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![](colossus07.jpg)
Built:
Early 200s B.C.
Location: Near harbor
of Rhodes, a Greek island in Aegean Sea
History: The Greek sculptor
Chares and his shop worked 12 years to build a giant bronze statue
in honor of the sun god Helios. The statue, celebrating the unity
of Rhodes' three city-states, is believed to have stood on a promontory
overlooking the water.
At
approximately 120 feet, the bronze Colossus stood almost as high as
the Statue of Liberty in the United States. Interior stone blocks
and iron bars supported the hollow statue. Just 56 years after it
was built, a strong earthquake destroyed it.
The island of Rhodes was an important economic centre in the ancient
world. It is located off the southwestern tip of Asia Minor where
the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. The capitol city, also named
Rhodes, was built in 408 B.C. and was designed to take advantage of
the island's best natural harbour on the northern coast. In 357 B.C.
the island was conquered by Mausolus of Halicarnassus (whose tomb
is one of the other Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), fell into
Persian hands in 340 B.C., and was finally captured by Alexander the
Great in 332 B.C..
When Alexander died of a fever at an early age, his generals fought
bitterly among themselves for control of Alexander's vast kingdom.
Three of them, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigous, succeeded in dividing
the kingdom among themselves. The Rhodians supported Ptolemy (who
wound up ruling Egypt) in this struggle. This angered Antigous who
sent his son Demetrius to capture and punish the city of Rhodes. The
war was long and painful. Demetrius brought an army of 40,000 men.
This was more than the entire population of Rhodes.
When
Demetrius attacked the city, the defenders stopped the war machine
by flooding a ditch outside the walls and mining the heavy monster
in the mud. By then almost a year had gone by and a fleet of ships
from Egypt arrived to assist the city. Demetrius withdrew quickly
leaving the great siege tower where it was. To celebrate their victory
and freedom, the Rhodians decided to build a giant statue of their
patron god Helios. They melted down bronze from the many war machines
Demetrius left behind for the exterior of the figure and the super
siege tower became the scaffolding for the project. According to Pliny,
a historian who lived several centuries after the Colossus was built,
construction took 12 years. Other historians place the start of the
work in 304 B.C.. The statue was one hundred and ten feet high and
stood upon a fifty-foot pedestal near the harbour mole. Although the
statue has been popularly depicted with its legs spanning the harbour
entrance so that ships could pass beneath, it was actually posed in
a more traditional Greek manner: nude, wearing a spiked crown, shading
its eyes from the rising sun with its right hand, while holding a
cloak over its left.
The
architect of this great construction was Chares of Lindos, a Rhodian
sculptor who was a patriot and fought in defence of the city. Chares
had been involved with large scale statues before. His teacher, Lysippus,
had constructed a 60-foot high likeness of Zeus. Chares probably started
by making smaller versions of the statue, maybe three feet high, then
used these as a guide to shaping each of the bronze plates of the
skin.
The
Colossus stood proudly at the harbour entrance for some fifty-six
years. Each morning the sun must have caught its polished bronze surface
and made the god's figure shine. Then an earthquake hit Rhodes and
the statue collapsed. Huge pieces of the figure lay along the harbour
for centuries. It is said that an Egyptian king offered to pay for
its reconstruction, but the Rhodians refused. They feared that somehow
the statue had offended the god Helios, who used the earthquake to
throw it down.
In
the seventh century A.D. the Arabs conquered Rhodes and broke the
remains of the Colossus up into smaller pieces and sold it as scrap
metal. Legend says it took 900 camels to carry away the statue. A
sad end for what must have been a majestic work of art. ![](fish.gif)
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