The System's Perfect Victim - Part 3: The Architect Who Obeyed the Emperor
System's Perfect Victim 1 Part 1: The By-the-Book Admiral 2 Part 2: The Railroad Manager Who Followed Policy 3 Part 3: The Architect Who Obeyed the Emperor 4 Part 4: The Minister Who Balanced the Books ← Series Home The Mountain That Was to Be a Man In 334 BC, the architect Dinocrates presented Alexander the Great with the most audacious building proposal in history. He would take Mount Athos—a 6,670-foot mountain peninsula in Greece—and carve it into a colossus. In the statue’s left hand would be an entire city of 10,000 inhabitants. In its right hand, a vast bowl would catch the waters of a diverted river, which would then cascade dramatically into the sea. The statue’s face would be that of Alexander. The conqueror, legend says, was delighted. He asked only one practical question: what would the inhabitants eat? Dinocrates, the visionary, had not considered this. He suggested they would import grain. Alexander, the pragmatist, rejected the plan. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, a practical grid on flat land, was built instead. Dinocrates faded from history, his perfect, impossible vision recorded only as a footnote in the chronicles of architectural hubris. ...