August 31, 2024 • 39 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Michael Denis Higgins, Professor Emeritus of Earth Science at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and author of the new book “The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: Science, Engineering and Technology.” What was the Colossus of Rhodes, why did it impress the ancient Hellenistic world and how might we recreate it in the modern world? (Originally published 07/27/2023)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday once more, so we
have a vault episode for you. This one is going
to be the episode The Colossus of Rhodes with Michael
Dennis Higgins. Michael Dennis Higgins wrote an excellent book titled
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology.
(00:26):
This is a lot of fun we get into, specifically
talking about the Colossus of Rhods, what it was, you know,
how we understand it, and indeed how it might be rebuilt. So,
without further ado, let's jump right in this one originally
published July twenty seventh, twenty twenty three. Everyone knows the
renowned Seven Wonders of the World, but few have set
(00:50):
eyes on them. For in order to do so, you
have to arrange a long journey to the land of
the Persians on the far side of the Euphrates to
visit Egypt. You must then change direction and go to
Ilia in Greece. Then you must see Halakarnassis, a city
state in Karia, and Ephesus in Ionia, and you have
(01:14):
to sail to Rhodes, so that, being exhausted by lengthy
wanderings over the Earth's surface, and growing tired from the
effort of these journeys, you finally fulfill your heart's desire
only when life is ebbing away, leaving you weak through
the weight of years.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. Those are the words of Philo of Byzantium,
promoting the idea of the Seven Wonders of the World.
On today's episode, I'm going to be chatting with Professor
Michael Dinni Higgins, author of the new book The Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology, out
(02:07):
now from Oxford University Press in both physical and digital formats.
It's an absolutely wonderful book, and we've actually used it
already as a source on the show in our series
on mud, specifically in our section on mud bricks, so
I'm delighted to have the author on the show. When
we set this up a couple of weeks ago, we
decided to just focus on a single wonder as opposed
(02:30):
to all seven of the wonders of the world, So
we're going to be talking about the Colossus of Rhodes.
Let's get right to the interview. Hi Michael, thanks for
coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's my pleasure to be alone.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
The book is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Science,
Engineering and Technology. It's a terrific read. Tell us how
did this project come together?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Well, the project was actually inspired many years ago by
my father. My father was a curator the British Museum.
After he died, I started thinking about what he had done,
and he had written on a chapter on the Colossus
of Roads for a book on the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World, and so I thought, well, why not
(03:14):
update it a bit, because there'd been nothing really done
seriously on the Seven Wonders in almost forty years, So
hence my book.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Now we're only going to be focusing on the one
particular wonder for today's conversation, the Colossus of Rhodes. But
I thought you might remind our listeners where and when
this whole concept of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World comes from.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Well, the idea broadly comes from the third century BCE.
It's a sort of a kind of modern like a
modern bucket list of things to see before you die,
and it may seem rather surprising that these kind of
lists existed at that time. Now, it's true that there
wasn't very much tourism in ancient Greece, and that was
(03:59):
part because travel was by sea and there was a
lot of problems with pirates. But into Roman times there
was a well established a tourist industry in Greece and
Egypt and Roman and all the rest of it. But
we actually have a tourist guide from the second century
BCE where he describes all the places he went to.
(04:21):
There were many lists, but the most popular and the
one that's come down to us now. It starts, of course,
with the Pyramids. You can't avoid them, the gardens of Babylon,
the walls of Babylon as well, although that was subsequently
are replaced by the pharos, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia,
(04:41):
the tomb of King Marsolis, the Temple of Artemis, and
of course the colossos of Rhodes. And the question always
is why were these things chosen? And they were probably
chosen for their size, their beauty, and their engineering challenges.
Also there's another aspect that almost all of them have
(05:03):
some kind of indirect or direct link with Alexander the
third of Macedon. He was the great conqueror who was
known as the Great by those who were not unfortunate
enough to have been conquered by him.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Now narrowing in on the island of Roads where the
Classus of Rhodes is his or wise position. Now, unfortunately,
the island of Rhodes is currently in the news due
to destructive wildfires, so a refresher might not be as
essential for listeners as as it normally would be. But
could you go ahead and position roads for us geographically?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
And I guess geologically, Well, it's a Biggish Greek island
in the southeast GNC. It's near the Turkish Turkish coast.
In antiquity it was known as a warm sunny island,
and in fact it was sacred to the sun god Helios.
And the story is that Zeus had divided up the
(06:00):
world between his brothers, but Helios was away, and when
he came back he found that that he hadn't been
allocated anything. I guess that perhaps held the meeting during
the night, so he wasn't there. But serious offered to
redivide up the world, but Helius saw an island appearing
in the south and asked for it, and that was Rhodes,
(06:21):
and so in a sense that people still worship the
sun there. Of course, it's a major holiday destination. Unfortunately,
it is hot, it's sunny, it's dry for a huge
amount of a very large amount of time every year,
and so it's very susceptible to fires, which we're seeing
now with the hot weather and that throughout Greece. It's
(06:43):
also susceptible to earthquakes, which come into the story of
the Colossos quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Now. Yeah, turning to the colossus itself, I think many
of us have seen illustrations of it, but really, what
was this colossus? What do we think it looked like?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Okay, it was a huge statue, probably thirty three meters high,
because we have some descriptions which say how big it
was at one hundred feet and it was made of bronze.
Now we don't have any really detailed description. Most people
seem to say, well, everybody knows what it looks like,
so there's no point in talking about it, and we
(07:22):
don't have any images of it. Although the Rodians actually
put on their coins the head of Helios now Roman
in ancient coins were obviously they were used for money,
but there was also essentially made souvenirs, and so they
often had on their coins things that would encourage tourism,
(07:45):
and one of them was this image of Helios with
curly hair and sun rays coming out of a kind
of diadem. Now many people have suggested that the image
of the head and perhaps of parts of the body
was actually inspired by the statues of Alexander, because the
(08:10):
sculptor who created the colossos was a pupil of the
official sculptor of Alexander. And as for the rest of
the statue, well, most people think that he probably the
god probably stood upright. He was holding a spear in
one hand. This was partly of course, to stabilize the statue,
(08:33):
and he may have held a torch above his head.
