Colossus of Rhodes

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It was probably used as a lighthouse about the time of the Norman conquest, and is now devoted to purposes of government storage. The Colossus of Rhodes is said to have been used as a beacon, but there is no proof that it was so.
Englishmen are notorious for the facility they have of making money, and some enterprising men among our forefathers lighted beacons along the coast, and levied tolls upon those who benefited by their light ”

“ But the arguments drawn from [9] ; [10] , referred to above, are quite invalidated, if we allow the opinion of some learned men, among whom are Suidas, Calepine, Munster, and others, that the Colossus, a gigantic statue at Rhodes, gave its own name to the people among whom it stood; for the ancient poets call the inhabitants of the island of Rhodes, Colossians; and hence they thought that the Colossians, to whom St. Paul directs this epistle, were the inhabitants of Rhodes. ”

“ CŎLOSSUS (κολοσσός) is used both by the Greeks and Romans to signify a statue larger than life; but as such statues were very common, the word was more frequently applied to designate figures of gigantic dimensions. Such figures were first executed in Egypt, and were afterwards made by the Greeks and Romans. Among the colossal statues of Greece, the most celebrated was the bronze colossus at Rhodes, dedicated to the sun, the height of which was about 90 feet. ”

“ When analyzed, this tendency towards realism points clearly to an absence of that fine critical faculty with which every supreme artist is endowed. It argues a lack of moderation which in the end must lead to disaster. The admixture of silver to the bronze “Dying Jocasta” was no isolated case. Hellenistic Greece proved itself open to a charge of immoderate folly on many another occasion. The instance furnished by that “Wonder of the World,” the Rhodian Colossus, will occur to every one. The great statue of the Sun-god at Rhodes measured 105 ft. ”

“ The folds themselves are quite natural; it is only in their arrangement that we find the element of art.
The Antioch permits us to assume the tall figure swathed in a long thin cloak as the female type of the Lysippic school, and therefore of the early Rhodian school, while the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes give us the male type. The close connexion postulated rests on the fact that Chares of Lindos, the author of Rhodes’ most famous statue, the great Colossus, was himself a member of the Sikyonian school and a pupil of the master. ”

“ The entire face has a solemn serenity and a sovereign goodness." Leaving aside all consideration of the artistic merits of other Egyptian colossi,—those at Memphis, Thebes, Karnac and Luxor, with the twin marvels of Amenophis-Memnon—we turn to the most famous colossus of antiquity, that at Rhodes, only to find that we have even less evidence on which to base an opinion as to its quality than is available in the case of the numerous primitive works of Egypt and of India. ”

“ The famous group of the Farnese Bull—the largest antique sculpture which has been preserved to us, and which, having once adorned the baths of Caracalla at Rome, is now the pride of the museum at Naples—was the work of two sculptors of Rhodes. Such noble statues, adorning the public places of the city, showed that in the cultivation of art Rhodes, if not the equal, was at least a worthy imitator, of Athens itself. ”

“ But the horizon expanded towards the southeast, and beyond the arches of Titus and Constantine he perceived the Colosseum. Ah! that colossus, only one-half or so of which has been destroyed by time as with the stroke of a mighty scythe, it rises in its enormity and majesty like a stone lace-work with hundreds of empty bays agape against the blue of heaven! There is a world of halls, stairs, landings, and passages, a world where one loses oneself amidst death-like silence and solitude. ”

“ The massive materials of which these walls were composed have long since disappeared, and were probably employed by the Knights to build their fortress with. On the other hand, the form of the ground has probably been much changed by the severe earthquakes to which Rhodes has been from time to time subjected; so that, though it cannot quite be said of this once famous city, etiam periere ruinæ, its site is far less striking than that of most Hellenic cities from the absence of marked and definite features. ”

“ RHODES One other great Hellenistic center existed in the island city of Rhodes. Founded during the closing years of the Peloponnesian War, Rhodes soon distanced Athens in the race for commercial supremacy. The merchants of Rhodes framed admirable laws, especially for business affairs, and many of these were incorporated in the Roman code. Rhodes was celebrated for art. No less than three thousand statues adorned the streets and public buildings. It was also a favorite place of education for promising orators and writers. ”

“ The houses are all built of squared stone, with flat roofs. Many of them have a strange tenantless aspect; for Rhodes is a place which has been long wasting away with that atrophy which is consuming the Ottoman empire. The town is far too large for its inhabitants, who are huddled away into holes and corners. About a year ago an earthquake threw down one of the fine old towers. Its ruins fell in one of the principal streets, blocking it up. Not a stone has been touched by the Turks, and the ruins may perhaps lie there till another earthquake shakes them up again. ”

“ The ancient Pliny records that the colossus, after having stood for sixty-six years, was overthrown by an earthquake, and that it took the artist Charès de Lindos, to whom the Rhodians had intrusted its construction, twelve years to complete his task.
The tendency in art to produce grand effects by colossal works became perceptible twenty-five year's before Phidias; for we find that 463 years before Christ the inhabitants of Syracuse caused a huge statue to be erected to Jupiter Eleutherius, after the death of the tyrant Thrasybulus. ”

“ The next moment, however, he had turned and was moving down the ledge. I stepped back to the wall (upon which two inscriptions were traced) and waited the result with such composure as I could summon.
At last Rhodes moved behind a projection in the wall. A moment, and the glow of his light had vanished. He was gone, and I was alone in that terrible place.
The blackness seemed to increase, the shadows to thicken about me and grow denser. But one sound broke the awful silence, which sound seemed to have a quality tangible, crushing—the growl of the water in the abysmal depths of the chasm. ”

