Note 650 — CANTO THE TWELFTH.
Reading edition
{479}B. 10bre 7th 1822.—[MS.]
A sculptor projected to hew Mount Athos into a statue of Alexander, with a city in one hand, and, I believe, a river in his pocket, with various other similar devices. But Alexander's gone, and Athos remains, I trust ere long to look over a nation of freemen.
[It was an architect named Stasicrates who proposed to execute this imperial monument. But Alexander bade him leave Mount Athos alone. As it was, it might be christened "Xerxes, his Folly," and, for his part, he preferred to regard Mount Caucasus, and the Himalayas, and the river Don as the symbolic memorials of his acts and deeds.—Plutarch's Moralia. "De Alexandri Fortuna et Virtute," Orat. II. cap. ii.]