So if you want to think of what it looked like, well,
clearly the statue of Liberty was inspired by this idea
of what the statue looked like, and it was created
to commemorate a very important event in three hundred and
(08:54):
five BCE. Now this time Rhodes was and quasi independent
kingdom and it was caught between two major powers which
were ruled by the successors of Alexander. So Alexander had
died some time before, and he just his empire had
(09:18):
been divided up, and two of the big chunks were
Egypt to the south and Macedonia to the north, and
Roads was kind of caught in a proxy war between
these two major states, and Macedonia attacked Roads with a
fleet of ships. The Egyptians came to the rescue and
(09:39):
defeated the Macedonians. And when the Macedonians left, they basically
just ran as fast as they could, and they left
behind most of their military equipment, including some huge siege towers.
And these were towers that were built of wood and
iron and bronze. Some of them maybe are up one
(10:01):
hundred and fifty feet high fifty meters high, and that
perhaps come back into the story a bit later. So
these towers had rams at the base of them. They
were covered in iron plates to prevent fire arrows setting
fire to the whole wooden structure. And the story goes
that when the Rhodians finally are defeated the Macedonians, that
(10:25):
they sold off a lot of the siege towers. But
I think actually they probably were wise enough to recycle
a lot of the material into the statue that makes sense,
and perhaps sell off other materials they didn't need. So
that was it.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Now you discussed that of the three surviving descriptions of
the statue, the longest description, like the most detailed description,
also seems to present a detailed but implausible construction method.
What are we to make of.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
This, Yes, it's a bit curious. The description you're talking
about is by Philo of by Xantium, who was a
third century BCE engineer, and he was the one who
may have written the original description of the Seven Wonders,
although that's somewhat debatable. Now. He talks about how the
(11:18):
statue had a framework of iron and stone, which is
okay so far it would have had to have been
built on a framework. But then he goes on and
talks in great detail about how the bronze was poured
on layer after layer, a bit like casting concrete, you know,
putting one layer on, waiting a for it to solidify,
(11:38):
and then putting another layer on. But it's a very
brutal way of making a statue, and it would have
required a gigantic amount of metal, and it would have
produced an incredibly heavy statue that would have probably had
problems standing up. It's much more likely that the colossus
was actually made like smaller statues because they had They
(11:59):
hadn't made one this high one hundred feet high before,
but they'd made statues that were thirty forty feet high,
so I mean they knew how to make big statues.
This one was just even bigger. Now. The first stage
in all of these, making any of these statues was
to build a full sized model. So this would have
had a frame of wood or iron. We don't know
(12:20):
whether it's the final frame or not, or whether it
was some kind of temporary affair. So they would have
built a frame of wood and put struts and other
bits on it, and finally smaller and smaller pieces of
wood until they could cover the whole thing with plaster
and make an exact model of what they wanted in
(12:42):
the final structure. So they must have needed cranes and
a shelter to produce this huge structure because it would
have taken years to do. And one possibility is that
they used the old Siege tower or one of the
old siege towers, or at least its framework. Now we
(13:03):
know these siege towers were maybe thirty or forty feet
wide and one hundred feet high. They were made of
wooden frames like I mentioned, covered with metal. So what
they could have done is dismantled a siege tower, moved
it and re erected it on the base for the statue.
(13:25):
And then they would have used that frame for hauling
things up, and also they could put a roof on
it so they would be sheltered while they were doing
the construction because they're building the statue probably took about
ten or twelve years, so it's kind of nice to
think that they were recycled. And perhaps the size of
(13:46):
the original siege tower, which would have been large enough
to reach out over the walls so that they could
attack the city. Perhaps this is what inspired the size
of the actual statue itself. So the next stage after
they'd produced that that model was casting the bronze first
(14:08):
light say, you know what is bronze? As people are
often get confused with all these different alloys, it's it's
an alloy of copper and tin and usually lead. Now,
the reason why they mixed up these metals was that
all alloys melt at lower temperatures than pure metals, so
(14:29):
it's less energy, it's easier to pour and bronze. This
mixture of mostly copper like ninety copper ten and two
few percent lead that also flows more readily than pure copper,
so it was a much better material. It was harder.
Now copper was available from Cypress. Cypress, in fact, even
(14:52):
takes its name from from the ancient Roman name for copper,
and there are huge deposits there which were exploited until
quite recently. Still they may still be exploited because Cypress
is actually a section of the seafloor that many many
(15:12):
years ago was thrust up above sea level or to
make new land. But I'm sure that many people have
seen pictures of black smokers. There's hot springs on the
ocean floor. The smoke that comes out is actually contains
copper sulfide, And so that's how those deposits on Cypress formed.
(15:34):
And so copper from Cypress was no problem. It had
been exploited for thousands of years before then, and it
was exploited for many years afterwards. Now tin is a
much more of a mystery. We don't know when people
discovered that tin. Addition of tin to copper would make
(15:54):
it melted at a lower temperature, make a harder material.
But it was certainly something extremely important. The problem is
where the tin came from, because there isn't a single
source like Cyprus. Heroditis, who was writing in the fifth
century BCE, talked about the Casierites islands far off in
the Atlantic, and that may have been England, Southwest England
(16:18):
or Brittany. But it's also possible that the tein actually
came from the far East, because we know that the
gem material lap is lazuli, was actually imported from Afghanistan
to Europe for a very long period of time. It's
present in ancient Egypt, so we know there were long
(16:40):
distance trade routes all the way as far as the
as far as Afghanistan, and it's possible that the tin
came from there, but there may have been just many, many,
many different sources. It was obtained by washing river sediments
a bit like gold place of gold, and it may
have been essentially a byproduct of gold expotation in some places. Now,
(17:04):
the third component was lead that was added to further
reduce the temperature, but it was also to stretch the
metal because it was incredibly cheap and the reason was
that it was a waste product from the silver mines
near Athens, near near Lavrion, which was the source of
(17:25):
the of the wealth that built the Parthenon and the
other monuments of classical grease. It was silver, so there
was pars of lead there. So they would import these
these materials and perhaps recycle a bit, and then they
had to cast it. So the way that is most
(17:45):
likely that they cast it was that they would have
taken a section of the of the full size model,
maybe up to two or three meters wide to three
meters deep, and they would have covered it with wax.
