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Pharos: the Lighthouse at Alexandria Return to Library Pharos: The Lighthouse at Alexandria "The voyage along the coast of this sea [the Mediterranean] is exceedingly long, and any landing is especially difficult; for from Paraetonium in Libya as far as Iopê in Coele-Syria, a voyage along the coast of some five thousand stades, there is not to be found a safe harbour except Pharos. And, apart from these considerations, a sandbank extends along practically the whole length of Egypt, not discernible to any who approach without previous experience of these waters. Consequently those who think that they have escaped the peril of the sea, and in their ignorance turn with gladness towards the shore, suffer unexpected shipwreck when their vessels suddenly run aground; and now and then mariners who cannot see land in time because the country lies so low are cast ashore before they realize it, some of them on marshy and swampy places and others on a desert region." Diodorus Siculus, Library of History (I.31.2-5) The low and featureless coastline of Egypt, with its broad delta and endless desert, offered no prominent landmarks by which a mariner could plot a course. For Homer, the only harbor in the "long and painful way" to Egypt (Odyssey, IV.542) was at Pharos, where Menelaus was said to have been stranded on his return from Troy. "Now, there's an island out in the ocean's heavy surge, well off the Egyptian coast—they call it Pharos....There's a snug harbor there, good landing beach where crews pull in, draw water from the dark wells then push their vessels off for passage out" (IV.395ff). It was ruled by Proteus, the prophetic, polymorphic "Old Man of the Sea" who resided in caves along the shore, bedded down with his flock of seals (IV.430ff). Only by grappling with the seer and holding him tight was Menelaus able to learn why he had been marooned by the gods and how, by appeasing them with burnt offerings, he could return home. There is a variant of Homer's epic, one in which Helen, the wife of Menelaus, is herself stranded in Egypt. In this version, "which was not so suitable to the composition of his poem as the other which he followed" (Herodotus, Histories, II.112-120; also Euripides, Helen), the Helen within the walls of Troy actually was a dopplegänger. In reality, the ship in which she had been abducted by Paris was blown off course and made landfall in Egypt, where, protected by King Proteus, the real Helen remained faithful to Menelaus until she could be reunited with her husband. Callimachus, too, makes this association between Greece and Egypt when he refers to Pharos as "Helen's island" (Aetia III, Fr.54, "Victory of Berenice"). Plutarch relates that when Alexander, who wished "to found a large and populous Greek city which should bear his name," was about to lay it out, he had a dream in which Homer himself appeared, quoting his lines about Pharos. Alexander went there at once and, seeing the natural advantages of the site, admitted that the poet was "not only admirable in other ways, but also was a very wise architect" (Life of Alexander, XXVI.4-7). Alexandria, in fact, was to have been built on Pharos, but it was not large enough (Curtius, History of Alexander, IV.8.1-2). Instead, the city was located at Rhacotis, a small fishing village sheltered by the island, which had served to guard against the importation of foreign goods and Greek raiders (Strabo, Geography, XVII.1.6). Having marked out a general plan (Arrian, Anabasis, III.2), including orders "to build a palace notable for its size and massiveness" (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, XVII.52.4), Alexander left his architect Dinocrates to supervise construction (Vitruvius, On Architecture, II.Preface.1ff; Geography, XIV.1.23; Arrian, Anabasis, III.1). Alexander then returned to Tyre in Phoenicia, which itself had been founded on an offshore island, besieging the town by building a mole up to its walls. Pharos, too, was later connected to the mainland by a long causeway. Thought by Caesar to have been built "by former kings" (Civil War, CXII), the Heptastadion (so named for its length, which was seven Greek stades or about three-quarters of a mile) was constructed by Ptolemy I Sotor or his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in whose reign the translators of the Septuagint were said to have crossed to begin their work on the Greek Old Testament (Letter of Aristeas, CCCI; Epiphanius, Weights and Measures, XI.53c). The Ptolemies also built the famed lighthouse on the island, Ptolemy II likely completing the project begun by his father. According to the Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, the Pharos was constructed by Ptolemy I in 297 BC, the year that Pyrrhus, who had been sent to Alexandria as a hostage, returned to Epirus and, with Ptolemy's help, reclaimed his kingdom (Phi114; Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, VII). Jerome, in his translation of Eusebius' Chronicle, puts the date in the first year of the 124th Olympiad (284 BC, or 283 BC in the Armenian translation, where the Olympiads differ by a year), when Ptolemy II assumed the throne in his own name. Writing a decade later, Ammianus Marcellinus believed that Cleopatra had built the Pharos, thereby furnishing "the means of showing lights to ships by night" (Res Gestae, XXII.16.9). Certainly, the Pharos elicited wonder in those who saw it. Caesar, who marveled that it was "of great height, a work of wonderful construction, which took its name from the island" (Civil Wars, III.112), paraded a model of the lighthouse, complete with a semblance of its flame, as part of his triumph in Rome (Florus, Epitome of Roman History, II.13.88; Appian, Civil Wars, II.101). Almost a century later, when Scipio Africanus and other delegates visited Alexandria, they scorned the pomp of Ptolemy VIII Physcon (whose offer of marriage had been spurned by Africanus' daughter) and were interested only in "those things which were really worth their viewing; such as the situation of the city, and its prosperity, and particularly the features of the Pharos" (Library of History, XXXIII.28B.2). When the Pharos was inaugurated, Posidippus, who resided at court, wrote an epigram commemorating the occasion, calling upon Proteus, the deity of the island. "The Greeks' saviour god—O mighty Proteus—shines from Pharos thanks to Sostratus of Cnidos, son of Dexiphanes. For Egypt has no cliffs or mountains as the islands do but a breakwater, level with the ground, welcomes her ships. And so this tower cutting through the breadth and depth of heaven beacons to the farthest distances by day, and all night long the sailors borne on the waves will see the great flame blazing from its top—nor miss his aim: though he run to the Bull's Horn, he'll find Zeus the Saviour, sailing, Proteus, by this beam" (CXV). Pliny mentions "the generous spirit shown by King Ptolemy, whereby he allowed the name of the architect, Sostratus of Cnidos, to be inscribed on the very fabric of the building" (Natural History, XXXVI.83). Strabo, who had visited Alexandria in about 24 BC, relates that, on entering the eastern harbor opposite the promontory of Lochias, there was the island, at the end of which "is a rock, which is washed all round by the sea and has upon it a tower that is admirably constructed of white marble with many stories and bears the same name as the island. This was an offering made by Sostratus of Cnidus, a friend of the kings, for the safety of mariners, as the inscription says: for since the coast was harbourless and low on either side, and also had reefs and shallows, those who were sailing from the open sea thither needed some lofty and conspicuous sign to enable them to direct their course aright to the entrance of the harbour" (Geography, XVII.1.6). That the name of Sostratus and not Ptolemy should be on the Pharos could not fail to elicit comment. And it is Lucian, writing in AD 166, who provides the most intriguing story. "He [Sostratus] built the tower on Pharos, the mightiest and most beautiful work of all, that a beacon-light might shine from it for sailors far over the sea and that they might not be driven on to Paraetonia, said to be a very-difficult coast with no escape if you hit the reefs. After he had built the work he wrote his name on the masonry inside, covered it with gypsum, and having hidden it inscribed the name of the reigning king. He knew, as actually happened, that in a very short time the letters would fall away with the plaster and there would be revealed: 'Sostratus of Cnidos, the son of Dexiphanes, to the Divine Saviours, for the sake of them that sail at sea.' Thus, not even he had regard for the immediate moment or his own brief life-time: he looked to our day and eternity, as long as the tower shall stand and his skill abide. History then should be written in that spirit, with truthfulness and an eye to future expectations rather than with adulation and a view to the pleasure of present praise" (How to Write History, LXII). Given that Ptolemy had allowed the name to be inscribed on the Pharos, the story likely is apocryphal, embellished by Lucian only to make his point that history should be written with a view to the future and not simply the present.
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