The known history of the Colossus of Rhodes
New research provides a more detailed and realistic history of the 100-foot-high statue from the ancient world called the Colossus of Rhodes.
The Colossus was a 30-metre-high bronze statue of the god Helios, built to commemorate the victory of the Rhodians over Demetrius of Macedonia, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed in 282 BCE, it fell in an earthquake only 56 years later in 226 BCE. The usual story is that the fragments remained untouched for 880 years until the invasion by the Umayyad caliph Muawiya I. However, literary and geological evidence suggest a more complex, and more likely, story involving several reconstructions, finishing with a devastating earthquake in 142 CE.
No one knows what it looked like or even the exact place it stood. The research ties its history however to the known earthquakes and later that had taken place at Rhodes, and thus provides a reasonable timeline for its destruction and removal. It also debunks this bit of “misinformation”:
In popular imagination, the Colossus stood astride the harbour entrance with ships sailing between his legs. This idea was first mentioned by an Italian pilgrim in 1395, who wrote that the Colossus stood with one leg at the end of the mole with the windmills and the other near St John’s chapel, later a fort. These sites are 750 metres apart, necessitating a statue 1500 metres high — a truly colossal edifice even by modern standards
The reason we don’t know where the statue actually stood is because the bronze used to forge it was exceedingly valuable. Once it was determined it could not be rebuilt that bronze did not remain in place for long.
New research provides a more detailed and realistic history of the 100-foot-high statue from the ancient world called the Colossus of Rhodes.
The Colossus was a 30-metre-high bronze statue of the god Helios, built to commemorate the victory of the Rhodians over Demetrius of Macedonia, and considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed in 282 BCE, it fell in an earthquake only 56 years later in 226 BCE. The usual story is that the fragments remained untouched for 880 years until the invasion by the Umayyad caliph Muawiya I. However, literary and geological evidence suggest a more complex, and more likely, story involving several reconstructions, finishing with a devastating earthquake in 142 CE.
No one knows what it looked like or even the exact place it stood. The research ties its history however to the known earthquakes and later that had taken place at Rhodes, and thus provides a reasonable timeline for its destruction and removal. It also debunks this bit of “misinformation”:
In popular imagination, the Colossus stood astride the harbour entrance with ships sailing between his legs. This idea was first mentioned by an Italian pilgrim in 1395, who wrote that the Colossus stood with one leg at the end of the mole with the windmills and the other near St John’s chapel, later a fort. These sites are 750 metres apart, necessitating a statue 1500 metres high — a truly colossal edifice even by modern standards
The reason we don’t know where the statue actually stood is because the bronze used to forge it was exceedingly valuable. Once it was determined it could not be rebuilt that bronze did not remain in place for long.