. Round 
these bars a rope was coiled, to which the traces of the 
oxen were made fast, and as it was drawn out, the stone 
rolled on by means of the wheels, but the machine by its 
constantly swerving from a direct straightforward path, 
stood in need of constant rectification, so that Pæonius 
was at last without money for the completion of his 
contract. 
CHAPTER VII. 
OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE QUARRY WHENCE STONE 
WAS PROCURED FOR THE TEMPLE OF DIANA AT 
EPHESUS. 
I MUsT digress a little, and relate how the quarries of 
Ephesus were discovered. A.shepherd, of the name of 
Pixodarus, dwelt in these parts at the period in which
	        
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