In the elementary works for the instruction of young people we find every day frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face both sides of the entrance to the principal port of the island of Rhodes, and ships in full sail pass easily, it is said, between its legs; for Pliny the ancient tells us that 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 suspended gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris, wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympicus; the mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the pharos of Alexandria, erected in the year of Rome 470, and completely destroyed by an earthquake A.D. 1303.
Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the island, and admitted the passage of vessels in fall 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.
A century ago, the Comte de Cayius, a distinguished French archaeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the schoolbooks [Footnote 76] for young people; but he sought in vain to trace its origin.
[Footnote 76: "Memoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions," t. xxiv., p. 369]
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, [Footnote 77] the latter adding a lamp to the hand of the statue.
[Footnote 77: "Histoire du Monde," iv., p. 319.]
The greater number of French dictionaries, Rollin, in his "Ancient History," and even some encyclopaedic dictionaries, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors.
A fictitious Greek manuscript, quoted by the mythologist Dachoul, [Footnote 78] further adorns the colossus by giving him a sword and lance, and by hanging a mirror round his neck.