Where the limbs are broken asunder, vast caverns are seen yawning in the interior. “Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms, and its fingers are larger than most statues. Pliny the Elder, who probably saw the ruins of the statue firsthand, tells us, as translated by John Bostock: Even in its ruined state, the Colossus was still a true Wonder of the World. Nonetheless, people still came to Rhodes to see the remains of the statue. Indeed, it spent more time lying broken on the ground than it did actually standing upright. It lay broken on the ground for centuries afterwards. Unfortunately, the Colossus of Rhodes only stood for about fifty-four years before it collapsed in 226 BC during a major earthquake. If it were still standing today, modern people would probably still be impressed by it. This would make the Colossus of Rhodes possibly the tallest known statue from antiquity. For comparison, the height of the Statue of Liberty from the statue’s feet to the top of her torch is forty-six meters (152 feet).
If the Colossus of Rhodes was really seventy cubits tall, that would mean that it was somewhere around thirty-two meters (105 feet) tall. 63 BC – c. 24 AD) in Book Fourteen, Chapter 2, Section 5 of his Geographika and by the late fourth-or-early-fifth-century AD Greek writer Philon of Byzantion in Chapter 4 of his treatise On the Seven Wonders.Īlthough this statistic is probably a rough estimate and not an exact measurement, it can be taken as a general indicator of about how tall the statue probably was. This is the statistic given by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, as well as the statistic given by the author of an anonymous poem quoted by the Greek geographer Strabon of Amaseia (lived c.
Most ancient writers seem to agree that the Colossus of Rhodes stood at around seventy cubits high when it was erect. Pliny states that the Rhodians managed to raise this tremendous sum of money by melting down the large siege weapons used by the army of Demetrios I Poliorketes, which had been abandoned on Rhodes when the siege had ended.
The ancient Roman writer Pliny the Elder (lived 23 – 79 AD) records in Book Thirty-Four, Chapter 18 of his encyclopedic work Natural History, that the construction of the Colossus took twelve years to complete and that it cost no less than 300 talents. The Colossus itself was probably made of bronze plates with stone-weighted iron interior framework. Lysippos is known to have created colossal statues of Zeus and Herakles and it is likely that, before taking on the project of designing the Colossus, Chares already had experience designing and building colossal sculptures. It was designed by the Greek sculptor Chares of Lindos, who was a student of the famous sculptor Lysippos of Sikyon (lived c. The Colossus of Rhodes was a sculpture of the ancient Greek sun god Helios, who was the patron god and protector of the island of Rhodes. Many people believe that the Colossus originally straddled the harbor of Rhodes with one foot on either side, but, for reasons I shall soon explain, this notion is certainly erroneous. There is, however, a pernicious modern misconception about the statue’s position and location. It was constructed between 292 and 280 BC in celebration of the fact that Rhodes had survived a prolonged, but unsuccessful siege in 305 BC by Demetrios I Poliorketes of Makedonia, the son of Antigonos I Monophthalmos.Īlthough the Colossus collapsed as the result of an earthquake only fifty-four years after it was built, it is still remembered today as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Colossus of Rhodes was a gigantic bronze statue of the ancient Greek sun god Helios that stood on the Greek island of Rhodes during the third century BC.
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