lower classes, who thus, although they remained at home, would have just
as good a claim to their share of the public funds as those who were
serving at sea, in garrison, or in the field. The different materials
used, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress-wood, and so
forth, would require special artisans for each, such as carpenters,
modelers, smiths, stone-masons, dyers, melters and moulders of gold,
and ivory painters, embroiderers, workers in relief; and also men to
bring them to the city, such as sailors and captains of ships and pilots
for such as came by sea; and, for those who came by land, carriage
builders, horse breeders, drivers, ropemakers, linen manufacturers,
shoemakers, road menders, and miners. Each trade, moreover, employed a
number of unskilled laborers, so that, in a word, there would be work
for persons of every age and every class, and general prosperity would
be the result.

These buildings were of immense size, and unequalled in beauty and
grace, as the workmen endeavored to make the execution surpass the
design in beauty; but what was most remarkable was the speed with which
they were built. All these edifices, each of which one would have
thought it would have taken many generations to complete, were all
finished during the most brilliant period of one man's administration.
In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was
built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for
they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to
make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth.

The overseer and manager of the whole was Phidias, although there were
other excellent architects and workmen, such as Callicrates and Ictinus,
who built the Parthenon on the site of the old Hecatompedon, which had
been destroyed by the Persians, and Coroebus, who began to build the
Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, but who only lived to see the columns
erected and the architraves placed upon them. On his death, Metagenes,
of Xypete, added the frieze and the upper row of columns, and Xenocles,
of Cholargos, crowned it with the domed roof over the shrine. As to the
long wall, about which Socrates says that he heard Pericles bring
forward a motion, Callicrates undertook to build it. The Odeum, which
internally consisted of many rows of seats and many columns, and
externally of a roof sloping on all sides from a central point, was said
to have been built