Note 37 — Chapter II

Its architects were Satyrus and Phiteus, and the building itself a parallelogram surrounded by thirty-six columns, supporting a pyramid of twenty-four steps, which tapered to the top like a meta, or goal. Its height was 140 feet. Martial describes it as “Aere vacuo pendentia Mausolea.” Pausanias states that the Romans admired it so much that they called all similar buildings “Mausolea”; while Eustathius, in the twelfth century, observes of it, Θαῦμα καὶ ἦν καὶ ἔστι (“it was and is a wonder”) clearly implying its existence, in some form or other, even then. In M. Guichard’s “Funérailles de Romains,” &c., Lyons, 1581, the sculptured reliefs and “certain white marble steps” (possibly those of the pyramid) are noticed. This information, he says, he had from M. Dalechamps—the editor of Pliny—and he, again, from M. de la Tourette, who was present, in 1522, when its last stones were finally removed to build the castle.