d--we call them
all by the common name of pulse, and the fruits having a hard rind,
affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts
and the like, which furnish pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which
spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we
console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating--all these
that sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth
fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance. With such blessings the
earth freely furnished them; meanwhile they went on constructing their
temples and palaces and harbours and docks. And they arranged the whole
country in the following manner:--

First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the
ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace. And at
the very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of the god
and of their ancestors, which they continued to ornament in successive
generations, every king surpassing the one who went before him to the
utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for
size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of
three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty
stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone,
making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and
leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find
ingress. Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which
parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out
of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as
to leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised
considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which a
passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone
of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the
one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which
surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island
in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All
this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a
stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing
towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which
was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island,
and from underneath the z