Colossus of Rhodes

Assembled from 29 blocks · 3 evidence · 27 related

1. Story
2. A bronze figure of Helios erected on Rhodes in 280 BCE, the work of Chares of Lindos, reported by Pliny the Elder at seventy cubits, roughly 33 m. An earthquake in 226 BCE (some sources give 228) broke it at the knee, and the pieces lay where they fell for centuries until Arab forces took Rhodes in 653–654 CE and sold the bronze for scrap. The familiar image of the statue straddling the harbour mouth with a ship passing between its legs is a medieval invention with no support in any ancient source and no structural plausibility. Its exact position within Rhodes is not known, which is why no coordinate is given here.
3. Knowledge
4. Colossus of Rhodes
5. The canon of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
6. Connections
7. Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
8. Lighthouse of Alexandria (the Pharos)
9. The canon of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
10. Antipater of Sidon writes the earliest surviving list of seven wonders
11. An earthquake breaks the Colossus of Rhodes at the knee
12. The bronze of the Colossus is sold for scrap
13. Great Pyramid of Giza (Pyramid of Khufu)
14. Hanging Gardens (of Babylon, or of Nineveh)
15. Lighthouse of Alexandria (the Pharos)
16. Colossus of Rhodes
17. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (the Artemision)
18. Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
19. Statue of Zeus at Olympia
20. Philo of Byzantium (the Paradoxographer)
21. Antipater of Sidon
22. Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre), Rome
23. Antipater of Sidon writes the earliest surviving list of seven wonders
24. UNESCO publicly disowns the New7Wonders campaign
25. The New7Wonders of the World are declared in Lisbon
26. Evidence
27. Ancient authority for the Colossus standing seventy cubits, roughly 33 m, and for its ruined state persisting centuries after the earthquake.
28. The earliest surviving text assembling seven marvels into a single list, and evidence that the canon originally included the walls of Babylon rather than the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
29. The fullest ancient description of the wonders as a set, written centuries after most had been ruined, and by a later Paradoxographer rather than the 3rd-century BCE engineer Philo Mechanicus.