And every trade in the
same nature, as a captain in an army has his particular company of
soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and
laborers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be as it
were the instrument and body for the performance of the service of
these public works distributed plenty through every age and
condition.
As then grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite
in form, the workmen striving to outvie the material and the
design with the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most
wonderful thing of all was the rapidity of their execution.
Undertakings, any one of which singly might have required, they
thought, for their completion, several successions and ages of
men, were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime
of one man's political service. Although they say, too, that
Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus, the painter, boast of
despatching his work with speed and ease, replied, "I take a long
time." For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work
lasting solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time
allowed to a man's pains beforehand for the production of a thing
is repaid by way of interest with a vital force for its
preservation when once produced.
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