According to a list standard since the Renaissance, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were:
The Great Pyramid of Giza The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus The Colossus of Rhodes
And the Lighthouse of Alexandria The oldest known list of the Seven Wonders,
a Greek poem dating to the second century BC, is identical, save for replacing the Lighthouse
of Alexandria with the Walls of Babylon.
The same seven appear in the only extant ancient work on the wonders.
The familiar list, however, was never definitive, and a number of Greek and Roman authors proposed
additions or alternatives.
This video will explore seven of these “other” wonders of the ancient world.
Number Seven.
The Egyptian Labyrinth Like many Greek and Roman visitors after him,
Herodotus – the father of history – was awestruck by the Egyptian pyramids.
But in his view, Egypt’s greatest wonder, equal to all the temples and monuments of
Greece, was the Labyrinth at Hawara.
Herodotus described the Labyrinth as a gargantuan complex with twelve courts and three thousand
chambers, half of them underground, all roofed and walled with white stone.
Subterranean passageways connected the Labyrinth to a vast pyramid with sculpted sides.
Later authors repeated and magnified these claims.
Pliny the Elder, for example, thought that the Labyrinth contained twenty-one courts,
forty shrines, and multiple pyramids, entwined in a maze of passageways that climbed long
staircases, plunged deep underground, and trapped the unwary in dark rooms filled with
echoes.
The Labyrinth seems to have actually been a mortuary temple – albeit an exceptionally
large and complex one – constructed by the great Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat III.
Unfortunately, we know little more than that, since the structure was torn apart for building
material in later centuries, leaving only vast foundations and bits of broken limestone.
Number Six.
The Temple of Zeus at Cyzicus In one of my earlier videos, I talked about
the gargantuan Temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus, a mountain of marble with columns seventy
feet tall.
But long before the reign of Hadrian, Cyzicus was known for another temple that was – at
least in the opinion of Pliny the Elder – a wonder of the world.
That temple, dedicated to Zeus, was famous for its beauty.
According to Pliny, the architect had inserted hundreds of thin gold tubes into the joints
of the stone walls.
Sunlight permeated through, infusing the temple’s marble and ivory statues with a golden glow.
We don’t know whether Pliny’s description was accurate.
But if there truly were golden tubes in the walls of the Temple of Zeus at Cyzicus, there
can be little doubt that this fascinating structure was demolished for the sake of its
metal in late antiquity.
Whatever the cause, it has vanished without a trace.
Number Five.
The Sewers of Rome No Roman building made the original list of
Seven Wonders, not least because that list was drawn up well before the construction
of Rome’s greatest monuments.
Roman authors, naturally, begged to differ, none more stridently than our friend Pliny
the Elder.
After surveying the manifold glories of Rome, Pliny concluded that the most impressive of
them all was the sewer system that drained the city.
Under the streets of Rome, said Pliny, seven subterranean rivers flowed with the force
of mountain torrents, rushing down to the Tiber.
During winter floods, the Tiber rose like a surging sea to meet them.
Yet despite this ebb and flow, and the constant concussion of traffic above, Rome’s sewers
held firm.
The sewers were already venerable in Pliny’s time, having been constructed – according
to legend – by the ancient kings of Rome.
The system was cleaned and expanded by Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’ right-hand man, who rowed
up the main line (the famous Cloaca Maxima) in a small boat to inspect the work.
Although it would be difficult, or at least inadvisable, to replicate that feat today,
the mouth of the cloaca can still be seen in the Tiber embankment.
Number Four.
The Theater of Scaurus Although Rome was the biggest city on earth
by the middle of the first century BC, it had relatively few of the monumental public
buildings taken for granted in even a modest Greek city.
In particular – thanks to the Senate, which professed to regard Greek-style drama as immoral
– Rome lacked a permanent theater.
But in 58 BC, as part of a magnificent series of games, the aedile Marcus Aemilius Scaurus
– the immensely wealthy scion of a great aristocratic family – constructed a temporary
wooden theater capable of holding 80,000 spectators (more, that is, than the Colosseum).
The size was impressive enough, but it was the magnificence of the decoration that led
Pliny to describe Scaurus’ theater as a wonder of the world.
The stage building, three stories tall, was decorated with 360 columns.
The columns of the first story were marble, those of the second story were glass, and
those of the third were gilded.
Between the columns, bronze statues gleamed.
As soon as the games ended, the theater was dismantled, leaving only some columns and
fittings that Scaurus reused in his villa.
The value of even these remnants was estimated at thirty million sestertii – ten times
the amount needed to buy a mansion in the heart of Rome.
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Returning to our list of wonders…
Number three: the Altar of Horns at Delos Among the bustling porticoes and marble temples
on the sacred island of Delos was an enormous pile of horns, stacked to form an altar.
According to myth, this altar – the Keraton – had been constructed by the young god
Apollo, who wove together the horns of goats shot by his sister Artemis.
Whatever its actual origins, it became impressive enough to be described as a wonder of the
world by several ancient authors.
For obscure reasons, only horns from the right side of an animal’s head could be used.
Like the ashen altar of Zeus at Olympia, the Altar of Horns was presumably built up over
the centuries, each sacrificial victim contributing a horn to the heap.
Since only a few fragments of the altar’s marble enclosure survive, however, the details
of its dimensions and appearance are unknown.
Number Two.
The Walls of Babylon As mentioned at the beginning of this video,
the original list of Seven Wonders differed from the familiar modern one by including
the Walls of Babylon, the vast mudbrick circuit said to have been built by the mythical queen
Semiramis.
The oldest and most famous classical account comes from Herodotus, who described the walls
as a square fourteen miles to a side, immensely tall, and broad enough for four-horse chariots
to drive along the top.
Later, Diodorus Siculus echoed Herodotus’ account, adding that the walls had 250 towers,
that they were finished in a single year, and that they enclosed two additional wall
circuits, which were decorated with the figures of animals.
Besides a few reconstructed segments, only eroded mounds survive today.
From these remains, it’s clear that Herodotus – who never visited Babylon – exaggerated
the walls’ dimensions.
The monumentality that impressed ancient travelers, however, can still be glimpsed.
Number One.
The Colosseum Viewers of this channel need no introduction
to the Flavian Amphitheater.
In a poem written to commemorate its completion, Martial proclaimed that the new arena cast
the pyramids, the mausoleum, and all the other wonders in the shade.
The Colosseum was certainly admired for the rest of antiquity.
But like so many other iconic monuments, it never managed to enter the canonical list
of Seven Wonders.
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Thanks for watching.