Milford chronicle., 1962-11-23
Rhodes May Build
A New Colossus

| ATHENS (AP) The Greek
island of Rhodes at the eastern
end of the Mediterranean m a y
again have a Colossus like t h e
huge statue, one of the Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World,
| that stood there long ago.
There are colossal pr o b m S
! first, however.
Where did the ancient Colossus
stand? Not even the experts agree
on that.
What did the old bronze figure
look like? No one knows for sure.
The Colossus era h to t h e
| ground during an earthquake in
224 B. c., 80 years after it was
erected. The pieces lay there until
| the Saracens hauled them away
| for junk eight centuries later
Will the modern Greeks accept
the idea of recreating the Colos-
sus? The ancient Greeks wouldn t
have tolerated it. The Oracle of
| Delphi had warned that disaster
would befall them if they tried to
rebuild the Colossus after it came
tumbling down.
Behind the plan to erect a
modern-day replica of the 81
meter 100-foot) statue is Andreas
Ioannou, 43, the governor of the
Dodecanese Islands. Ioannou, a
political scientist educated at the
University of Chicago, is also an
amateur archaeologist. He is get
ting together a committee Oh
archaeologists and sculptors to try
to determine what the original
Colossus looked like and just
where it stood.
Location i'm Tradition
According to tradition, t h e
Colossus stood astride the en-
trance to Mandrake Harbor at
| Rhodes and ancient oar-propelled
| barks passed between its huge
legs. Some experts cannot accept
this legend. They say that, if it
were true, the Colossus would
| have plunged into the sea and dis
| appeared on the harbor bottom
when the earthquake destroyed it.
Christie Carousos, curator of the
Athens Archaeological Museum,
says: at stood on dry land. Other
wise, the ancients would h av e
been bound to mention it (that it
wered above the h ar b o r
waters)."
The Roman geographer P lin y
recorded that he saw t h e
C0l lx-,, ~
the First Century. He also noted
that each of it's fingers was big
ger than the run-of-the-mill statue
of his day.
Whether or not the orig i n a
Colossus actually stood across the
harbor mouth is pretty m h
academic today. The size of
modern ocean-going vessels would
make construction there imprac-
tical if not impossible.
Prof Wotschitzky of the Uni
versity of Innsbruck thinks it
must have been close to where the
palace of the Knights of st. John
of Jerusalem now stands. T h e
palace was constructed in the mid
die ages, at the time of the cru
/ sades, and the sea once reached
| there . $780,
Represented Apollo
A fairly shrewd guess about the
Colossus physical appearance can
be made An 18th Century French
traveller named Rottiers included
! a conceptual drawing of the Colos-
sus in book he published.
The statue is known to repre-
sent the sun god Apollo. Coins of
the era show him with a spiked
coronet. 1t is reasonable to believe
that the Colossus of Rhodes wore
such a coronet about his head
History tells how the Colossus
came to be built by the people of
Rhodes. The Macedonian warrior
Demetrius had beseiged the city of
Rhodes for a full year, and the
people resisted successfully. They
decided to build the statue to
celebrate their success when the
siege ended in 305 B. C.
| ID m trius admired h e
ID I,