COLOSSUS. 



329 



the money he had received for the whole, which 

 overwhelmed him so completely with grief and de- 

 spair, that he hanged himself. Lacnes, his fellow- 

 countryman, finished the work in the space of three 

 Olympiads (twelve years), and placed the enormous 

 statue on its pedestal. Pliny does not mention the 

 latter artist, but gives all the honour to Chares. 

 Scarcely sixty years had elapsed before this monster 

 of art was thrown from its place by an earthquake, 

 which broke it off at the knees ; and so it remained 

 till the conquest of Rhodes by the Saracens, in A. D. 

 684, when it was beaten to pieces, and sold to 

 a Jew merchant, who loaded above 900 camels with 

 its spoils. Strabo, Pliny, and other ancient authors, 

 who lived at the time that the colossus of Rhodes 

 is said to have been in existence, and who could 

 have learned from contemporaries the truth or false- 

 hood of the accounts of it, give its height at seventy 

 cubits, or a hundred English feet. Other authors, 

 who flourished since its destruction, report its height 

 at eighty cubits. Pliny also relates other parti- 

 culars, as that few persons could embrace its 

 thumb, and that its fingers were as long as ordi- 

 nary statues, which, calculated by the proportion of 

 a well made man, would make its height nearer to 

 eighty tlian seventy cubits. Perhaps the latter di- 

 mension may relate to its real altitude to the crown 

 of its head, and the greater to its altitude if erect. 

 But we are not aware that any writer has given this 

 reason for the ancient difference. The statue was 

 placed across the entrance of the harbour, with its 

 teet on two rocks ; and the Rhodian vessels could 

 pass under its legs. Some antiquaries have thought 

 with great justice, that the fine head of the sun, 

 which is stamped upon the Rhodian medals, is a re- 

 presentation of that of the colossus. Of other colos- 

 sal statues, those which were executed by Phidias are 

 among the most celebrated for beauty and elegance 

 of workmanship. They were his Olympian Jupiter 

 and his Minerva of the Parthenon. The virgin god- 

 dess was represented in a noble attitude, twenty-six 

 cubits or thirty-nine feet in height, erect, clothed in 

 a tunic reaching to the feet. In her hand she bran- 

 dished a spear, and at her feet lay her buckler and a 

 dragon of admirable execution, supposed to repre- 

 sent Erichthonius. On the middle of her helmet a 

 sphynx was carved, and on each of its sides a griffin. 

 On the asgis were displayed a Medusa's head and 

 a figure of victory. This colossal work was not 

 only grand and striking in itself, but contained, on its 

 various parts, curious specimens of minute sculpture 

 in bassi rilievi, which Phidias is said to have brought 

 to perfection. His Olympian Jupiter was executed 

 after the ungrateful treatment he received from the 

 Athenians, when he abandoned the city of his birth, 

 which he had rendered celebrated by his works, and 

 took refuge in Elis. Animated rather than subdued 

 by the ingratitude of his countrymen, Phidias labour- 

 ed to surpass the greatest works with which he had 

 adorned Athens. With this view he framed the sta- 

 tue of Jupiter Olympius for the Eleans, and succeeded 

 even in excelling his own Minerva in the Parthenon. 

 This colossal statue was sixty feet in height, and com- 

 pletely embodied the sublime picture which Homer 

 has given of the mythological monarch of the heavens. 

 While describing the colossi of ancient times,we should 

 not forget the magnificent and extravagant proposal of 

 Dinocrates to Alexander the Great, of forming mount 

 Athos into a colossus of that conqueror ; nor a simi- 

 lar proposal, in modern times, of sculpturing one of 

 the Alps, near the pass of the Simplon, into a resem- 

 blance of Napoleon. Among other celebrated colossi 

 of ancient times, historians record as eminently beau- 

 tiful, that which was executed by Lysippus at Ta- 

 rentuni. It was 40 cubits or 60 feet in height. The 



difficulty of carrying it away, more than moderation 

 in the conqueror, alone prevented Fabius from re- 

 moving it to Rome, with the statue of Hercules, be- 

 longing to the same city. 



Colossi were in use also in Italy before the time 

 when the Romans despoiled their vanquished enemies 

 of their works of art. The Jupiter of Leontium in 

 Sicily was 7 cubits in height, and the Apollo of 

 wood that was transported from Etruria, and placed 

 in the palace of Augustus, at Rome, 50 feet. The 

 same emperor also placed a fine bronze colossus of 

 Apollo in the temple of that god, which he built 

 near his own palace. The earliest colossus recorded 

 to have been sculptured in Rome was the statue of 

 Jupiter Capitolinus, which Spurius Carvilius placed 

 in the capitol after his victory over the Samnites ; 

 but colossi soon became far from scarce. Five are 

 particularly noticed ; namely, two of Apollo, two of 

 Jupiter, and one of the Sun. There has been dug 

 up among the ruins of ancient Rome, a colossal sta- 

 tue of the city of Rome, which was reckoned among 

 the tutelary divinities of the empire. The superb 

 colossi on the Monte Cavallo, called by some anti- 

 quaries the Dioscuri, are magnificent specimens of 

 Grecian art; so are the Farnese Hercules and the 

 gigantic Flora of the Belvedere. It used to be the 

 common opinion, that the colossi on Monte Cavallo 

 both represented Alexander taming Bucephalus. 

 They are now generally believed to represent the 

 Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux ; the statue which, ac- 

 cording to the inscription on the pedestal, is the work 

 of Phidias, being intended for Castor ; the other of 

 inferior value, and, according to the inscription, the 

 production of Praxiteles, representing Pollux. The 

 original design of these statues is not known ; nor 

 does it appear from history what led Praxiteles, after 

 an interval of about 80 years, to execute a counter- 

 part to the work of Phidias, in case the inscription is 

 to be credited. The editors of Wincklemann's works 

 (vi. 2d part, p. 73, and v. p. 560), on account of the 

 elevated character of the first of these statues, think 

 it reasonable to attribute it, as the inscription does, to 

 Phidias ; for in the individual parts there is no narrow^ 

 laboured care perceptible in the execution, no over- 

 wrought polish and elegance. From various ine- 

 qualities on the statue of the man for instance, on the 

 chin they conjecture that this work was not com- 

 pleted by that great master, and hence was not 

 esteemed so highly at first as afterwards, when the 

 era of noble Grecian sculpture had passed away, and 

 when the statue was probably first set up. But, as 

 the primitive design of the work required a counter- 

 part, they conjectured that the sculpture was commit- 

 ted to Praxiteles, the most perfect artist of that pe- 

 riod. On this hypothesis, they explain the marks of 

 a later age in the second statue, particularly the 

 great dexterity with which the master lias imitated 

 the first, and finished every part without seeming to 

 be a mere copyist. The want of that lofty spirit 

 which distinguishes the earlier statue they ascribe to 

 the constraint of the artist in forming a counterpart 

 to a previous work, and to the circumstance that 

 Praxiteles, belonging to an age which was fond of the 

 gentle and soft, entered the fists with the giant of an 

 earlier period in the arts (Winckelmann's Works, vi. 

 2d part, p. 155). Canova has attempted to prove, 

 from the nature of the groups, that hi both, the hero 

 and horse were so placed that the two could be seen 

 at once ; and perhaps it was so originally ; but the 

 horse is now exactly opposite to the spectator, and 

 the whole is less agreeably grouped. 



Rome possesses several other colossi, of admirable 

 workmanship, as the colossal statue of Alexander 

 the Great, in the Colonna palace ; the rare colossus 

 of Antoninus, in the Palazzi Vitelleschi ; the cele- 



