THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.
B. C. 306.
In the elementary works for the instruction of young people, we find frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes.
The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face the entrance to the principal port of the Island of Rhodes; and ships in full sail passed easily, it is said, between its legs; for, according to Pliny the ancient, its height was seventy cubits.
This Colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the six others being, as is well known, the hanging gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympus; the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the Pharos of Alexandria, completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1303.
Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the harbour of the island and admitted the passage of vessels in full sail between its wide-stretched limbs. No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of the ignorant. Nevertheless, the historian Rollin, several French dictionaries, and even some encyclopedias, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors.
A century ago, the Comte de Caylus, a distinguished French archeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the school books[7] for young people, but he sought in vain to trace its origin.
Vigenère, in his Tableaux de Philostrate, is supposed to have been the first who ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the Colossus. He was followed by Bergier and Chevreau,[8] the latter adding a lamp to the hand of the statue. A fictitious Greek manuscript, quoted by the mythologist Du Choul,[9] further adorns the Colossus by giving him a sword and lance and by hanging a mirror round his neck.
The Count Choiseul-Gouffier, in his Picturesque journey through Greece, published about the year 1780, declares the Colossus with the outstretched legs to be fabulous.
He says: “This fable has for years enjoyed the privilege so readily accorded to error. It is commonly received, and discarded only by the few who have made ancient history their study. Most persons have accepted without investigation an assertion which is unsupported by any authority from ancient authors.”
Nevertheless the Belgian Colonel Rottiers, and the English geologist Hamilton,[10] do not yield to this opinion, but endeavour still to place the site of the statue at the entrance to one of the smaller harbours of the island, scarcely forty feet wide. Rottiers goes even further, and gives a superb engraving of the Colossus, under the form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver on his shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, and a beacon flame above his head.
Polybius is the first among the ancient writers who mentions the Colossus of Rhodes, in enumerating the donations received by the inhabitants of the island after the fearful earthquake they experienced about 223 years before Christ. “The Rhodians,” says he, “have benefited by the catastrophe which befell them, owing to which, not only the huge Colossus, but innumerable houses and a portion of the surrounding walls were demolished.” Then follows a list of the rich gifts they received from all parts. Among the benefactors of the town of Rhodes, Polybius mentions the three kings, Ptolemy III. of Egypt, Antigonos Doson of Macedonia, and Seleucus of Syria, father of Antiochus.
The elder Pliny records that the Colossus, after having stood for fifty-six years, was overthrown by an earthquake, and that it took Charès of Lindos, to whom the Rhodians had entrusted its re-construction, twelve years to complete his task.
It is probable that the statue of Minerva, from 50 to 60 feet in height, which was designed and partly executed by Phidias for the Acropolis at Athens, served as a model for Charès, not only for the material, but for the conception of the Colossus and for the site on which it stood.
Minerva was the patroness of Athens as the sun-god Helios was the patron of the island of Rhodes.
About 150 years before Christ a certain Philo-Byzantius wrote a short treatise on the seven wonders of the ancient world.[11] In it he gives an explanation of the construction of the Colossus, but nowhere speaks of the extended legs under which vessels in full sail entered the port, nor of the beacon light. On the contrary, he mentions one sole pedestal, which was of white marble. Moreover, the statue was said to be 105 feet in height, and the great harbour entrance, according to modern research, was 350 feet wide; it could not therefore possibly reach across this space.
Lastly, if the statue had stood at the entrance of the great harbour, the earthquake must have overthrown it into the sea, whereas Strabo and Pliny tell us that its fragments remained for a considerable time embedded in the earth, and attracted much attention by their wonderful size and dimensions.
The following is the real truth concerning the Colossus. Towards the year 305 before Christ, Demetrius Poliorcetes laid siege to Rhodes, and the inhabitants defended themselves with so much bravery, that after a whole year of struggle and endurance, they forced the enemy to retire from the island.
