In the days of its greatest power Rhodes became famous as a centre of pictorial and plastic art ; it had a school of eclectic ora tory whose chief representative was Apollonius Molon, the teacher of Cicero ; it was the birthplace of the Stoic philosopher Panae tius ; the home of the poet Apollonius Rhodius and the historian Posidonius. Protogenes embellished the city with his paintings, and Chares of Lindus with the celebrated colossal statue of the sun-god, which was 105 ft. high. The colossus stood for 56 years, till an earthquake prostrated it in 224 B.c. Its enormous frag ments continued to excite wonder in the time of Pliny, and were not removed till A.D. 656, when Rhodes was conquered by the Saracens, who sold the remains for old metal to a dealer, who em ployed 90o camels to carry them away. The notion that the colos sus once stood astride over the entrance to the harbour is a mediae val fiction. During the later Roman empire Rhodes was the capital of the "province of the islands." Its history under the Byzantine rule is uneventful, but for some temporary occupations by the Saracens (653-658, 717-718), and the gradual encroachment of Venetian traders since 1082. In the 13th century the island stood as a rule under the control of Italian adventurers, who were, how ever, at times compelled to acknowledge the overlordship of the emperors of Nicaea, and failed to protect it against the depreda tions of Turkish corsairs. In 13°9 it was conquered by the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem at the instigation of the pope and the Genoese, and converted into a great fortress for the pro tection of the southern seas against the Turks. Under their mild and just rule both the native Greeks and the Italian residents were able to carry on a brisk trade. But the piratical acts of these traders, in which the knights themselves sometimes joined, and the strategic position of the island between Constantinople and the Levant, necessitated its reduction by the Ottoman sultans. A siege in 148o by Mohammed II. led to the repulse of the Turks with severe losses; after a second investment, during which Sultan Sul eiman I. is said to have lost 90,00o men out of a force of 200,00o,
the knights evacuated Rhodes under an honourable capitulation (1522). The population henceforth dwindled in consequence of pestilence and emigration, and although the island recovered some what in the 18th century under a comparatively lenient rule, it was brought to a very low ebb owing to the severity of its governor during the Greek revolution. The sites of Lindus, Ialysus and Camirus, which in the most ancient times were the principal towns of the island, are clearly marked, and the first of the three is still occupied by a small town with a mediaeval castle, both of them dating from the time of the knights, though the castle occupies the site of the ancient acropolis, of which considerable remains are still visible. There are no ruins of any importance on the site of either Ialysus or Camirus, but excavations at both places have produced valuable and interesting results in the way of an cient vases and other antiquities, which are now in the British Museum and in the local collection at Rhodes. In mediaeval times its pottery, a lustre ware at first imitated from Persian, developed into an independent style of fine colouring and rich variety of design. Since the Italian occupation in 1912 a consider able modern quarter on European lines has grown up west of the city of the knights; carriage roads are being constructed and the harbours improved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—See Pindar, 7th Olympian Ode; Diodorus, v. 55-59, xiii.—xx. passim; Polybius, iv. 46-52, v. 88-90, xvi. 2-9, XXVii.-XXiX. passim; A. Berg, Die Insel Rhodos (1862) ; C. Torr, Rhodes in Ancient Times (Cambridge, 1885), Rhodes in Modern Times (Cambridge, 1887) ; C. Schumacher, De republisa Rhodiorum commentatio (Heidel berg, 1886) ; H. van Gelder, Geschichte der alien Rhodier (Hague, 190o) ; B. V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. Baron de Balabre, Rhodes of the Knights (1909) ; K. F. Kinch, Fouilles de Vroulia (1914) ; A. Gabriel, La Cite de Rhodes (1921).