The Coliseum at Rome, built by Vespasian for 100,000 spectators, was in its longest diameter 615-5 feet, and in the shortest 510, embraced 5-1/2 acres, and was 120 feet high.  Eight aqueducts supplied ancient Rome with water, delivering 40 millions of cubit feet daily.  That of Claudia was 47 miles long and 100 feet high, so as to furnish the hills.  Martia was 41 miles, of which 37 were on 7,000 acres 70 feet high.  These vast erections would never have been built had the Romans known that water always rises to its own level.

The Temple of Diana, at Ephesus, was 425 feet long and 225 feet broad, with 127 columns, 60 feet high, to support the roof.  It was 220 years in building.

Solomon’s Temple, built B.C. 1014, was 60 cubits or 107 feet in length, the breadth 20 cubits or 36 feet, and the height 30 cubits or 54 feet.  The porch was 36 feet long and 18 feet wide.

The largest one of the Egyptian pyramids is 543 feet high, 693 feet on the sides, and its base covers 11 acres.  The layers of stones are 208 in number.  Many stones are over 30 feet long, 4 broad and 3 thick.

The Temple of Ypsambul, in Nubia, is enormously massive and cut out of the solid rock.  Belzoni found in it 4 immense figures, 65 feet high, 25 feet over the shoulders, with a face of 7 feet and the ears over 3 feet.

Sesostris erected in the temple in Memphis immense statues of himself and his wife, 50 feet high, and of his children, 28 feet.

In the Temple of the Sun, at Baalbec, are stones more than 60 feet long, 24 feet thick and 16 broad, each embracing 23,000 cubic feet, cut, squared, sculptured, and transported from neighboring quarries.  Six enormous columns are each 72 feet high, composed of 3 stones 7 feet in diameter.  Sesostris is credited with having transported from the mountains of Arabia a rock 32 feet wide and 240 feet long.

The engineering appliances used by the ancients in the movement of these immense masses are but imperfectly understood at the present day.

During modern times, a block of granite weighing 1,217 tons, now used as the pedestal of the equestrian statute of Peter the Great, at St. Petersburg, was transported 4 miles by land over a railway, and 13 miles in a vast caisson by water.  The railway consisted of two lines of timber furnished with hard metal grooves; between these grooves were placed spheres of hard brass about 6 inches in diameter.  On these spheres the frame with its massive load was easily moved by 60 men, working at capstans with treble purchase blocks.

In 1716 Swedenborg contrived to transport (on rolling machines of his own invention) over valleys and mountains, 2 galleys, 5 large boats and 1 sloop, from Stromstadt to Iderfjol (which divides Sweden from Norway on the South), a distance of 14 miles, by which means Charles XII. was able to carry on his plans, and under cover of the galleys and boats to transport on pontoons his heavy artillery to the very walls of Frederickshall.