The pyramid was built in steps, battlement-wise, as it is called, or, according to others, altar-wise. After laying the stones for the base, they raised the remaining stones to their places by means of machines formed of short wooden planks. The first machine raised them from the ground to the top of the first step. On this there was another machine, which received the stone upon its arrival, and conveyed it to the second step, whence a third machine advanced it still higher. Either they had as many machines as there were steps in the pyramid or possibly they had but a single machine, which, being easily moved, was transferred from tier to tier as the stone rose--both accounts are given, and therefore I mention both. The upper portion of the pyramid was finished first, then the middle, and finally the part which was lowest and nearest the ground. There is an inscription in Egyptian characters on the pyramid which records the quantity of radishes, onions, and garlic consumed by the laborers who constructed it; and I perfectly well remember that the interpreter who read the writing to me said that the money expended in this way was 1,600 talents of silver. If this then is a true record, what a vast sum must have been spent on the iron tools used in the work, and on the feeding and clothing of the laborers, considering the length of time the work lasted, which has already been stated, and the additional time--no small space, I imagine--which must have been occupied by the quarrying of the stones, their conveyance, and the formation of the underground apartments! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 14: From Book II of the "History." Translated by George Rawlinson. The Pyramid of Cheops was built about 3,500 B.C. Cheops, according to Herodotus, reigned fifty years.] IV THE STORY OF PERIANDER'S SON[15] After Periander had put to death his wife Melissa, it chanced that on his first affliction a second followed of a different kind. His wife had borne him two sons, and one of them had now reached the age of seventeen, the other of eighteen years, when their mother's father, Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus,[16] asked them to his court. They went, and Procles treated them with much kindness, as was natural, considering they were his own daughter's children. At length, when the time for parting came, Procles as he was sending them on their way said, "Know you now, my children, who it was that caused your mother's death?" The elder son took no account of this speech, but the younger, whose name was Lycophron, was sorely troubled at it--so much so that when he got back to Corinth, looking upon his father as his mother's murderer, he would neither speak to him nor answer when spoken to nor utter a word in reply to all his father's questionings. So Periander, at last growing furious at such behavior, banished his son from his house.