This would have been bees wax, maybe a quarter inch
thick five milimeters. Then they would have carefully removed the
(18:09):
wax model, covered it in clay and baked it to
make a mold, so the wax would have drained out.
It would have been recycled because it had a lot
of value, and they would vended up with a clay
mold with a hole in it very very narrow width,
just like I said, a quarter of an inch. So
then melt metal and pour it into the mold, and
(18:33):
then once it was cool, you would break up the
mold and clean up the casting because of course it
would probably have holes in it and other little bits
and pieces that need fixing, and then you'd fix those
metal sheets onto the framework, the framework of iron, and
would probably mostly iron. And the total amount of metal
in the statue was probably the order of like one
(18:56):
hundred and thirty one hundred and fifty tons something like that.
So it was it was a significant amount, but it
wasn't It wasn't gigantic. They probably would have produced that
much copper in Cyprus every year, or or perhaps every
six months, So it was it was not. It's not
an impossibly large amount of material.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
How would it have looked from afar? Would it?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Do?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You do? We think it would have like gleamed in
the sun. Would it have been like really splendid to behold?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I think initially it would have gleamed in the sun,
but of course it would have. It would have had
a green pattern that developed quite fast. I don't think
anybody has ever suggested that it was covered in gold.
You could have put a thin coating of gold on it.
It was sometimes done, but it probably wouldn't last that long.
I mean, remember that it was put up beside the sea,
(19:42):
and so there was a certain amount of sea spray
which would have corroded it, so I think, you know,
it would have looked green, and it would have been
seen from some distance out to sea, So it was
a kind of it was a kind of beacon to
welcome boats into the hear but as well as a
symbol of yes, look we can stand up to ourselves
(20:04):
against the against the Macedonians, even if it was our
friends the Egyptians who helped us on this one.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Now, one of the big mysteries with the Colossus of Roads,
as you discuss and this is there's similar mysteries with
with other of the ancient wonders concerns that the location.
So we don't know exactly where the Colossus of Roads
stood right right exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
We don't. We don't have any fragments of it. We
don't we haven't actually found where the metal was cast,
which would actually probably be something easier to find than
the than the fragments of the statue itself, because you know,
an old factory is something that nobody particularly wants, so
(20:56):
you should be left remains of it. And it's a
bit of a mystery as to why we've never actually
found anything of where it was. But there's something that
is clear is that there's an image which is endlessly
recycled of the Colossos straddling the harbor as this giant
(21:18):
statue with his legs apart and ships sailing happily between
his legs. Well, there is absolutely no suggestion that that
was correct. It's completely the fantasy of a sixteenth century illustrator.
But I think because of the power of the illustration,
it's a bad idea that you just can't get rid of.
(21:40):
It would have been technically impossible to actually build a
statue with the legs apart like that. And also if
the statue was thirty three meters high, it's one hundred
feet high including this spear and torch, then the crotch
would have only been at about thirty five feet And
it's supposed to straddle the military harbor, and none of
(22:01):
the military boats of navy boats could have got in
because it would have been too small. So there is
no way it stood like that. It's much more likely
that it stood on a low mound near the edge
of the harbor, that's to say, between the current harbor
which still exists and the city itself. In fact, the
(22:23):
place where we think it stood is actually covered by
the Palace of the Crusader Knights, which was erected essentially
in medieval times, although what you see now is essentially
a modern reconstruction because when Roads was part of the
part of Italy, briefly during Missolini's time, it was reconstructed
(22:47):
as a palace for Mussolini, so unfortunately that's what happened now.
So there are certain advantages being near the harbor like this.
First of all, it was on a low hill, so
so it was more it was visible from further out.
It was also useful for shipments of metal coming in
because they had a lot of weight of metal, and
(23:09):
being naturally harbor, they could store it there. They could
have put workshops very easily around the harbor itself, and
perhaps the old seage engine was nearby, so they had
plenty of space for construction. And also it was far
from the corrosive effects of sea spray, because sea spray
obviously creates bronze very readily.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Now you mentioned the of course, you mentioned that the
stance of the statue and how we think that it
was likely legs together as opposed to the legs apart.
That is a fantasy of illustration. One thing I kept
wondering about reading the chapter is that a lot of
us still have that vision stuck in our minds when
we just think of the Colossus of Rhodes, this huge
(23:52):
metal colosses, you know, straddling the bay right up there,
you know, next to the water, and we think of that,
and we think, well, that just sounds audacious. Of course
it fell down because we don't have I don't see
statues like that in the world today. You know, why
would they be able to get away with it back then?
(24:14):
And I was just wondering, if do you think that
these sorts of images in this line of thinking, does
it make us sort of take for granted the skill
that they would have had in constructing it, Like how
you mentioned that this was basically a larger version of
statues that they were already building. So was it truly
on an audacious project or was it maybe not as
(24:35):
audacious as we might think?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Oh? I think it was definitely audacious. I mean it
really was considerably bigger, probably two or three times bigger
than anything they'd constructed before. And remember that it was
a very impressive construction and it was much imitated afterwards.
There were other statues of this size that were built.
One of them will come into the story a little
(24:57):
bit later, but it was the Colossos of Nera that
was built at Rome, and it was constructed next to
the Flavian Amphitheater, which most people, of course know as
the Colosseum, and the Colisseum was not named because it
was colossal. It was named for the colossal statue of
Nero that stood nearby. But the problem always with large
(25:20):
constructions in an area like roads, which is particularly susceptible
to earthquakes, is that it collapsed. It collapsed, in fact,
only sixty years after it was finished, in two twenty six.
So the problem was that there was an earthquake that
(25:40):
was not perhaps by a Roodian stands a very big earthquake,
but the land went down by one meter. And the
problem was that the wealth of Roads essentially was derived
from its trading activity, and the harbor went down one meter.
