Colossus of Rhodes (c. 280 BC): The Giant Bronze Statue of Helios

The Colossus of Rhodes was a giant bronze statue of the sun god Helios, completed around 280 BC in the city of Rhodes on the Greek island of the same name. At about 33 metres tall it was the largest statue of the Greek world and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It stood for little more than half a century before an earthquake brought it down in 226 BC, yet its fame has lasted more than two thousand years.

Background: the siege of Rhodes

In the late 4th century BC Rhodes was a rich, independent trading state. During the wars between Alexander’s successors, it tried to stay neutral and kept close trading ties with Ptolemaic Egypt. In 305 BC Antigonus I, who wanted Rhodes on his side against Ptolemy, sent his son Demetrius to take the city.

The siege of Rhodes lasted about a year. Demetrius brought huge siege engines, including the famous Helepolis (“city-taker”), a wheeled iron-plated tower many storeys high. Despite this, the Rhodians held out, helped by supplies from Ptolemy. In 304 BC Demetrius made peace and withdrew, leaving much of his siege equipment behind.

The Rhodians sold the abandoned equipment and, according to Pliny the Elder, used the 300 talents it raised to build a statue to Helios, their patron god, in thanks for their survival.

Why Helios?

Helios, the personification of the Sun, was the chief god of Rhodes. According to a myth told by the poet Pindar in his seventh Olympian ode, the island rose from the sea and was given to Helios when the gods divided up the world. The island’s three old cities, Lindos, Ialysos and Kamiros, were said to be named after his grandsons.

In 408 BC these three cities joined to found a new capital, the city of Rhodes, at the northern tip of the island, laid out on a grid plan with several harbours. The Rhodians held an annual festival in honour of Helios, the Halieia, with athletic games. Rhodian coins regularly showed his radiant head on one side and a rose, in Greek rhodon, on the other, a pun on the island’s name.

A giant statue of Helios was therefore both a religious offering and a statement of civic pride. It also advertised Rhodes’ new confidence: in the 3rd century BC the island became the leading naval and commercial power of the eastern Aegean.

Building the statue

The sculptor was Chares of Lindos, a Rhodian and pupil of Lysippos, the leading bronze sculptor of Alexander’s time. Pliny says the work took 12 years, so it was probably begun around 292 BC and finished around 280 BC. Lysippos had made a bronze Zeus at Tarentum in southern Italy about 40 cubits (roughly 18 metres) high, then one of the largest statues known; the Colossus was nearly twice as tall.

How exactly it was built is not known. A late ancient text attributed to Philo of Byzantium describes a structure of stone columns and iron bars covered with cast bronze plates, built up in stages while an earth mound was heaped around it so the workers could reach the upper parts. The same text gives large figures for the metal used, but its date and reliability are uncertain.

What the statue looked like is also uncertain. No accurate ancient image of it survives. Rhodian coins show the head of Helios with a crown of sun rays, and the Colossus probably looked similar. Scholars have suggested poses such as a raised hand shading the eyes or holding a torch, but none can be proved.

The Colossus in numbers

For comparison, the copper figure of the Statue of Liberty measures about 46 metres from base to torch, and about 34 metres from heel to head.

The earthquake and the ruins

In 226 BC a strong earthquake struck Rhodes, damaging much of the city. The Colossus snapped at the knees and fell. The same earthquake damaged houses, walls and the dockyards. Other Greek cities and Hellenistic kings sent generous aid, including money, grain, timber and building materials, which the historian Polybius lists in detail as a sign of the respect Rhodes enjoyed. Ptolemy III of Egypt offered to pay for its rebuilding, but Strabo writes that an oracle forbade the Rhodians to restore it.

The broken statue lay where it fell for around eight centuries and became a famous sight. Pliny, writing in the 1st century AD, says few people could put their arms around its thumb and that its fingers were larger than most statues. Through the gaps in the broken limbs, visitors could see the rocks used to weigh it down inside.

In the 650s AD Arab forces under the Umayyad leader Mu’awiya occupied Rhodes. The Byzantine chronicler Theophanes says the bronze was sold to a merchant who needed 900 camels to carry it away. Historians treat this figure with caution, but the metal was certainly removed and lost.

Myths and facts

Myth: it straddled the harbour. The most famous image of the Colossus, with one foot on each side of the harbour entrance and ships passing between its legs, dates from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Engineers and historians agree this was impossible. The legs would have had to stand hundreds of metres apart, and the bronze could not have supported such a pose. A fallen statue would also have blocked the harbour for centuries, which ancient sources do not mention.

Where did it stand? Its real location is unknown. Suggestions include the area by Mandraki harbour, a breakwater, or the sanctuary of Helios, which some scholars place on the acropolis of Rhodes. No foundations have been firmly identified.

Myth: “colossus” means giant. In early Greek, kolossos meant a statue in general. Its modern meaning of something enormous comes largely from the fame of this statue.

Legacy

The Colossus appears in ancient lists of the Seven Wonders, including one by the poet Antipater of Sidon in the 2nd century BC, alongside the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Renaissance artists such as Maarten van Heemskerck spread the straddling image in popular prints.

The statue inspired later monuments, above all the Statue of Liberty. Emma Lazarus’s 1883 sonnet for it, “The New Colossus”, contrasts the new statue with “the brazen giant of Greek fame”. Proposals to build a new Colossus in Rhodes have appeared in modern times, but none has been carried out.

Timeline

• 305–304 BC: Demetrius Poliorcetes besieges Rhodes and fails.
• c. 292 BC: Work on the Colossus begins under Chares of Lindos.
• c. 280 BC: The statue is completed.
• 226 BC: An earthquake topples the Colossus.
• 1st century AD: Pliny the Elder describes the ruins.
• 650s AD: Arab forces occupy Rhodes and the bronze is sold off.
• 1883: Emma Lazarus writes “The New Colossus”.

Why it matters

The Colossus showed what a small, independent city could achieve after surviving a powerful enemy. Although it stood for only about 54 years, it became a lasting symbol of ambition and engineering, and its imagined pose still shapes how many people picture the ancient world.