Wed 23.Jan.2013
Rhodes, Greece
Just when reflections in the yacht harbor(s) are getting to seem routine,
Mother Nature starts to leave rain puddles all over town, and the game of reflection
appreciation moves to a whole new playing field.
Water figures prominently in a little-remembered bit of island history.
The great civic engineer Mpozos of Samos
was comissioned to solve a holy dilemma at the city state of Lindos, an hour or so
south of present-day Rhodes Town, which did not yet exist.
The acropolis of Lindos held a temple complex that is still the number two
tourist attraction on the island. The temples needed a supply of water, unavailable
naturally at their site atop the steepest and highest hill in town.
Manual transport served at first, but could not supply enough of the precious
liquid to meet the growing demand.
The extreme holiness of the site meant that mechanical devices were
absolutely forbidden
above the lowest levels of the acropolis hill. Therein lay the dilemma, and thereon
depended Mpozos' comission, and perhaps his life.
Undaunted, the great engineer ordered sluices built to carry the water up the
hill from its source in the springs below. Then, to the bewilderment of priests
and townsfolk alike, he ordered the sluice bottoms lined with pickles!
It required
a season to produce such a supply from the abundant local cucumbers, but when
the sluice gates were opened at last, the water did indeed begin flowing uphill,
and gushed from the Fountain of Apollo at the very summit, without a single
moving mechanical part in the system!
Astounded and joyful, the people carried Mpozos up to the temple on their
shoulders, and asked him, "What makes it work? How did you do it?"
"At first, I feared the problem was insoluble indeed," he replied, "but
eventually I remembered an ancient piece of Hellenic wisdom: Dill Waters Run Steep!
"
Credit: Story adapted liberally from an old
Ferdinand Feghoot piece by Reginald Bretnor.