So all the key our underwater, the military ship sheds
(26:03):
where they stored the boats. Because boats were the military
boats were always hauled out of the water except when
they were needed. They were all submerged, and this international
trading hub just simply collapsed to that point. And there
were many cities which needed that trade, including Egypt, and
so there was a kind of international effort to try
(26:25):
and help roads and re establish the trade. So it
was not entirely altruistic that they were doing it. For instance, Egypt,
we know they offered ninety tons of bronze works, workmen
and money to restore the harbor and the statue. Now
we don't know if it was accepted immediately or accepted
at all. What we do know is that the Rhodians
(26:49):
consulted the Oracle of Delphi, who said, do not rebuild. Now.
I probably think that the Oracle of Delphi was a
bit like modern management consulting companies consult them to consolidate
the idea that they've already had in their mind. But
whether they did or did not accept the Obgyptian offer
(27:10):
is unclear. But the story that has followed on from
that was that the remains of the statue lay on
the ground for nine hundred years. Nobody stole any of
it until the Arabs invaded and sold off the money
to a Jewish trader who hauled it away on one
(27:32):
hundred and thirty five camels. This story seems extremely unlikely.
I can't imagine anywhere in the ancient world where you
could have that amount of metal, the amount of wealth
in a big pile sitting around for nine hundred years
without anybody stealing it. But that's become again, it's the
story that's off to repeat it. But there's another possibility.
(27:55):
There was a Roman historian called Eusebius writing in three
hundred and eleven CE, and he it's it's a kind
of chronicle year by year that he describes, and for
about four times he describes in this kind of year
by year listing that the Colossos was rebuilt. The problem
(28:20):
is that we don't know whether he's talking about the
Colossus of Rhodes or the Colossus of Nero, because he
was actually based in Rome, so hence the problem. But
of course, if you could have restored the Colossos of Nero,
which was almost exact copy of the Colossos of Roads,
except of course with Near's head on the top, if
(28:42):
you could restore that one, then you could restore the
Colossos of Roads too. So it seems quite likely that
many of the Roman emperors did in fact restore the
colossos and in fact, it may have been rebuilt two
or three times. Whether it was built in exactly the
same form rebuilt, we don't know, and we don't know
(29:03):
how much of the damage was. But I imagine that
the corrosion, probably of the statue with an iron core
and a bronze exterior, would have corroded quite readily, and
so even relatively small earthquakes would have certainly damaged it
partly brought it down. So I like to think that
that Ucbius was probably right and that it was actually restored,
(29:26):
because it certainly was something that was incredibly important in
people's consciousness, and Roman emperors did sometimes do these kind
of altruistic moves just to re establish their power too.
So which case, when did it finally fall and was
not restored, Well, probably one forty two CE, so this
(29:50):
is like four hundred years after it was built. There
was a huge earthquake in Rhods. Now we know about
this earthquake because the land was uplift did by four
point eight meters that's what fourteen feet, And imagine that
the size of an earthquake needed to push the land
(30:10):
up fourteen feet, and we know how much the land
went up and when that happened from looking at sea
level notches along the northeast coast of Roads. Now, the Mediterranean,
as most people know, has very little tide, so when
the waves hit on cliffs, they create a notch, they
(30:34):
rode away the cliff at a level, and they create
a platform because there's century no tide, so the waves
are always attacking the same level. So during an earthquake,
the land will move up or down. In this case,
it moved up, and we have the old kind of notch.
The old sea level is still visible and those that
(30:54):
visit Roads City, Northern Roads can still see these things
along all the beaches. This this old notch up on
it so and it gives you the whole history of it.
And it certainly was a gigantic earthquake. The trade must
have completely been eliminated. The harbor was just kind of
wiped out. It was. It would have taken a tremendous it.
(31:16):
It did take a tremendous amount of effort to re
establish trade. But if the colossus fell at that point,
it probably was not restored simply because there were so
many other things to do well after such a huge earthquake.
The distraction of the city would have been almost total,
as well as all all the buildings and the rest
of it.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Now, in the last chapter of the book, you discuss
the idea of reconstructing modern replicas of the Seven Wonders,
which which I thought was a wonderful way to round
out the book, especially given you know, the book has
this has this great focus of lie on geology, often
bringing up the aspects of the local geology and the
(32:05):
sourcing of materials for the different Wonders that I'd never
really considered before. I guess i'd, you know, and often
focus more on just sort of the historical tidbits. I
loved all of that, and I love the focus on
the engineering. So with the Colossus of Roads in particular,
how colossal of an undertaking, if you will, would it
be to rebuild it today, and to do it right?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
I don't think it would have actually been particularly difficult
to do to rebuild now. I mean, we do have
the Statue of Liberty, which is a little smaller, but
not that much smaller. The Statute of Liberty is built
again on a metal frame. It's made of copper. It's
not bronze. But of course the Statue of Liberty is
(32:50):
not in an earthquake, So whereas Roads, we definitely know
it is. There is a plate tectonic boundary, probably about
ten kilometers south of Roads, where the floor of the
Mediterranean drops down from the kind of platform which Roads
is on right down into the deep ocean. So it's
(33:11):
a place where we regularly get big earthquakes, and like
I said, we can have ones with fourteen feet of displacement,
which is a huge earthquake. So you need to build
an earthquake resistant structure. There certainly are. There's a lot
of expertise in building such structures, especially in places like
Chili where they regularly have very large earthquakes. And I
(33:34):
think the way to do it would be to build
a platform, a metal platform, and isolate it seismically from
the underlying rock. So you would have a slab of concrete,
you'd have rubber blocks, and then on top of that
there would have been a metal frame, and the metal
(33:55):
frame could be relatively rigid. Then the statue would have
a framework which would be built onto that base. Again,
it would have to have a certain amount of flexibility
so that the amount of vibration that did get transmitted
through there would not make the plates of bronze come
(34:16):
off the framework. They'd have to be carefully to sign
in that way, but I don't think it would be
a particularly big challenge to do. The big challenge would
be that everybody would expect to rebuild it as a
statue straddling the harbor. And so when I've seen pictures
(34:38):
of reconstructions that they're going to do, it's been announced
several times that they're building a reconstruction. It's you know,
often portrayed as straddling the harbor. Now it is actually
a harbor that's used now. So the choice is you
then have to build a much bigger colossos, which I
think is what they're thinking of doing, one that would
be not one hundred feet high but three hundred feet high.
