mountainside from heights of between two and three thousand feet. The blocks had to be maneuvered on sleds down a paved quarry road (parts of which still survive), and only the smaller ones could be eased along on rollers. At intervals, there were stout posts, carrying rope and tackle, which were used to help brake the sleds downward momentum. Accidents were not unknown, and one rough dresses column drum, probably destined for the Parthenon lies in a nearby ravine to this day.Even when the plain was safely reached, difficulties still abounded. Shifting a total of 22,000 tons of marble across ten miles of level plain to the Acropolis proved a major operation itself. These drums, blocks, and architraves were so enormously heavy that special methods of transport had to be devised for them, and the existing road had to be rebuilt so that it was strong enough to support their weight. Traffic was restricted to the dry summer months for fear that the blocks would bog down in the mud, and the largest blocks of all seem to have baffled the wagonmakers. Axles had to be inserted directly into their end sockets, and these were then equipped with wheels no less than twelve feet in diameter. The whole was fitted to a frame of four-inch timbers and drawn by up to thirty teams of oxen. Shifting a block of marble from the quarry to the Acropolis took at least two days and cost up to 300 drachmas-at a time when one drachma was the average laborers daily wage. Then, at the foot of the Acropolis itself there was more sweating with the sleds and rollers, pulleys and tackle before the blocks could finally be maneuvered into position atop the citadel for the stonemasons to dress. Although the price of the wages for the workers was relatively small, the Parthenon was reasonably inexpensive compared to the things kept inside the temple. Understandably, no single item in the entire building program aroused as much hostile criticism as Phidia’s...
