COLOSSI'S, at Rhodes. a celebrated statue of Apollo, made of brass, popularly supposed to have been erected over the entrance of the harbour in such manner that a Eliot stood on each pier, and ships passed dirt sigh its extended logs. This has left an account, was begim hw a pupil of Lysippus, and completed by Ladies; twelve years were employed in making it. Its height was 105 feet ; the thumb was so large that few men could span it. and its fingers were much larger than those of ordinary statues. It was cast hollow, and filled with large :dunes to connterbalan•e its weight, and keep it ate:it Iy on its supporters. Within was a winding staircase ascending to the top, where it is said, was hung a 'last mirror, in which the country of Syria, and ships entering the ports of Egypt, might be discerned. The notion that its legs rested one on each side of the harbour does not, however, seem to be snpported by any good authority, and modern travellers do not agree as to its site.
After standing upwards of sixty years, the Colossus was overthrown by an earthquake hi the year 2'24 a. c., by which also I he buildings of the city sutThred greatly. So great at that time was the commercial importance of 11 laides, that the great princes of the day vied with each other in the munificence of their presents to repair its !oases. The inhabitants of Rhodes
sent ainbasaadors to all the states of Grecian origin, to solicit their assistance for repairing and re-erecting their statue, and obtained a sum more than five times equal to the damage. The principal contributors were the kings of Macedon, Syria, Egypt, l'outus, and Bithynia. But, instead of appropriating the money to the purpose for which it was given, the Rhodian priests pretended that the oracle of Delphi had forbidden it ; and the money was converted to other uses. The Colossus, therefiwe, lay neglected on the ground for 894 years, when the Saracens, becoming masters of the island, sold it to a Jewish merchant, who broke it up, and loaded 900 camels with the metal : the weight of the brass, therefore, allowing 800 pounds for each load, after the diminution it had sustained by rust, and probably by theft, amounted to 720,000 pounds weight.
This enormous finire was not the only colossal statue that attracted notice in the city of Rhodes, for Pliny reckons near 100 others. From the Rhodian Apollo, it is supposed, that every statue exceeding in magnitude the size of a man, has been called a colossal statue.