The Colossus of Rhodes
was a giant statue of the Greek god
Helios, erected on the Greek island
of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos, a student
of sculptor Lysippos, between 292
and 280 B.C.E. It is one of the Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World. Before
its destruction from an earthquake,
the Colossus of Rhodes stood 70 cubits
tall, around 110 feet, making it the
tallest statues of the ancient world.
Rhodes is an island
situated in the eastern Aegean Sea.
It lies approximately 11 miles (18
kilometers) west of Turkey's shores,
situated between the Greek mainland
and the island of Cyprus. The citizens
of its capital, also called Rhodes,
built the Colossus as a victory monument
after resisting a military invasion.
The Colossus has been compared in
literature and lore to the Statue
of Liberty in New York Harbor. The
two statues are roughly the same size.
Erection
of the statue
The Island of Rhodes, with the city
of Rhodes at its northeast tipThe
Colossus was originally built as a
victory monument by the people of
Rhodes after they successfully resisted
an attack by a powerful army in the
aftermath of the division of Alexander
the Great's empire. Alexander died
at an early age in 323 B.C.E. without
having time to put into place any
plans for his succession. Fighting
broke out among his generals, the
Diadochi, with three of them eventually
dividing up much of his empire in
the Mediterranean area. During the
fighting Rhodes had sided with Ptolemy,
and when Ptolemy eventually took control
of Egypt, Rhodes and Ptolemaic Egypt,
forming an alliance that controlled
much of the trade in the eastern Mediterranean.
Another of Alexander's
generals, Antigonus I Monophthalmus,
was upset by this turn of events.
In 305 B.C.E. he had his son Demetrius
Poliorcetes, also a general, invade
Rhodes with an army of 40,000. However,
the city was well defended, and Demetrius—whose
name "Poliorcetes" signifies
the "besieger of cities"—had
to start construction of a number
of massive siege towers in order to
gain access to the walls. The first
was mounted on six ships, but these
were capsized in a storm before they
could be used. He tried again with
a larger, land-based tower named Helepolis,
but the Rhodian defenders stopped
this by flooding the land in front
of the walls so that the rolling tower
could not move. In 304 B.C.E. a relief
force of ships sent by Ptolemy arrived,
and Demetrius' army abandoned the
siege, leaving most of their siege
equipment.
To celebrate their victory,
the Rhodians sold the equipment left
behind for 300 talents and decided
to build a colossal statue of their
patron god, Helios. Construction was
left to the direction of Chares, a
native of Lindos in Rhodes, who had
been involved with large-scale statues
before. His teacher, the sculptor
Lysippus, had constructed one 60-foot-high,
bronze statue of Zeus at Tarentium.
In order to pay for the construction
of the Colossus, the Rhodians sold
all of the siege equipment that Demetrius
left behind.
Construction
Colossus of Rhodes as imagined in
a sixteenth-century engraving by Martin
Heemskerck, part of his series of
the Seven Wonders of the WorldAncient
accounts, which differ to some degree,
describe the structure as being built
around several stone columns (or towers
of blocks) forming the interior of
the structure, which stood on a 50-foot-high,
white marble pedestal near the Mandraki
harbor entrance. Other sources place
the Colossus on a breakwater in the
harbor.
Iron beams were embedded
in the brick towers, and bronze plates
attached to the bars formed the visible
skin of the sculpture. Much of the
iron and bronze was reforged from
the various weapons Demetrius's army
left behind, and the abandoned second
siege tower was used for scaffolding
around the lower levels during construction.
Upper portions were built with the
use of a large earthen ramp. The statue
itself was over 110 feet tall, somewhere
near the harbor entrance to Rhodes.
After 12 years, in 280 B.C.E., the
statue was completed. During construction,
builders would pile mounds of dirt
around the sides of the Colossus to
aid in construction. To an observer
it may have looked like a volcano-like
sculpture. Upon completion all of
the dirt was moved and the colossus
was left to stand alone.
The "harbor-straddling
Colossus" was a figment of later
imaginations. Many older illustrations
(above) show the statue with one foot
on either side of the harbor mouth
with ships passing under it:
"The brazen giant
of Greek fame, with conquering limbs
astride from land to land"—The
New Colossus (poem inscribed at the
base of the Statue of Liberty).
In Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar,
Cassius (I,ii,136–38) says of
Caesar:
Why man, he doth bestride
the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep
about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves
Shakespeare alludes to the Colossus
also in Troilus and Cressida (Ch.
5) and in Henry IV, Part 1 (Ch. 1).
While these fanciful
images from poetry feed the misconception,
mechanical engineers believe it was
highly unlikely that the Colossus
could have straddled the harbor (Maryon,
1956). Arguments against such an open-legged
construction include:
If the completed statue
straddled the harbor, the entire mouth
of the harbor would have been effectively
closed during the entirety of the
construction. Moreover, the ancient
Rhodians did not have the means to
dredge and re-open the harbor after
construction.
The statue fell in 224 B.C.E.: if
it straddled the harbor mouth, it
would have entirely blocked the harbor
rather than falling on the land as
described in the ancient sources.
Even ignoring these objections, the
statue was made of bronze, and an
engineering analysis indicated that
the Colossus could not have been built
with its legs apart without collapsing
from its own weight.
Destruction
The statue stood for only 56 years
until Rhodes was hit by an earthquake
in 224 B.C.E. The statue snapped at
the knees and fell over onto the land.
Ptolemy III offered to pay for the
reconstruction of the statue, but
an oracle made the Rhodians afraid
that they had offended Helios, and
they declined to rebuild it. The remains
lay on the ground as described by
Strabo (xiv.2.5) for over eight hundred
years, and even broken they were so
impressive that many traveled to see
them. Pliny the Elder remarked that
few people could wrap their arms around
the fallen thumb and that each of
its fingers was larger than most statues.
In 654 an Arab force
under Muawiyah I captured Rhodes,
and according to the chronicler Theophanes
the Confessor,[2] the remains were
sold to a traveling salesman from
Edessa, Mesopotamia. The buyer had
the statue broken down, and transported
the bronze scrap on the backs of nine
hundred camels to his home. Pieces
continued to turn up for sale for
years, after being found along the
caravan route.
The Statue of LibertyMedia reports
in 1989 initially suggested that large
stones found on the seabed off the
coast of Rhodes might have been the
remains of the Colossus; however this
theory was later rejected by most
scholars.
There has been much debate as to whether
to build a replica of the Colossus.
Those in favor the idea say it would
boost tourism in Rhodes greatly, but
those against construction say it
would cost too large an amount over
US$134 million. This idea has been
revived many times since it was first
proposed in 1970.
Sylvia Plath's poem "The Colossus"
refers to the Colossus of Rhodes.
Perhaps the most famous reference
to the Colossus, however, is in the
poem, "The New Colossus,"
by Emma Lazarus, written in 1883 and
inscribed on a plaque at the Statue
of Liberty in New York City's harbor.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek
fame,
With conquering limbs
astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with
a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning,
and her name
Mother of Exiles. From
her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome;
her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor
that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient
lands, your storied pomp!" cries
she
With silent lips. "Give
me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside
the golden door!"
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