In the true spirit of Hellenism, it was a cosmopolitan city, ambitious and hedonistic: it was said of the Rhodians that they ate as if they were going to die soon and built as if they were going to live forever. Housing more than 200,000 inhabitants, it was an enormous place, home to three times as many people as it is today. In the wake of Alexander’s death, owing to its ideal geographic location, Rhodes became the leading maritime city of the Greek world. In 409 BC, the island’s three main cities (Ialyssos, Kamiros and Lindos) united to form one territory, the city of Rhodes. In a final twist, after the dissolution of Alexander’s empire, Rhodes formed an alliance with Ptolemy, who based his power in Egypt, rather than with Antigonus who inherited mainland Greece. They switched sides only after it became obvious that Alexander was getting the better of the Persians. In the course of Alexander’s fight against the Persians, they sided with their former Asian invaders. Sometime later, at the urging of Carian ruler Mausolus, the Rhodians withdrew from the Athenian-led confederacy altogether, deciding to go their own way. Nevertheless, when the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta broke out in 431 BC, Rhodes chose to remain largely neutral. Henceforth, Rhodes became part of the Athenian league, an association of Greek city-states under the leadership of Athens. As a result – and to say the least – Rhodes’ relations with mainland Greece were always ambiguous.Īt the beginning of the 5th century BC, the Persians invaded the island, but in 478 BC, they were defeated by forces from Athens. It was Greek enough to look classical in the ornate Middle East, but too far off the Greek mainland to not be receptive of non-Greek influence from the north of Africa or the interior of Asia Minor. Rhodes was thus always a cosmopolitan island, an island of many different identities and cultures. In antiquity, two major sea routes passed through the island: between Egypt and Libya to the south and the Ionian trading towns along the Anatolian coast to its north and between mainland Greece to the west and Cyprus and the Levant to the east. Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese islands, is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens and about 10 miles (16 km) off the southwestern corner of the Anatolian mainland as such, it lies at a crossroads between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Nevertheless, for about half a century after it had been erected in 280 BC, it did stand somewhere along the harbor entrance to the island of Rhodes, glistening in the sun, towering over the buildings of a mighty city-state. No copies were ever made of the Colossus and there are no eyewitness accounts to tell us what it looked like when it still stood. We know why it was built, and even who was the ingenious artist who conceived it, but everything else about it remains an inspiring mystery. How could it have? A gigantic bronze thank-offering to the sun god Helios, the Colossus of Rhodes was easily the largest statue of antiquity even as a ruin, it must have been astounding. Where the limbs are broken asunder, vast caverns can be seen yawning in the interior.” In Pliny’s time, as is obvious from the quote, the Colossus was merely a ruin, slowly corroding where it had fallen more than a century before, toppled by an earthquake around 225 BC. In his “Natural History,” published in AD 77, Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder describes the Colossus of Rhodes, the ancient forerunner of the Statue of Liberty, as “by far the most worthy monument of human admiration.” “Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms,” he writes, “and its fingers are larger than most statues.
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