The most common question from visitors to the Acropolis is about how the large marbles were lifted. Those who know somewhat better consider such questions naive, and sometimes they may indeed be right; they occasionally add some derogatory comments about those who are puzzled, often not realizing that these monuments are far more significant as artistic and spiritual achievements than as manual labor.

However, the critics also err when they insist on paying attention to and admiring only the intangible and purely spiritual aspects of the achievements, almost disdainfully neglecting the manual work. It seems, however, that both admirers and non-admirers of manual labor share a common ground. They only understand a few, and indeed the easier, of the technical issues of ancient architecture. They are unaware that some other stages of the work, such as quarrying and transportation, were heavier than that of lifting, and that an even greater and more challenging achievement was the perfect leveling and fitting of the stones.

(. . .) [Excerpt from the text of the preface]