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.
BELISARIUS.
A. D. 565.
The imagination of poets, painters, and sculptors, backed by one of Marmontel’s novels, has helped to make of an apocryphal tradition a matter of history which has been believed in by the many, who are ever open-mouthed to receive the marvellous upon trust.