“ At the outset of the war the Roman people had ascertained on trustworthy evidence that the Rhodians had been forming secret designs in conjunction with Perseus against the Republic, and if there had been any doubt as to this before, the language of the envoys had now reduced it to a certainty. Dishonest dealing, even if at the beginning it has been somewhat cautious, generally betrays itself in the long run. The Rhodians were now acting as arbitrators of peace and war over the whole world; the Romans were to take up and lay down their arms at the beck and nod of Rhodes ”

“ Although fully half the stone has been thus removed, the part of the structure which still remains is the most impressive of all the ruins of the city—a monument of the grandeur and of the moral degradation of Rome. It is an especially rich experience to visit the Colosseum by moonlight, where, seated on a stone at the edge of the arena, we may in imagination, with the aid of the tranquil light, reconstruct the vast interior and repeople it with a Roman multitude breathlessly awaiting the opening of the games or exulting over the triumph of a popular favorite. ”

“ To that city in the course of time almost all the spoils of the world were brought, and the artists themselves gathered there beside these excellent works. By such means Rome became an exceedingly beautiful city, more richly adorned by the statues of foreign artists than by those made by natives. It is known that in the little island city of Rhodes there were more than 30,000 statues, in bronze and marble, nor did the Athenians possess less, while those of Olympus and Delphi were more numerous still, and those of Corinth were without number, all being most beautiful and of great price. ”

“ We have seen the very pure and slightly finicky naturalism of the early third century give way to a rather more baroque extravagance in detail, but in neither its earlier nor its later stage did the purest of the Hellenistic schools affect the exaggerations of Alexandria or Pergamon. In Rhodes, at any rate, the steady development of Greek sculpture reached its perfect and logical conclusion. We have seen it start with a great idealism and no technique at all. In the fifth century technique and idealism are almost equally balanced. ”

“ And the mise-en-scène in which she is placed exalts her into a heroine, and adds to her the light, colour and humanity of Greek romance. Born at Rhodes, but of an Athenian mother, she is 366fourteen when the news arrives that the Athenian fleet under Nikias, sent to subdue Syracuse, has been destroyed, and the captive Athenians driven to labour in the quarries. All Rhodes, then in alliance with Athens, now cries, "Desert Athens, side with Sparta against Athens." Balaustion alone resists the traitorous cry. ”

“ We now possess some evidence for the continuous study and development of female drapery at Rhodes parallel to the study and development of the male form. The Rhodian48 school is in fact the most industrious and the most scientific of all the Hellenistic art centres. In mastery of detail they are unapproachable, but they have ceased to care much for motive or idealism in their subjects. To such art both impressionism and romantic feeling are foreign. Rhodian art is very versatile and very straightforward, but its constant aspiration after the unusual renders it in the end monotonous. ”

“ It seemed insufferable that one small island should presume to withhold its allegiance to a monarch whose dominions exceeded those of Alexander and of every conqueror the world had ever seen, and whose power was acknowledged by the Christian sovereigns of Anatolia, as well as in all the provinces of the East; yet Rhodes, small as it was, presented so formidable an aspect, with its masses of fortifications, that he determined on first of all reducing the city of Smyrna, whose position in the very heart of the Asiatic provinces seemed to bid defiance to his arms. ”

“ Colossos (Latin, colossus) , a gigantic brazen statue 126 feet high, executed by Charles for the Rhodians. Blaise de Vignenère says it was a striding figure, but Comte de Caylus proves that it was not so, and did not even stand at the mouth of the Rhodian port. Philo tells us that it stood on a block of white marble, and Lucius Ampellius asserts that it stood in a car. Tiekell makes out the statue to be so enormous in size, that—
While at one foot the thronging galleys ride,
A whole hour's sail scarce reached the further side ”

“ We lay just off the semicircular harbor, which is clasped by walls—partly shaken down by earthquakes—which have noble, round towers at each embracing end. Rhodes is, from the sea, one of the most picturesque cities in the Mediterranean, altho it has little remains of that ancient splendor which caused Strabo to prefer it to Rome or Alexandria. The harbor wall, which is flanked on each side by [Pg 186] stout and round, stone windmills, extends up the hill, and becoming double, surrounds the old town; these massive fortifications of the Knights of St. ”

“ As the Pantheon is the most entire, the Amphitheatre of Vespasian is the most stupendous, monument of antiquity in Rome. It was finished by his son Titus, and obtained the name of Colosseum, afterwards corrupted into Coliseum, from a colossal statue of Apollo which was placed before it. This vast structure was built of Tiburtine stone, which is remarkably durable. If the public buildings of the ancient Romans had met with no more inveterate enemy than Time, we might, at this day, contemplate the greater number in all their original perfection ”

“ An orgie for the emotions which makes one adore the past. 40
Above the Woolsack towers the Wind Mountain, on its slopes the white and grey granite temple of the Rhodes Monument.
The Rhodes Memorial.
One day someone sat gazing at the big Devils Peak, which shadows Groote Schuur and stands like a rampart of the Citadel Mountain behind. As he gazed he became inspired; he said: 'There should be a monument to Rhodes, just there, on those steep green slopes under the Watch House, where the heavy Dutch cannon were dragged up to defend the bay.' The Rhodes trustees rose up and formed the chorus. ”

“ They assisted Pompey against Cæsar, and were defeated by Cassius, and became dependent upon the Romans. The island of Rhodes has been known by the several names of Ophiusa, Stadia, Telchinus, Corymbia, Trinacria, Æthrea, Asteria, Poessa, Atabyria, Oloessa, Marcia, and Pelagia. It received the name of Rhodes, either on account of Rhode, a beautiful nymph who dwelt there, and who was one of the favourites of Apollo, or because roses (ῥοδον) grew in great abundance all over the island. Strabo, bk. 14.—Homer, Iliad, bk. 2.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 7.—Diodorus, bk. 5.—Pliny, bk. ”