124 



encompass the thumb, Pliny and Diodorus Siculus 

 relate, that Semiramis made the mountain Bagistan, 

 between Babylon and Media, be cut out into a statue 

 of herself, which was seventeen stadia high; that is, 

 near two miles : and around it were a hundred 

 other statues, of proportionable size, though not so 

 large. And Plutarch speaks of a very great under* 

 taking, which one Stesicrates proposed to Alex- 

 ander ; viz. to make a statue of him out of mount 

 Athos, which would have been a hundred and fifty 

 miles in circumference, and about ten in height. His 

 design was to make him hold in his left hand a city^ 

 large enough to contain ten thousand inhabitants ; 

 and in the other an urn, out of which should (low a 

 river, poured by him into the sea. See also the same 

 Plutarch ? vol. 1. p. 705. But Nitruvius gives to 

 this statuary the name of Dinocrates. 



10. In short what shall we say of the other struc- 

 tures of the ancients, which still remain to be spoken 

 of? Of their cement, which in hardness equalled 

 even marble itself ; of the firmness of their highways, 

 some of which were paved with large blocks of black 

 marble ; and of their bridges, some of which still 

 subsist, irrefragable monuments of the greatness of 

 their conceptions ? The bridge at Gard, three leagues 

 from NimeSj is one of them. It serves at once as a 

 bridge and an aqueduct. It goes across the river 

 Gardon 5 and joins together the two- mountains, be- 

 tween which it is ' enclosed. It comprehends tluee 

 stories ; the third is the aqueduct, which conveys the 

 waters of the Eure info a great reservoir, which sup- 

 plies the amphitheatre and city of Niir.es. The bridge 

 of Alcantara, upon the Tagus, is still a work fit to 

 raise in us a great idea of (he Roman magnificence: 

 it is six hundred and seventy feet long, and contains 

 six arches, each of which measures above a hundred 

 feet from one pier to the other ; and its height from 

 the surface oi ' Uie water is two hundred feet. The 

 broken remains of Trajan's bridge over the Danube 