The Rhodians, inspired by a sentiment of piety, and excited by fervent gratitude for so signal a proof of the divine favour, commanded Charès to erect a statue to the honour of their deity. An inscription explained that the expenses of its construction were defrayed out of the sale of the materials of war left by Demetrius on his retreat from the island of Rhodes.
This statue was erected on an open space of ground near the great harbour, and near the spot where the pacha’s seraglio now stands; and its fragments, for many years after its destruction, were seen and admired by travellers.
This explanation is still further supported by the fact, that a chapel built on this ground in the time of the Templars is named Fanum Sancti Ioannis Colossensis.
We have seen that Strabo, who wrote and travelled during the reigns of the first two Roman emperors, was, after Polybius, the earliest author who mentions the fall of the Colossus of Rhodes, and that very concisely. Pliny enters into somewhat fuller details, and speaks of the dimensions of the mutilated limbs. “Even while prostrate,” says he, “this statue excited the greatest admiration; few men could span one of its thumbs with their arms, and each of its fingers was as large as an ordinary full-sized statue. Its broken limbs appeared to strangers like caverns, in the interior of which were seen enormous blocks of stone.”
From this time we find no further mention whatever of these fragments, but it is remarkable that towards the end of the second century after Christ some writers speak of a colossal statue at Rhodes as still existing. It is possible that one was again constructed, but of smaller dimensions. Indeed, Leo Allazzi tells us that the Colossus of Rhodes was reconstructed under the Emperor Vespasian.
Alios Aristides, who flourished between the years 149 and 180 of the Christian era, wrote a panegyric on the island of Rhodes, on the occasion of another earthquake which happened there under the reign of Antoninus Pius. He alludes to demolished monuments, but he consoles the inhabitants by telling them, that at any rate all vestiges of their former grandeur have not disappeared, and that they will not be obliged, as in the former disaster [that of B. C. 407], to rebuild the greater part of their town. He reminds them that, on the contrary, the two basins of the port still remain, as well as the theatre, the gymnasium, and the great bronze statue.
This passage is certainly not very clear, and it remains to be proved if the author here speaks of the Colossus which had been restored and had escaped the earthquake, or of some other bronze statue.
Pausanias, who wrote shortly after Aristides, speaks also in two places of the earthquake in the time of Antoninus, without making any mention of the Colossus; but in a description of Athens, he alludes in terms of great admiration to a temple of Jupiter built by Adrian, and he adds: “The emperor consecrated to it a magnificent statue of the god, which surpassed all other statues except the Colossus of Rhodes and of Rome.”
The author could hardly have made this comparison if there had only existed in his time fragments of the Colossus of Rhodes.
Lastly, the satirist Lucian makes frequent mention of the Colossus, and he even introduces it in a dialogue of the assembled gods.
It is probable, therefore, judging from these passages from Aristides, Pausanias, and Lucian, that, at the epoch in which they lived, the Colossus of Rhodes had been restored or reconstructed; for if during four centuries past the fragments had been lying in the dust, these writers would not have thus expressed themselves.
A long time after the fall of the Roman empire, the island of Rhodes was conquered by the general-in-chief of the caliph Othman, in the 7th century of the Christian era; and then mention is once more made of a Colossus in metal. “This last memorial of a glorious past was not respected by the conqueror,” says the Byzantine history; “the general took down the Colossus, which stood erect on the island, transported the metal into Syria, and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980 camels with the materials of his purchase.”
Such is the account given by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetos, and confirmed by that of Theophanes, Zonaras, and others. As to the fable of the ancient Colossus between whose gigantic limbs ships in full sail were believed to have passed, we are disposed to think that it originated at the time of the Crusades, when the inhabitants of Rhodes must have amused themselves by relating to the new-comers all sorts of incredible stories of their past grandeur.
We can refer those who may still be anxious for further details on the Colossus of Rhodes, to a treatise on the subject by Carl Ferdinand Lüders, in which the fiction of the extended limbs is completely disposed of; but this treatise contains such an array of learned accessories, more germanico, that few will probably have the patience to read it through.