Diagoras of Rhodes

“ On the female side Diagoras was a Messenian by extraction, as he was descended from the daughter of Aristomenes. And Dorieus the son of Diagoras, besides his victories at Olympia, had 8 victories in the Isthmian games, and seven in the Nemean. It is said that he also won in the Pythian games without a contest. And he and Pisirodus were entered in the games as Thurians, because they were driven from Rhodes by faction and migrated to Thurii. But Dorieus returned to Rhodes subsequently. ”

“ Rhodes is said to have been colonised at the time of the Dorian migrations by Argive Dorians from Epidauros, who were Herakleidai of of the family of Tlepolemos. They founded a confederacy of three cities, Kameiros, Lindos, and Ialysos. Ialysos was then ruled by the dynasty of the Eratidai. Their kingly power had now been extinct two hundred years, but the family was still pre-eminent in the state. Of this family was Diagoras, and probably the ode was sung at a family festival ”

“ Pindar begins this beautiful ode (which, as the younger scholiast informs us, was said to have been written in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of Minerva) with a highly poetical simile drawn from domestic life, which introduces the praise of the Rhodian victor and his race.—He then proceeds to the story of Tlepolemus, an ancestor of Diagoras, who, after having murdered Licymnius, departed for Rhodes by the command of Apollo ”

“ The poet then proceeds to panegyrize Tlepolemus and Diagoras, enumerating the several victories of the latter.
The ode concludes with an invocation to Jupiter, to whom divine honours were paid on Atabyrius, a mountain of Rhodes, propitiating his continued favour both for the poet and the victor, and a moral reflection on the mutability of human fortune. ”

“ Pindar, as the younger scholiast observes, leaves it doubtful in what Attic contest Diagoras came off victorious: whether in the Panathenaic, the Heraclean, the Eleusinian, or the Panhellenic; or whether he obtained the prize in all these. The same epithet is applied by Homer to Ithaca: (Il.. ii. 201.) ↑ A mountain in Rhodes, on which was erected a temple to Jupiter, containing brazen bulls, that, according to the scholiast, had the property of lowing whenever any unseemly action was about to be committed there. ”

“ From the union of Helios and Rhodos sprang, says Pindar, seven noble sons. And to three of these sons he traces the three independent communities which in his own day occupied the island, the cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Camirus.
A dazzling enumeration of Diagoras's victories closes the Ode. Olympia and Pytho had been already mentioned as scenes of his triumph; now we hear of prizes brought by him from the Isthmus, Nemea, Argos, Athens, Arcadia, Thebes, Pellene, Ægina, Megara—a marvellous list indeed. Yet the poet adds a word of caution; he dares not finish with a boast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As regards, first of all, the allegation that we are atheists—for I will meet the charges one by one, that we may not be ridiculed for having no answer to give to those who make them—with reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there was no God at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Possessing a fleet larger than they had ever before had united in Asia, together with a numerous body of allies, they calculated on being able to get money to pay their men without Persian aid; and an invitation, which they just now received from various powerful men at Rhodes, tended to strengthen such confidence. The island of Rhodes, inhabited by a Dorian population considerable in number as well as distinguished for nautical skill, was at this time divided between three separate city governments, as it had been at the epoch of the Homeric Catalogue,—Lindus, Ialysus, and Kameirus ”

“ THE author of this poem was the son of Silleus and Illeus. He was born at Alexandria in Egypt, and educated under Callimachus. He received the name of Rhodius, or the Rhodian, either from his mother, whose name was Rhoda, or, more probably, from the city Rhodes. During his stay in this place he finished his Argonautic poem, and founded a school of rhetoric. Ptolemy Euergetes, in whose reign our poet flourished, two hundred and forty-four years before Christ, recalled him from his retirement at Rhodes, and appointed him successor to Eratosthenes in the care of the Alexandrian library. ”

