The statue of limitations was a colossal marble erection, five hundred cubits in height, that was expected to bestride the entrance to the Cycladean harbour of Santorini for a thousand years as a primordial testament to the perennial uselessness of humankind but which, in a bout of titanic irony collapsed under its own weight a week or so after completion, killing its sculptor and the entire race of proto-Greek epicureans who conceived of it.
