The New International Encyclopædia/Dinocrates

DINOC′RATES (Lat., from Gk. Δεινοκράτης Deinokratēs). A Greek architect of the time of Alexander the Great. According to Vitruvius, he visited the camp of Alexander with letters of introduction, but was unable to secure an audience. Relying upon his athletic figure, he at length decked himself in the costume of Heracles, with lion's skin and club, and thus attracted the notice of the King. He then proposed to Alexander to carve the huge mass of Mount Athos into a human figure, holding a city in one hand and a vessel of water in the other. The work was never attempted, but Dinocrates was taken into the favor of the King, and employed as architect in the foundation of Alexandria. He was also employed by the Ephesians in the reconstruction of the Temple of Diana (q.v.). The story that he designed a temple of Arsinoë, wife of Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, in which an iron statue of the Queen was to be held suspended by a loadstone roof, is, on chronological grounds, impossible.