“ When our acquisition of the language became a real one, we began to learn something of the science of Drome and to impart a knowledge of the wonderful science of our own world. Never shall I forget the amazement of the queen and those learned men of Drome when Rhodes brought his mathematics into play. Problems that only a Droman Archimedes could solve and that only after much labor (what with their awful notation) Rhodes solved, presto—just like that! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this account of ancient university life our attention has been almost exclusively confined to Athens, though there were other seats of education very celebrated, and in much request—Rhodes, Massilia, Tarsus, and, above all, Alexandria. Many Roman nobles preferred sending their sons to Massilia for their education—a Greek town, planted far away from the vices and luxuries of the East. Rhodes maintained its political freedom longer than any other Hellenic settlement, and was famous as a school of rhetoric. ”

“ Leave the hideous thing alone. Why, the Dromans will think that you are dippy. Fact is, I believe that they are beginning to think so already."
"Let 'em!" said Rhodes with true philosophic indifference. "People thought that Galileo was crazy, and Newton and Darwin; Columbus was non compos mentis, [13] Fulton was dippy, and Edison was looney. Yes, at one time the great inventor bore the beautiful sobriquet of Looney Edison. Listen to me, Billy, me lad: the greatest compliment that a scientist can ever receive is to be called a sap by sapheads." ”

“ When Rhodes proceeded to the solution of trigonometrical problems, their amazement knew no bounds. And when he explained to them that all they had to do to become masters of such problems was to discard their cumbersome notation and adopt the simple numerals used by ourselves—well, I do actually believe that that was the straw that broke the back of Brendaldoombro's power! For (strange though it may seem to a world that is more interested in moonshine than it is in science) that brought over to our side every learned man in Drome and a majority of the people themselves. ”

“ Enter his old friend and teacher, Diagoras, who has come from Athens to visit him. Diagoras is amazed to see the lavish richness and splendor of the house and the room. When Cleon asks him politely to sit down, he answers that he cannot, for he does not see any seat! ”

“ One was a native of Crotona, a man who attained tyrannical power; the second was a Phliasian, a trainer of wrestlers, as some say; the third was a native of Zacynthus; the fourth was this our philosopher, to whom they say the mysteries of philosophy belong, in whose time that proverbial phrase, “Ipse dixit,” was introduced into ordinary life. Some also affirm, that there was another man of the name of Pythagoras, a statuary of Rhodes; who is believed to have been the first discoverer of rhythm and proportion; and another was a Samian statuary; and another an orator, of no reputation ”

“ Rhodes and Drorathusa evinced an admirable nonchalance, but in the eyes of the others burned the dull light of despair. And perhaps, too, in my own. I tried to hide it, but I could not disguise it from myself—the numbing, maddening fact that I had abandoned hope.
For a time I lay watching Rhodes, who was writing, writing in his journal. How could he do it? Who could ever find the record? At any rate, even though found, it could never be read, for the finder would be a Droman. It made me angry to see a man doing a thing so absurd. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Diodorus (xiv, 97) agrees in this number of twenty-seven triremes, and in the fact of aid having been obtained from Samos, which island was persuaded to detach itself from Athens. But he recounts the circumstances in a very different manner. He represents the oligarchical party in Rhodes as having risen in insurrection, and become masters of the island; he does not name Teleutias, but Eudokimus (Ekdikus?) ”

“ Indeed, the commercial mantle of Athens had fallen upon Rhodes. Unlike the kingdoms of Pergamus and of the Seleucidæ, the middle-class was paramount here. Rhodes, like Venice in later years, was practically ruled by an aristocracy of merchants. The vigorous schools of art and rhetoric depended in no small measure upon this. Such a social system provides that prime essential of vital literature and art—large numbers of citizens with the experience that comes from rubbing wit against wit and passion against passion in the market square and the forum. ”

“ He was about sixty years of age, lean to emaciation and with the cold, hard look of the fanatic in his eyes and, indeed, in his every lineament. His face, smooth-shaven, as is the Droman custom, was like that of some cruel bird of prey. Coldly he received, and returned, the salutation of Drorathusa, and dark with malevolence had been the look which he had fixed upon Rhodes and me.
There could not be the slightest doubt that this human raptor purposed to rend us beak and talon. ”

“ 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. ”