(35:00):
Then of course it gets to be a little bit
more complicated. But you know, the question is do they
want to rebuild it as something that is somewhat resembles
what it was in antiquity, or do you want it
as a model symbol of roads, in which case it
doesn't have to resemble anything that it did. Did it
look like an antiquity? But it's an interesting problem. It's
(35:23):
more of a political problem than anything else. I mean,
I rather hope that none of it is ever reconstructed,
because I rather like visiting roads, and Roads is a
rather nice place on its own, with that very large
statue in it.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
But the fact that it was there was ever it
was ever built at all. You know, what what do
you what does this reveal about like the nature and
the scope of the original construction and about the place
of roads in the ancient world.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I think it was it's celebrated. Their worship of Helios,
and Helios is as a Greek odd is somewhat neglected.
I mean, nowhere else in Greece do you find statues
or worship of Helios in any significant So it was
essentially their own kind of personal island god. I mean,
(36:14):
his place of Helios is usually taken by Apollo, who
had a similar kind of responsibilities. Now Helios we always
talk about the sun god. Actually he is not quite that.
He was the guy in charge of transporting the sun,
so he dragged it on a chariot across the sky
and then kind of pushed it through hades and pulled
it up on the other side. So it was more
(36:36):
of a kind of wagoneer than than a God. But
you know, every city, every community wants to have its
kind of what was it starchitect a building now and
this was their starchitect building from the third century BC,
and perhaps nothing really has changed. People want to have
(36:58):
a symbol of their town, something they can put on
their coins, something they can use to attract tourists. And
that's what it was at those times, I say, and
not unusual when you look at the other Wonders they
were essentially perhaps partly there to attract tourists too, but
also for worship as well. I mean, the Zeus Statue
(37:19):
of Zeus was certainly a very very important destination for
people to view. The Mausoleum was a similar in that
kind of way, and of course the pyramids still are
the greatest symbol of Egypt.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, Michael, thanks again for coming on the show to
discuss the book again. The title is The Seven Wonders
of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology. I encourage
listeners to check this book out because it has the history,
it has the mythology, it has the engineering and the geology.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
It's just a treat Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Thanks again to Professor Michael Dennis Higgins for chatting with
us today. The book again is The Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology from Oxford University Press.
It's available now in hardback and as an ebook. I
highly recommend it. I think you can love it. If
you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to
(38:16):
Blow your Mind, well just find us in the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.
We have core episodes of the show on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
listener mails on Mondays, short form artifactural monster fact episodes
on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. Thanks again to the excellent JJ Possway for
(38:40):
producing the show, and if you would like to get
in touch with us, well, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcast My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday once more, so we
have a vault episode for you. This one is going
to be the episode The Colossus of Rhodes with Michael
Dennis Higgins. Michael Dennis Higgins wrote an excellent book titled
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology.
(00:26):
This is a lot of fun we get into, specifically
talking about the Colossus of Rhods, what it was, you know,
how we understand it, and indeed how it might be rebuilt. So,
without further ado, let's jump right in this one originally
published July twenty seventh, twenty twenty three. Everyone knows the
renowned Seven Wonders of the World, but few have set
(00:50):
eyes on them. For in order to do so, you
have to arrange a long journey to the land of
the Persians on the far side of the Euphrates to
visit Egypt. You must then change direction and go to
Ilia in Greece. Then you must see Halakarnassis, a city
state in Karia, and Ephesus in Ionia, and you have
(01:14):
to sail to Rhodes, so that, being exhausted by lengthy
wanderings over the Earth's surface, and growing tired from the
effort of these journeys, you finally fulfill your heart's desire
only when life is ebbing away, leaving you weak through
the weight of years.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. Those are the words of Philo of Byzantium,
promoting the idea of the Seven Wonders of the World.
On today's episode, I'm going to be chatting with Professor
Michael Dinni Higgins, author of the new book The Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology, out
(02:07):
now from Oxford University Press in both physical and digital formats.
It's an absolutely wonderful book, and we've actually used it
already as a source on the show in our series
on mud, specifically in our section on mud bricks, so
I'm delighted to have the author on the show. When
we set this up a couple of weeks ago, we
decided to just focus on a single wonder as opposed
(02:30):
to all seven of the wonders of the world, So
we're going to be talking about the Colossus of Rhodes.
Let's get right to the interview. Hi Michael, thanks for
coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's my pleasure to be alone.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
The book is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Science,
Engineering and Technology. It's a terrific read. Tell us how
did this project come together?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Well, the project was actually inspired many years ago by
my father. My father was a curator the British Museum.
After he died, I started thinking about what he had done,
and he had written on a chapter on the Colossus
of Roads for a book on the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World, and so I thought, well, why not
(03:14):
update it a bit, because there'd been nothing really done
seriously on the Seven Wonders in almost forty years, So
hence my book.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Now we're only going to be focusing on the one
particular wonder for today's conversation, the Colossus of Rhodes. But
I thought you might remind our listeners where and when
this whole concept of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World comes from.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Well, the idea broadly comes from the third century BCE.
It's a sort of a kind of modern like a
modern bucket list of things to see before you die,
and it may seem rather surprising that these kind of
lists existed at that time. Now, it's true that there
wasn't very much tourism in ancient Greece, and that was
(03:59):
part because travel was by sea and there was a
lot of problems with pirates. But into Roman times there
was a well established a tourist industry in Greece and
Egypt and Roman and all the rest of it. But
we actually have a tourist guide from the second century
BCE where he describes all the places he went to.
(04:21):
There were many lists, but the most popular and the
one that's come down to us now. It starts, of course,
with the Pyramids. You can't avoid them, the gardens of Babylon,
the walls of Babylon as well, although that was subsequently
are replaced by the pharos, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia,
(04:41):
the tomb of King Marsolis, the Temple of Artemis, and
of course the colossos of Rhodes. And the question always
is why were these things chosen? And they were probably
chosen for their size, their beauty, and their engineering challenges.
