#Introduction Alright.
If you were to visit the city of Rhodes, let’s say a few years after 280 BCE.
You would visit a beautiful city.
A city with beautiful buildings, beautiful scenery and, I’m sure, beautiful people.
You would also see a thriving city, a city with one of the most successful harbours in
the mediterrarnean.
But chances are, your eyes wouldn’t be on the city, or the harbour, or the people, or
even the scenery.
Your eyes would be on the 33 metre tall bronze statue awaiting you on the island.
A statue famously known as one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
That statue obviously being the Colossus of Rhodes.
If you were to visit the city of Rhodes today, you would still visit a beautiful and thriving
city.
But, you wouldn’t see any bronze statue or even evidence that there was one?
So that begs that question, what happened to the Colossus of Rhodes?
#Background But before we can answer that question, we
need a bit of context.
A long long time, on the island of Rhodes, there were 3 city states.
One day, the three city states decided to join together and create a new city, the city
of Rhodes.
Rhodes, overtime, built up strong commercial and diplomatic relations with the other Mediterranean
cities, and soon grew bigger and, more importantly, richer.
So it’s no surprise that Rhodes did not enjoy peace for long.
At the turn of the 4th century BCE, war broke out between Ptolemy, King of Egypt, and Antigonus,
King of Macedonia.
Rhodes being an incredibly rich city, at an important location, made it an obvious target.
Antigonus would try all he could to persuade the city to join his side.
But his efforts led him nowhere, as Rhodes held close ties with Ptolemy.
Antigonus would send his son Demetruis to capture the city, and on paper it seemed like
a simple victory.
Demetruis had an army 5 times the size of Rhode’s, he had a siege tower, he had nearly
200 ships and a newly built harbour to launch them.
But after a year, he made no progress, the city of Rhodes stood tall.
Perhaps growing bored or realising the financial drain, Demetruis negotiated a truce and got
the hell out of Rhodes.
#Building the Colossal The people of Rhodes were overjoyed, they
wanted to do something to celebrate the colossal occasion.
And of course, what better way to celebrate than to build a 33 metre tall bronze statue
of Helios, the greek sun god.
The colossal task of building the statue was given to Charles of Lindos, a famous ancient
Greek sculptor.
And it would take 12 years and 300 workers to complete, starting in 292 BCE and finishing
in 280 BCE.
So it definitely was not a quick project.
The Colossus of Rhodes is believed to have been built on site, with the bronze outer
layer done first.
With stones then filling the inside, and then mounts of dirt being placed around the completed
section.
This allowed workers to build higher and higher, with great stability.
Rinse and repeat for 12 years, and the Colossus of Rhodes was completed.
#Colossus of Rhodes While we have a good idea of how tall the
Colossus of Rhodes was, who built it and how it was built.
The exact location of the statue and the exact pose are both a debate.
Let’s start with the simpler one, the exact location of the Colossus of Rhodes.
The most likely location would be at the Fort of St. Nicholas, as there’s evidence of
a sandstone circle and curved blocks of marbles, both potentially once a part of the Colossus.
But the colossus has also often been depicted standing at the mouth of the harbour, though
this location is unlikely, we’ll get to that later.
And outside of that, there’s also speculation placing the statue inland, an example being
outside the Acropolis of Rhodes.
However, one thing is for sure.
There’s no concrete evidence supporting any claim, so the best you could possibly
do, right now, is provide guess work.
Now, let’s look at the exact pose of the statue.
Earlier I said that the Colossus of Rhodes could have potentially stood at the mouth
of the harbour.
While it’s a really cool image to see this massive statue, standing leg apart at the
harbour, that you could sail underneath.
I’m afraid such a pose and location would be incredibly unlikely.
Because A, the Colossus would have collapsed under its own weight or fall due to the strong
Mediterranean winds.
B, the Rhodes harbour would’ve been closed for extended periods of time during the construction.
And C, this would make more sense later, but where would the statue have fallen.
So we can safely rule this particular pose out.
But again, there’s no concrete evidence supporting any particular pose.
The only evidence are ancient coins, temple carvings and poems.
And they all contradict each other.
So the Colossus could either be using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, holding
a torch like the statue of liberty or be in a dozen different poses.
So, let’s not waste anymore time and finally answer the question.
What happened to the Colossus of Rhodes?
#Colossal Fall Completed in 280 BCE, the Colossus of Rhodes
stood for 54 years.
When suddenly, an earthquake struck the island of Rhodes in 226 BCE, causing the colossus
to snap at its knees and to subsequently fall.
At first there was much discussion regarding a rebuild, with Egyptian king, Ptolemy III
Euergetes offering to pay and rebuild the statue himself.
But an oracle would tell the Rhodians that they had angered Helios, and that rebuilding
the statue would only anger him ever more.
And so the Colossus lay on the ground where it fell.
Though the Colossus had fallen, it did not stop attracting visitors from distant lands,
and certainly did not lose its title as a wonder.
However, the story does not end here.
Some 800 years after the Colossus fell, Rhodes was stormed by Umayyad muslims.
And to cut a long story short, the Colossus of Rhodes would be demolished.
The bronze from the statue, sold to a merchant in Syria, and it apparently took some 900
camels to transport the bronze.
So that’s what happened to the Colossus of Rhodes.
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