Persepolis was a city, which all historians speak of as one of the most ancient and noble of Asia. There remain the ruins of one of its palaces, which measured six hundred paces in front, and still displays relics of its former grandeur.
The Lake Mœris and the Pyramids.
The lake Mœris was a hundred and fifty leagues in circuit, and entirely the work of one Egyptian king, who caused that immense compass of ground to be hollowed, to receive the waters of the Nile, when it overflowed its usual level, and to serve as a reservoir for watering Egypt by means of canals, when the river was not of sufficient height to overflow and fertilize the country. From the midst of this lake arose two pyramids, of six hundred feet in height.
The other pyramids of Egypt, in bulk and solidity so far surpass whatever we know of edifices, that we should be ready to doubt their having existed, did they not still subsist. One of the sides of the base of the highest pyramid measures six hundred and sixty feet. The free-stones which compose it are each of them thirty feet long. The moderns are at a loss to imagine by what means such huge and heavy masses were raised to a height of above four hundred feet.
The Colossus of Rhodes.
This was another marvellous production of the ancients. Its fingers were as large as statues; few were able with outstretched arms to encompass the thumb. Ships passed between its legs.
Stupendous Statues.
Semiramis caused the mountain Bagistan, between Babylon and Media, to be cut out into a statue of herself, which was seventeen stadia high, that is, above half a French league; and around it were a hundred other statues, of proportionable size, though less large.
It was proposed to Alexander the Great, to make a statue of him out of mount Athos, which would have been a hundred and fifty miles in circumference, and ten miles in height. The 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 flow a river into the sea.