Also there's another aspect that almost all of them have
(05:03):
some kind of indirect or direct link with Alexander the
third of Macedon. He was the great conqueror who was
known as the Great by those who were not unfortunate
enough to have been conquered by him.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Now narrowing in on the island of Roads where the
Classus of Rhodes is his or wise position. Now, unfortunately,
the island of Rhodes is currently in the news due
to destructive wildfires, so a refresher might not be as
essential for listeners as as it normally would be. But
could you go ahead and position roads for us geographically?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
And I guess geologically, Well, it's a Biggish Greek island
in the southeast GNC. It's near the Turkish Turkish coast.
In antiquity it was known as a warm sunny island,
and in fact it was sacred to the sun god Helios.
And the story is that Zeus had divided up the
(06:00):
world between his brothers, but Helios was away, and when
he came back he found that that he hadn't been
allocated anything. I guess that perhaps held the meeting during
the night, so he wasn't there. But serious offered to
redivide up the world, but Helius saw an island appearing
in the south and asked for it, and that was Rhodes,
(06:21):
and so in a sense that people still worship the
sun there. Of course, it's a major holiday destination. Unfortunately,
it is hot, it's sunny, it's dry for a huge
amount of a very large amount of time every year,
and so it's very susceptible to fires, which we're seeing
now with the hot weather and that throughout Greece. It's
(06:43):
also susceptible to earthquakes, which come into the story of
the Colossos quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Now. Yeah, turning to the colossus itself, I think many
of us have seen illustrations of it, but really, what
was this colossus? What do we think it looked like?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Okay, it was a huge statue, probably thirty three meters high,
because we have some descriptions which say how big it
was at one hundred feet and it was made of bronze.
Now we don't have any really detailed description. Most people
seem to say, well, everybody knows what it looks like,
so there's no point in talking about it, and we
(07:22):
don't have any images of it. Although the Rodians actually
put on their coins the head of Helios now Roman
in ancient coins were obviously they were used for money,
but there was also essentially made souvenirs, and so they
often had on their coins things that would encourage tourism,
(07:45):
and one of them was this image of Helios with
curly hair and sun rays coming out of a kind
of diadem. Now many people have suggested that the image
of the head and perhaps of parts of the body
was actually inspired by the statues of Alexander, because the
(08:10):
sculptor who created the colossos was a pupil of the
official sculptor of Alexander. And as for the rest of
the statue, well, most people think that he probably the
god probably stood upright. He was holding a spear in
one hand. This was partly of course, to stabilize the statue,
(08:33):
and he may have held a torch above his head.
So if you want to think of what it looked like, well,
clearly the statue of Liberty was inspired by this idea
of what the statue looked like, and it was created
to commemorate a very important event in three hundred and
(08:54):
five BCE. Now this time Rhodes was and quasi independent
kingdom and it was caught between two major powers which
were ruled by the successors of Alexander. So Alexander had
died some time before, and he just his empire had
(09:18):
been divided up, and two of the big chunks were
Egypt to the south and Macedonia to the north, and
Roads was kind of caught in a proxy war between
these two major states, and Macedonia attacked Roads with a
fleet of ships. The Egyptians came to the rescue and
(09:39):
defeated the Macedonians. And when the Macedonians left, they basically
just ran as fast as they could, and they left
behind most of their military equipment, including some huge siege towers.
And these were towers that were built of wood and
iron and bronze. Some of them maybe are up one
(10:01):
hundred and fifty feet high fifty meters high, and that
perhaps come back into the story a bit later. So
these towers had rams at the base of them. They
were covered in iron plates to prevent fire arrows setting
fire to the whole wooden structure. And the story goes
that when the Rhodians finally are defeated the Macedonians, that
(10:25):
they sold off a lot of the siege towers. But
I think actually they probably were wise enough to recycle
a lot of the material into the statue that makes sense,
and perhaps sell off other materials they didn't need. So
that was it.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Now you discussed that of the three surviving descriptions of
the statue, the longest description, like the most detailed description,
also seems to present a detailed but implausible construction method.
What are we to make of.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
This, Yes, it's a bit curious. The description you're talking
about is by Philo of by Xantium, who was a
third century BCE engineer, and he was the one who
may have written the original description of the Seven Wonders,
although that's somewhat debatable. Now. He talks about how the
(11:18):
statue had a framework of iron and stone, which is
okay so far it would have had to have been
built on a framework. But then he goes on and
talks in great detail about how the bronze was poured
on layer after layer, a bit like casting concrete, you know,
putting one layer on, waiting a for it to solidify,
(11:38):
and then putting another layer on. But it's a very
brutal way of making a statue, and it would have
required a gigantic amount of metal, and it would have
produced an incredibly heavy statue that would have probably had
problems standing up. It's much more likely that the colossus
was actually made like smaller statues because they had They
(11:59):
hadn't made one this high one hundred feet high before,
but they'd made statues that were thirty forty feet high,
so I mean they knew how to make big statues.
This one was just even bigger. Now. The first stage
in all of these, making any of these statues was
to build a full sized model. So this would have
had a frame of wood or iron. We don't know
(12:20):
whether it's the final frame or not, or whether it
was some kind of temporary affair. So they would have
built a frame of wood and put struts and other
bits on it, and finally smaller and smaller pieces of
wood until they could cover the whole thing with plaster
and make an exact model of what they wanted in
(12:42):
the final structure. So they must have needed cranes and
a shelter to produce this huge structure because it would
have taken years to do. And one possibility is that
they used the old Siege tower or one of the
old siege towers, or at least its framework. Now we
(13:03):
know these siege towers were maybe thirty or forty feet
wide and one hundred feet high. They were made of
wooden frames like I mentioned, covered with metal. So what
they could have done is dismantled a siege tower, moved
it and re erected it on the base for the statue.
