Chares was a good pick-he not only hailed from a town on the island of Rhodes, but he was also a student of Lysippus, one of Alexander the Great’s favorite sculptors.Ĭhares would become known for making several large-scale sculptures over the course of his career, but none was as large as the statue of Helios that would take him 12 years to complete. The city commissioned the sculptor Chares of Lindos to lead this project. When the Macedonian army fled, they left behind a trove of equipment and weapons.Īccording to the legends, the Rhodians took this loot and sold part of it off for money-the remainder was melted down for material-and those resources were used to construct a giant monument to their patron god. The Rhodians, on the other hand, not only wrested back their freedom, but they also got a little booty to go along with it. The leader of the Macedonians, son of one of Alexander the Great’s best generals, was forever after saddled with a nickname mocking his loss-he is known to this day as Demetrius Poliorcetes, or Demetrius “the Besieger.” In 305 B.C., the Rhodians vanquished their attackers. Helios may not have been able to prevent the Macedonian siege of the city in the fourth century B.C., but he was given credit for its defeat. In the first century B.C., the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote about the legends surrounding the founding of the island: “Helios (the Sun), the myth tells us, becoming enamored of Rhodos, named the island Rhodes after her and caused the water which had overflowed it to disappear.” It didn’t hurt that the city was the namesake of Helios’s wife, a nymph named Rhodes who was also the daughter of Poseidon. While residents followed the tradition of the day and worshipped many different gods, they had a special place in their hearts for the sun god Helios. Kenneth Lapatin, Curator of Antiquities at the Getty Museum, told The Daily Beast.ĭuring Greek antiquity, Rhodes was known as a center of culture. “I think it’s just interesting that the statue looms so large in the imagination when it stood for a relatively short time and we really know so little about what it looked like, where it stood, or how it was made,” Dr. The base of the statue, of which only a few vestiges still exist today, was demolished in 1933, when Via dell’lmpero and Via dei Trionfi were built.It was a spectacular sight-the sun god Helios standing tall with one arm holding high a torch-and it made such an impression that it continues to be regarded as one of Seven Wonders of the Ancient World even though, after only 56 years, it came tumbling down in an earthquake leaving nary a sketch behind. His bronze was almost certainly reused by Pope Gregory the Great (540- 604 A.D.) who had it melted down to produce the cannons of Castel Sant’Angelo. The Colossus was probably destroyed during the Sack of Rome (410 A.D.), or perhaps it fell as a result of one of the earthquakes of the fifth century. At first a symbol of immortality and later of the Eternal City, it continued to be an object of worship even in the Christian era. When the latter emperor died, the Colossus again became the image of Helios and remained such during the reign of Septimius Severus, as demonstrated by the coins of the period portraying the god with his left hand resting on a helm and his right one holding a globe. Vespasian had it transformed into a radiate image of the Sun, while Commodus preferred to characterize it with the attributes of Hercules and his physiognomy. Thus Hadrian, in order to build the Temple of Venus and Rome, had to use a cart pulled by twenty-four elephants to move the statue from its original location. Its gigantic size – it was about 35 meters tall, as can be calculated from the proportions of the base and a passage from Piiny the Elder – made it the largest bronze statue ever made in the ancient world. On the other side were villas with fields, vineyards and pastures, and woodlands full of all kinds of domestic and wild animal» The size of the latter was such that it had three colonnades a mile long and a pool that ivas more like a sea, surrounded by buildings as large as cities. «… a colossal statue of Nero, 120 feet tall, stood in the vestibule of the house. Commissioned from the sculptor Zenodoros and inspired by the famous Colossus of Rhodes created by Chares of Undos at the beginning of the third century B.C., it portrayed the emperor standing and decorated the vestibule of the Domus Aurea on the site now occupied by the Temple of Venus and Rome. It derives from the colossal bronze statue of Nero, which stood in the immediate vicinity. The name Amphitheatrum- Colyseus appeared for the first time in the eleventh century as a designation for the building, which had previously been called “ Amphitheatrum Caesareum”, and was later extended in the name regio Colisei to the entire valley.
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