DINOC'RATES, a Greek architect of the time of Alexander the great. He applied to the courtiers for an introduction to the Macedonian king, but was put off from time to time with vain promises. Impatient at the delay, he is said to have laid aside his usual dress, besmeared his body in oil in the manner of an athlete, thrown a lion's skin over his shoulders, and, with his head adorned with a wreath of palm branches, and a club in his hand, made his way through a dense crowd which surrounded the royal tri bunal to the place where the king was dispensing justice. Amazed at the strange sight, Alexander asked him who he was. He replied that lie had come into the royal presence to make known a scheme which would lie worthy of the consideration of the greatest monarch in the world. Out on Mt. Athos, a mountain rising like a pyramid to a height of 6,780 ft., topped with a cone of white limestone, he proposed to construct the gigan tic figure of a man, holding a large city in his right hand, while in his left he held a gigantic tank large enough to contain all the water from the brooks in the peninsula.
The story goes that the king was not displeased with the idea, though. thinking it impracticable. Alexander, however, was so delighted with the man, and .his bold and daring conceptions, that he carried D. with him on his campaigns against Darius. He was employed by the king to design and lay out the city of Alexandria. The city was founded in 332 B.C., but the untimely death of D. prevented it from assuming the pro portions intended by its designer. The Ephesians, whose temple of Diana had just been burnt down, employed him in its reconstruction. But perhaps the most original of all his conceptions was his design for a temple to Arsinoo, wife of Ptolemy II., king of Egypt. The roof of the building was to have been composed of a mass of load stones, strong enough to hold floating in the air and suspended within the temple an iron statue of the queen.