And sadly, it only stood for around 54 years, the shortest time of any of the seven wonders. One myth suggests it was knee trouble that brought the great statue down in an earthquake. The statue buckled at the knees in the earthquake and toppled over; the architect took his own life in humiliation.
Whether there was an error in the structure has not been confirmed, but we do know it fell in an earthquake in B. The ruins of Colossus lay untouched, broken apart and left in place for years. In , invading Arabs found the bronze and sold it to Jewish merchants who transported it on the backs of camels to the East to melt down and reuse.
The ancient art of recycling. Great deals happen. Don't miss one. Sign up for our newsletter! That was a very interesting write-up. We had learned about the Colossus of Rhodes in school but had never bothered to look up the actual particulars. This article was very informative. Rhodes Summer Holidays As summer season has kicked in, we are looking at some of the videos that tell us experiences from people who are visiting the island!
Read more about Rhodes Summer Holidays The Wine and Vineries of Rhodes. Being one of the first of the Aegean islands to adopt the cultivation of the grapevine and wine production process. Thanks to it's unique soil and plenty of sunshine, wines of Rhodes today have a fine reputation. Read more about The Wine and Vineries of Rhodes. Hippocrates: Father Of Medicine.
He is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. Read more about Hippocrates: Father Of Medicine. The Ancient Greek Siege Warfare. Although most of the Greek city-states, excluding Sparta, had fortifications from the earliest period, the siege warfare was a strangely absent affair in Ancient Greece for a prolonged period, as there is no reliable evidence of sieges occurring from — BC.
Roads to Rhodes Marathon Read more about Roads to Rhodes Marathon All Rights Reserved. Hosted on CO2 Neutral Servers. Wind: 3. Search Contact For Business. Lipsi or Leipsoi Lipsi are a cluster of islets in the south eastern Aegean and are found north of Leros and east of Patmos. Their collective name is taken from the name of the largest island Lipsi or Lipso, which is comprised of two land masses, joined together by a narrow metre wide neck.
The total area of the cluster is Travelling to Rhodes - Covid Information. From our blog Gadouras Dam: solving the important and crucial water supply problems of the wider Rhodes urban area. Search RhodesGuide. Its port, also named Rhodes, is located on the northern tip. At the time the Colossus was built, the port was an important stop on the trade routes linking Greek cities in Asia Minor—such as Miletus—with the wealth of Egypt, ruled by the Greek Ptolemies.
In the third century B. Rhodes had close links with Alexandria, founded a century before by Alexander the Great. At the end of the fourth century B. Formidable sailors and skilled diplomats, the Rhodians would not renounce their ties with the Egyptians.
Antigonus did his utmost to persuade them to take his side, and when they refused, he decided to use force. Antigonus sent his son Demetrius to subdue Rhodes in B. Protected by metal plates and armed with catapults, this fearsome weapon failed to bring victory to Demetrius.
Rhodes stood strong, and Demetrius withdrew after an unsuccessful, yearlong siege. Rhodes and Macedonia agreed that the Rhodians would back Antigonus against his enemies except Ptolemy. In exchange, they would remain politically and economically autonomous. In gratitude for withstanding the siege, the inhabitants of Rhodes decided to build an extraordinary statue in honor of Helios.
In Greek mythology, Helios was one of the Titans, the gods who ruled over Greece before the Olympians. Lord of the sun, Helios drove his chariot across the sky each day.
The island of Rhodes was sacred to him, and he its patron deity. To build the massive statue, Rhodes needed bronze, and a lot of it. Chares of Lindos, a Rhodian sculptor, was commissioned to construct the monument. Respected across the Greek world, he was a pupil of the famous sculptor Lysippus, a favorite artist of Alexander the Great. Chares may have conceived his commission with a great statue of Zeus in mind: Sculpted by Phidias for the temple of Zeus at Olympia, this statue was massive, described as being seven times larger than life.
Working from to B. Many questions remain as to what exact methods he employed to build it. Work began at the bottom, and the feet were put in place first. However, Philo was writing more than years after the Colossus had been built. Modern art historians do not know what sources he relied on to gather his information, and many dispute the methodology described in his text.
Despite marveling at its size, however, neither source describes what it looked like and where exactly it stood in the port city, omissions that have frustrated historians ever since. What is indisputable is that the Colossus was magnificent. Most sources agree that when the statue fractured, it broke at the knees.
Although Ptolemy III Euergetes of Egypt offered funds and labor to rebuild it, Strabo tells us the Rhodians did not dare to do so as an oracle advised them against it, so the pieces were left where they fell. Ptolemy III even represented himself as Helios on a coin, wearing a crown denoting rays of the sun. Lying on the ground, the vast remains of this giant were admired for centuries.
Lucian of Samosata joked that the Colossus of Rhodes, just like the Pharos of Alexandria, could be seen from the moon. Time eventually ran out for travelers wishing to admire what remained of the great figure of Helios, even in its fallen state.
By the middle of the seventh century, the Umayyad Muslims captured much of the eastern Mediterranean. When their general and future caliph, Muawiyah, conquered Rhodes in A. His forces collected the bronze and sent it to Syria, where it was purchased by a scrap merchant.
According to Byzantine sources, more than camels were needed to carry it all away. During the third millennium B. An alloy made of 90 percent copper and 10 percent tin, bronze was easier to cast and stronger than pure copper. Early Greek bronze statues were simple designs made by separately hammering sheets of the metal into shape and riveting them to one another.
By the fifth century B. Bronze-smiths, like those depicted on this fifth-century B. Judging from the six casting pits that have been found in Rhodes, the island was an impor- tant center for bronze working in the ancient world. Even so, art historians still do not have a conclusive answer as to how the massive Colossus was cast or assembled.
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