It is popularly believed that the great buildings of the ancient world were very long in the process of construction—that they, in fact, took many decades and sometimes even hundreds of years to complete. If this were true it might in a measure explain the obscurity in which their architects have been left, inasmuch as the original designer of the building might have been forgotten ere the last of his successors had finished the work he had undertaken. But this is not altogether the fact. Even the pyramid of Cheops—that colossal marvel of the creative genius of man—we are informed by some authorities took but thirty years to construct, ten of which were given to the building of a road leading to the site of the pyramid, for the greater facility in handling the huge blocks of stone to be used. Neither were the temples and public edifices of Greece and Rome, as a rule, long in building, being generally undertaken and finished during the influential period of a public man’s career, or the reign of a single emperor. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule, as, for example, the temple of Apollo at Delphi, that erected to Diana at Ephesus, and that dedicated to Jupiter at Athens; but in nearly all such instances it will be found that the temples were destroyed and rebuilt during the long interval which is supposed to have passed from the time when their foundations were first laid, to that which found them again in all respects completed structures; or, if not destroyed and the work undertaken anew, the delay was caused by some political influence which contributed to check the continuous prosecution of the work, implying no procrastination on the part of the original builders. But even in the most of such cases the names of the various architects who were from time to time associated with the work are at least known, if their biographies are not more fully recorded. It may be stated broadly that both the Greeks and the Romans were rapid builders when the size of their edifices is taken into account. Especially is this true of the time of Pericles, if we are to believe the testimony of Plutarch: “Every architect strived to surpass the magnificence of design with the elegance of execution, yet still the most wonderful circumstance was the expedition with which they [the buildings] were completed. Many edifices, each of which seemed to require the labor of successive ages, were finished during the administration of one prosperous man.” And the great biographer also adds: “... Hence we have the more reason to wonder that the structures raised by Pericles should be built in so short a time, and yet built for ages, for each of them as soon as finished had the venerable air of antiquity; so now they are old they have the freshness of a modern building. A bloom is diffused over them which preserves their aspect untarnished by time, as if they were animated by a spirit of perpetual youth and unfading elegance.”