Darius' bridge across the Bosporus

When Darius the Great set out to crush the nomadic Scythians he took his great army across the Hellespont on a pontoon bridge built by one Mandrocles, an engineer from the island of Samos. This was before Darius determined on subjugating the Greek city-states. The Great King was good business for lots of Greeks early in his reign.

Darius immediately rewarded Mandrocles with immense wealth, some of which the engineer spent commemorating the success of his project. He commissioned a painting of the army crossing the bridge, with Darius looking on, and dedicated it to Hera in her great sanctuary on Samos (legendarily the goddess's birthplace). An unknown poet supplied an inscription in verse:

He bridged the fishy span of Bosporus:

Now Mandrocles sets up this souvenir

Of his pontoon-work in our Hera’s shrine.

He took a coronet for his reward,

And crowned his Samians with martial fame,

When he fulfilled the will of Darius.

The epigram comes to the Anthology (6.341) through Herodotus, who gives a great account of the bridge episode at 4.87-8.

I'll next move onto some of the erotic epigrams of the Anthology, from Book 5.