(13:25):
And then they would have used that frame for hauling
things up, and also they could put a roof on
it so they would be sheltered while they were doing
the construction because they're building the statue probably took about
ten or twelve years, so it's kind of nice to
think that they were recycled. And perhaps the size of
(13:46):
the original siege tower, which would have been large enough
to reach out over the walls so that they could
attack the city. Perhaps this is what inspired the size
of the actual statue itself. So the next stage after
they'd produced that that model was casting the bronze first
(14:08):
light say, you know what is bronze? As people are
often get confused with all these different alloys, it's it's
an alloy of copper and tin and usually lead. Now,
the reason why they mixed up these metals was that
all alloys melt at lower temperatures than pure metals, so
(14:29):
it's less energy, it's easier to pour and bronze. This
mixture of mostly copper like ninety copper ten and two
few percent lead that also flows more readily than pure copper,
so it was a much better material. It was harder.
Now copper was available from Cypress. Cypress, in fact, even
(14:52):
takes its name from from the ancient Roman name for copper,
and there are huge deposits there which were exploited until
quite recently. Still they may still be exploited because Cypress
is actually a section of the seafloor that many many
(15:12):
years ago was thrust up above sea level or to
make new land. But I'm sure that many people have
seen pictures of black smokers. There's hot springs on the
ocean floor. The smoke that comes out is actually contains
copper sulfide, And so that's how those deposits on Cypress formed.
(15:34):
And so copper from Cypress was no problem. It had
been exploited for thousands of years before then, and it
was exploited for many years afterwards. Now tin is a
much more of a mystery. We don't know when people
discovered that tin. Addition of tin to copper would make
(15:54):
it melted at a lower temperature, make a harder material.
But it was certainly something extremely important. The problem is
where the tin came from, because there isn't a single
source like Cyprus. Heroditis, who was writing in the fifth
century BCE, talked about the Casierites islands far off in
the Atlantic, and that may have been England, Southwest England
(16:18):
or Brittany. But it's also possible that the tein actually
came from the far East, because we know that the
gem material lap is lazuli, was actually imported from Afghanistan
to Europe for a very long period of time. It's
present in ancient Egypt, so we know there were long
(16:40):
distance trade routes all the way as far as the
as far as Afghanistan, and it's possible that the tin
came from there, but there may have been just many, many,
many different sources. It was obtained by washing river sediments
a bit like gold place of gold, and it may
have been essentially a byproduct of gold expotation in some places. Now,
(17:04):
the third component was lead that was added to further
reduce the temperature, but it was also to stretch the
metal because it was incredibly cheap and the reason was
that it was a waste product from the silver mines
near Athens, near near Lavrion, which was the source of
(17:25):
the of the wealth that built the Parthenon and the
other monuments of classical grease. It was silver, so there
was pars of lead there. So they would import these
these materials and perhaps recycle a bit, and then they
had to cast it. So the way that is most
(17:45):
likely that they cast it was that they would have
taken a section of the of the full size model,
maybe up to two or three meters wide to three
meters deep, and they would have covered it with wax.
This would have been bees wax, maybe a quarter inch
thick five milimeters. Then they would have carefully removed the
(18:09):
wax model, covered it in clay and baked it to
make a mold, so the wax would have drained out.
It would have been recycled because it had a lot
of value, and they would vended up with a clay
mold with a hole in it very very narrow width,
just like I said, a quarter of an inch. So
then melt metal and pour it into the mold, and
(18:33):
then once it was cool, you would break up the
mold and clean up the casting because of course it
would probably have holes in it and other little bits
and pieces that need fixing, and then you'd fix those
metal sheets onto the framework, the framework of iron, and
would probably mostly iron. And the total amount of metal
in the statue was probably the order of like one
(18:56):
hundred and thirty one hundred and fifty tons something like that.
So it was it was a significant amount, but it
wasn't It wasn't gigantic. They probably would have produced that
much copper in Cyprus every year, or or perhaps every
six months, So it was it was not. It's not
an impossibly large amount of material.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
How would it have looked from afar? Would it?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Do?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
You do? We think it would have like gleamed in
the sun. Would it have been like really splendid to behold?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I think initially it would have gleamed in the sun,
but of course it would have. It would have had
a green pattern that developed quite fast. I don't think
anybody has ever suggested that it was covered in gold.
You could have put a thin coating of gold on it.
It was sometimes done, but it probably wouldn't last that long.
I mean, remember that it was put up beside the sea,
(19:42):
and so there was a certain amount of sea spray
which would have corroded it, so I think, you know,
it would have looked green, and it would have been
seen from some distance out to sea, So it was
a kind of it was a kind of beacon to
welcome boats into the hear but as well as a
symbol of yes, look we can stand up to ourselves
(20:04):
against the against the Macedonians, even if it was our
friends the Egyptians who helped us on this one.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Now, one of the big mysteries with the Colossus of Roads,
as you discuss and this is there's similar mysteries with
with other of the ancient wonders concerns that the location.
So we don't know exactly where the Colossus of Roads
stood right right exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
We don't. We don't have any fragments of it. We
don't we haven't actually found where the metal was cast,
which would actually probably be something easier to find than
the than the fragments of the statue itself, because you know,
an old factory is something that nobody particularly wants, so
(20:56):
you should be left remains of it. And it's a
bit of a mystery as to why we've never actually
found anything of where it was. But there's something that
is clear is that there's an image which is endlessly
recycled of the Colossos straddling the harbor as this giant
(21:18):
statue with his legs apart and ships sailing happily between
his legs. Well, there is absolutely no suggestion that that
was correct. It's completely the fantasy of a sixteenth century illustrator.
But I think because of the power of the illustration,
it's a bad idea that you just can't get rid of.
(21:40):
It would have been technically impossible to actually build a
statue with the legs apart like that. And also if
the statue was thirty three meters high, it's one hundred
feet high including this spear and torch, then the crotch
would have only been at about thirty five feet And
it's supposed to straddle the military harbor, and none of
(22:01):
the military boats of navy boats could have got in
because it would have been too small. So there is
no way it stood like that. It's much more likely
that it stood on a low mound near the edge
of the harbor, that's to say, between the current harbor
which still exists and the city itself. In fact, the
(22:23):
place where we think it stood is actually covered by
the Palace of the Crusader Knights, which was erected essentially
in medieval times, although what you see now is essentially
a modern reconstruction because when Roads was part of the
part of Italy, briefly during Missolini's time, it was reconstructed
(22:47):
as a palace for Mussolini, so unfortunately that's what happened now.
