Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1910 — COLOSSUS OF RHODES. [ARTICLE]

COLOSSUS OF RHODES.

One of the Ancient Seven Wonder* of the World. The ancients succeeded in making that alloy of copper which is known as bronze. Among the seven wonejers of the world was the famous statue wholly jnade of bronze, historically known as the Colossus of Rhodes. It represented Phoebus, the national deity of the Rhodians. It was begun by Chares, a pupil of Lysippus, the sculptor, and was completed by Laches 288 B. C. The popular belief is that it stood astride the harbor of Rhodes, that it was 106 feet high and that ships could easily sail between its legs. Pliny said that few men could clasp its thumb. It was cast on metal plates, afterward joined together, and this process occupied five years. In the interior was a spiral staircase reaching into its head, and in a great mirror suspended to its neck were reflected the coast of Syria and the ships sailing to Egypt. After it had stood for sixty-four years this colossus was overthrown by an earthquake, and its remains lay on the shore for 923 years—that is, until A. D. 672—when they were sold by the Saracens to a dealer. The original cost was 300 talents—about $6,000,000 —and it is not too much to say that a similar image might be constructed now in one-fourth of the time and at one-third of the original cost. Rhodes, the post was adorned with 1,00 coloson the brain, for Pliny relates that the port was adorned with 1,000 colassal statues of the sun.