Dinocrates of Rhodes

Dinocrates was Alexander's architect and laid out Alexandria. He came from Rhodes and was, on Vitruvius's account, an ambitious young man who could not get access to the king. His solution was to strip, oil himself, put a lion skin over his shoulder and a poplar wreath on his head, take a club, and stand where Alexander was giving judgment until he was noticed. Asked who he was, he proposed carving Mount Athos into the shape of a man holding a city in his left hand and a basin in his right that would collect the rivers of the mountain and pour them into the sea. Alexander asked whether there were cornfields near enough to feed the city. Told there were not, he said the proposal was admirable and that a city could no more be sustained without provisions than a child without milk — and took Dinocrates with him. The commission came in Egypt in 331 BC. The site chosen was a fishing village on a limestone ridge between the sea and Lake Mareotis, with an island offshore that could shelter a harbour. Dinocrates laid it out on a grid with a main axis some thirty metres wide, oriented to catch the sea breeze, with a mole to Pharos creating two harbours. The story that the chalk ran out and barley meal was used instead, and that birds ate the lines, is told as an omen of the city feeding the world. He is also credited with rebuilding the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

• Lived: 360 BCE – 290 BCE
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: intellectual