ROME—Historians are calling into question the veracity of one of Western civilization’s most oft-quoted maxims, following the discovery of a thousand-page personal diary belonging to the ancient Roman architect Maximus. In this extremely long and self-obsessed document, Maximus describes in detail how, after buying some Adderall from his friend Antonius for five denari, he conceived of and executed the entire construction of Rome in twenty-four hours. Here is an excerpt.

So, I thought, O.K., a city. What does a city need? Well, first off, it needs a Colosseum, obviously, for the Christians and the lions. And a city needs some temples for sacrifices. And baths, ’cause people are gonna get filthy and stressed out, and they’re gonna want to sweat out the toxins. But where are we gonna get the water?

I paced around my courtyard. My heart pounding. Shit. Shit. But then—I snapped my fingers. “Aqueducts!”

The birds scattered from the boom of my voice.

“We’ll just build aqueducts on a slant and roll the damn water down from the mountains. Like some Rube Goldberg shit. Yes! I love this. And what else? What else? We’re gonna have all this water. How about . . . fountains! People can drink from ’em, and throw coins in to make wishes if they want to—I don’t know, I’m not a mind reader, it might be fun. And it would monetize wish-making, which I think is a good thing in and of itself. What about an elaborate kinda . . . Trevi Fountain! That’s it! Fucking awesome. So, wait. Wait.”

I told my assistants to start laying the bricks for the fountains and aqueducts and Colosseum and temples right away.

One of them, I can’t even remember his name, said to me, “Maximus, you look . . . excited. Maybe you should relax in the shade of your chambers—let your nerves settle a bit.”

This really tried my patience. “Get to raising those temples! You are messing up my rhythm!” He ran away in his sandals.

It was all coming together. But then something horrible happened: for, like, ten hellish minutes, I was totally stuck. I had architect’s block, which some people will tell you doesn’t exist—but you should have seen me! The inspiration was all gone. Nothing was flowing. I was like a clogged aqueduct.

I popped another Adderall and found myself cleaning my chambers till they were spotless. I listened to the self-help/motivational orators who were lecturing outside my window. I needed to go somewhere, I felt. That’s the way people are. They need destinations. They gotta get to those destinations. And then, like Jupiter’s thunderbolt, it hit me: roads! And all of ’em, each and every damn one, could lead to Rome. Yes!!! I called all my assistants, who, as I mentioned in chapters one and three, were just a bunch of children and slaves. (You didn’t have to pay them! They just needed stuff to pad their stone-tablet résumés!)

I shouted, “Roads! Lay ’em, pave ’em, put ’em all over the damn place. Connect everything. It’s all part of the plan!”

“You should eat something, sir,” an assistant said.

“Not hungry!”

My assistants ran off in their sandals to start laying my roads.

Maximus’s diary continues in this vein for many, many hundreds of pages. Its final lines read:

And then, at about VI or VII in the morning, I had awful dry mouth, and I was standing on a mountaintop, and my bones felt hollow—like I could feel the hollowness inside of them—and I was surveying this grand city that I’d built in a single day, and I felt, like, That’s great. That’s so great, but what’s next? You know? What’s my next project? Gotta think of the future. Can’t get complacent. But also, hold on. I need to sleep. I should catch, maybe, like, IV hours of sleep right here on the mountain.

So I sprawled out. But my heart was still pounding like the heart of a Christian who’s about to be fed to a lion. And I was very aware of the hair follicles on my head. And I kept tonguing the roof of my dry, dry mouth.

Finally, after an hour of this, I started to really panic. What if I never slept again? Wasn’t that how Catullus the Younger went mad? And that’s when it hit me: I’ll go call on Antonius. It’ll be O.K. Antonius will sell me a Klonopin.