k he fixed rings to
contain the pivots, and fastened wooden cheeks to the ends. The pivots,
being enclosed in the rings, turned freely. So, when yokes of oxen began
to draw the four-inch frame, they made the shaft revolve constantly,
turning it by means of the pivots and rings.

12. When they had thus transported all the shafts, and it became
necessary to transport the architraves, Chersiphron's son Metagenes
extended the same principle from the transportation of the shafts to the
bringing down of the architraves. He made wheels, each about twelve feet
in diameter, and enclosed the ends of the architraves in the wheels. In
the ends he fixed pivots and rings in the same way. So when the
four-inch frames were drawn by oxen, the wheels turned on the pivots
enclosed in the rings, and the architraves, which were enclosed like
axles in the wheels, soon reached the building, in the same way as the
shafts. The rollers used for smoothing the walks in palaestrae will
serve as an example of this method. But it could not have been employed
unless the distance had been short; for it is not more than eight miles
from the stone-quarries to the temple, and there is no hill, but an
uninterrupted plain.

13. In our own times, however, when the pedestal of the colossal Apollo
in his temple had cracked with age, they were afraid that the statue
would fall and be broken, and so they contracted for the cutting of a
pedestal from the same quarries. The contract was taken by one Paconius.
This pedestal was twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and six feet high.
Paconius, with confident pride, did not transport it by the method of
Metagenes, but determined to make a machine of a different sort, though
on the same principle.

14. He made wheels of about fifteen feet in diameter, and in these
wheels he enclosed the ends of the stone; then he fastened two-inch
crossbars from wheel to wheel round the stone, encompassing it, so that
there was an interval of not more than one foot between bar and bar.
Then he coiled a rope round the bars, yoked up his oxen, and began to
draw on the rope. Consequently as it uncoiled, it did indeed cause the
wheels to turn, but it could not draw them in a line straight along the
road, but kept swerving out to one side. Hence it was necessary to draw
the machine back again. Thus, by this drawing to and fro, Paconius got
into such financial embarrassment that he became insolvent.

15. I will digress a bit and explain h