The orders made in the preparatory phase to produce cables for the bridges are mentioned by Herodotus in a rather casual way like orders for larger quantities of standard merchandise. Only when he describes the bridges rebuilt after the storm he gives a single indication saying that the weight of the cables made of white flax was one talent per cubit what roughly translates into 26 kg/46 cmAgain, the conversion is made without regard to the unit differing locally and to the various views of historians. or 56.5 kg per meter.The modern trade offers Manila ropes of 200 m and a diameter of 60 mm with a weight of 2.49 kg/m or hemp ropes of 40 mm and 0.56 kg/m, whose breaking loads are 22 tonnes and 10 tonnes, respectively. Using various methods of conversion one arrives at diameters between 23 and 28 cm (between 9 and 11 inches)!Hammonds (p.99) uses a cubit of 52,7 cm and a practical rule of thumb taken from Robert Chapman, A treatise on ropemaking as practiced in private and public ropeyards ... (Philadelphia 1869) and calculates the diameter to be 23 cm; Barker (p. 34) uses simplified figures and the circular area and arrives at a diameter of 25 cm; a comparison with a modern rope taking the weights and the circular areas into account results in a diameter of more than 28 cm. Cables weighing that much cannot be handled, it is almost impossible to bend cables with such a diameter or to reel them on a cable drum - which probably did not yet exist at that time - or to put them into any other transportable condition. Bollards of several meters in diameter would have been necessary in order to fasten these cables without breaking them.Hammond (p. 101) describes the mooring by way of an eye splice on a bollard of 45 cm diameter without any discussion how to splice a cable of 23 cm diameter, how the cable would survive such a sharp bend, or how the then existing iron smelting and forging industry managed to produce bollards larger than most modern ones. Herodotus appears to talk about undivided cables reaching from shore to shore. However, a single cable of 2,200 m would have weighed 124.3 tonnes and even today could not be transported by any practical means.Hammond (p. 100) calculates a weight of for the cable of 1,500 m (corresponding to 108 t for an equivalent cable of 2,200 m), but does not refer in any way to the problems resulting from such weight.
