ATTACK ON GREECE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1941, Page 8

ATTACK ON GREECE

RHODES AND ITS WARS STORY OF THE COLOSSUS. MOMENTOUS EVENTS BEFORE CHRISTIAN EBA. Germany's attack on Greece once more brings war to the historic islands cf the zEgean which, under die leadership of the large island of Rhodes, have been embroiled in wars and adventures since they were said to have thrown in their lot with the Greeks in besieging Troy (says the "Christian Science Monitor"). It was one of these wars that produced the Colossus of Rhodes —one of the “Seven Wonders of the World" — a sort of Statue of Liberty guarding the entrance to the island’s famous harbour. The statue was of the sun god Apollo Helios, to whom the pagan Rhodians attributed their deliverance f rom a‘long siege in 304 B.C. Rhodes at the time had become a sizable maritime Rower, with a navy and merchant fleet. It was a strategic point that Antigonos. ruler of Syria, was anxious to control in order to attack Egypt. But Rhodes proved to be as reluctant to fall in with the plans of Antigonos as Britain today is to suit the purposes of the German Fuehrer. The Syrian satrap besieged the island for a year without breaking the islanders’ determination to resist.

Finally the Syrian turned appeaser

He raised the siege and made the Rhodians a present of all his giant battering rams, super-catapults, flame throwers, and the rest of the war devices invented by the experts of the day. HUGE STATUE BUILT.

To commemorate the occasion, the Rhodians sold all this equipment, turned over the proceeds to a sculptor named Chares, who planned the whole mountain of bronze in the form of Apollo. Chares started the statue on pedestals overlooking, the harbour. Some say the figure bestrode the harbour like a great Gulliver, and that the Rhodian ships sailed to the wharves between its legs. Unfortunately the representation of the Colossus preserved on Rhodian coins of the day fails to make this point quite clear. However that may be. Chares worked'l2 years on his 125 ft giant, and then discovered to his grief that his calculations had gone wrong. He believed he could not pull Apollo into shape and gave up the task. But a successor, named Laches, completed the Colossus.

In its completed form it resembled in some respects the Russian worker in Statute-of-Liberty pose. holding his flare aloft, that surmounted the Soviet building during the first year of New York’s World's Fair.

Whether the statue acted as a lighthouse has not been definitely determined. Monumental lighthouses were not unknown at that time, for about the time the Colossus was receiving its final touches the Egyptian monarch, Ptolemy Philadelphus, was making headway with another of the world’s seven wonders in the shape of his white marble lighthouse for Alexandria, standing 600 feet above the sea on the island of Pharos outside the port. Some say a mirror in the middle of Apollo's breast was used to guide mariners. TOPPLED BY EARTHQUAKE.

Although the twentieth ■ century prides itself on turning out. mammoth manifestations of architecture and art, the ancients were scarcely behind our moderns in their aspirations. An enormous statue of Jupiter at Tarentum had set the fashion, and Chares had built his dreams of the Colossus upon that work. .-

But man's overweening ambitions receive their setbacks. After Apollo had guided mariners into Rhodes Harbour for about 56 years, he was unceremoniously toppled over by an earthquake in 227 B.C.

The disaster made such an impression on the world at large that contributions for restoration of the Colossus came from all nations. However, whether no engineer could be found to undertake the task, or whether Rhodian ambitions had been diverted to other directions, the work never was started and Apollo remained recumbent in the harbour for 900 years. Thereafter, as the Saracens swept over Asia Minor and Rhodes, the bronze was broken up and sold to a dealer in old metal, who was said to have used 980 camels to transport it to his warehouse.