Deinocrates of Rhodes
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Deinocrates of Rhodes (sometimes spelled Dinocrates; working last quarter of the 4th century BC) was a Greek architect and technical adviser for Alexander. Around 332 BC Alexander appointed him director of surveying and urban planning work for the city of Alexandria, which was laid out on a grid plan that was influential in Hellenistic city planning. He was aided by Cleomenes of Naucratis, an hydraulic engineer. In Babylon he designed the funerary monument to the general Hephaestion (died in 324), which was described by Diodorus Siculus, Arrian, Strabo, Plutarch and others. It was built of stone in imitation to a Babylonian temple. In 323 Deinocrates collaborated with the reconstructing of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus — one of the seven wonders of the world —, which was destroyed by Herostratus on July 21, 356 BC, in the night that Alexander was born. He also worked on, among other things, an incompleted funerary monument for Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedon. Deinocrates is cited by Vitruvius for his plan to sculpt in the flank of Mount Athos a colossal sculture of Alexander, with a small city in one hand and with the other, emptying a river into the sea.
[edit] References
- [[1]] - Technology Museum of Thessaloniki: biographical notes
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