So there are certain advantages being near the harbor like this.
First of all, it was on a low hill, so
so it was more it was visible from further out.
It was also useful for shipments of metal coming in
because they had a lot of weight of metal, and
(23:09):
being naturally harbor, they could store it there. They could
have put workshops very easily around the harbor itself, and
perhaps the old seage engine was nearby, so they had
plenty of space for construction. And also it was far
from the corrosive effects of sea spray, because sea spray
obviously creates bronze very readily.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Now you mentioned the of course, you mentioned that the
stance of the statue and how we think that it
was likely legs together as opposed to the legs apart.
That is a fantasy of illustration. One thing I kept
wondering about reading the chapter is that a lot of
us still have that vision stuck in our minds when
we just think of the Colossus of Rhodes, this huge
(23:52):
metal colosses, you know, straddling the bay right up there,
you know, next to the water, and we think of that,
and we think, well, that just sounds audacious. Of course
it fell down because we don't have I don't see
statues like that in the world today. You know, why
would they be able to get away with it back then?
(24:14):
And I was just wondering, if do you think that
these sorts of images in this line of thinking, does
it make us sort of take for granted the skill
that they would have had in constructing it, Like how
you mentioned that this was basically a larger version of
statues that they were already building. So was it truly
on an audacious project or was it maybe not as
(24:35):
audacious as we might think?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Oh? I think it was definitely audacious. I mean it
really was considerably bigger, probably two or three times bigger
than anything they'd constructed before. And remember that it was
a very impressive construction and it was much imitated afterwards.
There were other statues of this size that were built.
One of them will come into the story a little
(24:57):
bit later, but it was the Colossos of Nera that
was built at Rome, and it was constructed next to
the Flavian Amphitheater, which most people, of course know as
the Colosseum, and the Colisseum was not named because it
was colossal. It was named for the colossal statue of
Nero that stood nearby. But the problem always with large
(25:20):
constructions in an area like roads, which is particularly susceptible
to earthquakes, is that it collapsed. It collapsed, in fact,
only sixty years after it was finished, in two twenty six.
So the problem was that there was an earthquake that
(25:40):
was not perhaps by a Roodian stands a very big earthquake,
but the land went down by one meter. And the
problem was that the wealth of Roads essentially was derived
from its trading activity, and the harbor went down one meter.
So all the key our underwater, the military ship sheds
(26:03):
where they stored the boats. Because boats were the military
boats were always hauled out of the water except when
they were needed. They were all submerged, and this international
trading hub just simply collapsed to that point. And there
were many cities which needed that trade, including Egypt, and
so there was a kind of international effort to try
(26:25):
and help roads and re establish the trade. So it
was not entirely altruistic that they were doing it. For instance, Egypt,
we know they offered ninety tons of bronze works, workmen
and money to restore the harbor and the statue. Now
we don't know if it was accepted immediately or accepted
at all. What we do know is that the Rhodians
(26:49):
consulted the Oracle of Delphi, who said, do not rebuild. Now.
I probably think that the Oracle of Delphi was a
bit like modern management consulting companies consult them to consolidate
the idea that they've already had in their mind. But
whether they did or did not accept the Obgyptian offer
(27:10):
is unclear. But the story that has followed on from
that was that the remains of the statue lay on
the ground for nine hundred years. Nobody stole any of
it until the Arabs invaded and sold off the money
to a Jewish trader who hauled it away on one
(27:32):
hundred and thirty five camels. This story seems extremely unlikely.
I can't imagine anywhere in the ancient world where you
could have that amount of metal, the amount of wealth
in a big pile sitting around for nine hundred years
without anybody stealing it. But that's become again, it's the
story that's off to repeat it. But there's another possibility.
(27:55):
There was a Roman historian called Eusebius writing in three
hundred and eleven CE, and he it's it's a kind
of chronicle year by year that he describes, and for
about four times he describes in this kind of year
by year listing that the Colossos was rebuilt. The problem
(28:20):
is that we don't know whether he's talking about the
Colossus of Rhodes or the Colossus of Nero, because he
was actually based in Rome, so hence the problem. But
of course, if you could have restored the Colossos of Nero,
which was almost exact copy of the Colossos of Roads,
except of course with Near's head on the top, if
(28:42):
you could restore that one, then you could restore the
Colossos of Roads too. So it seems quite likely that
many of the Roman emperors did in fact restore the
colossos and in fact, it may have been rebuilt two
or three times. Whether it was built in exactly the
same form rebuilt, we don't know, and we don't know
(29:03):
how much of the damage was. But I imagine that
the corrosion, probably of the statue with an iron core
and a bronze exterior, would have corroded quite readily, and
so even relatively small earthquakes would have certainly damaged it
partly brought it down. So I like to think that
that Ucbius was probably right and that it was actually restored,
(29:26):
because it certainly was something that was incredibly important in
people's consciousness, and Roman emperors did sometimes do these kind
of altruistic moves just to re establish their power too.
So which case, when did it finally fall and was
not restored, Well, probably one forty two CE, so this
(29:50):
is like four hundred years after it was built. There
was a huge earthquake in Rhods. Now we know about
this earthquake because the land was uplift did by four
point eight meters that's what fourteen feet, And imagine that
the size of an earthquake needed to push the land
(30:10):
up fourteen feet, and we know how much the land
went up and when that happened from looking at sea
level notches along the northeast coast of Roads. Now, the Mediterranean,
as most people know, has very little tide, so when
the waves hit on cliffs, they create a notch, they
(30:34):
rode away the cliff at a level, and they create
a platform because there's century no tide, so the waves
are always attacking the same level. So during an earthquake,
the land will move up or down. In this case,
it moved up, and we have the old kind of notch.
The old sea level is still visible and those that
(30:54):
visit Roads City, Northern Roads can still see these things
along all the beaches. This this old notch up on
it so and it gives you the whole history of it.
And it certainly was a gigantic earthquake. The trade must
have completely been eliminated. The harbor was just kind of
wiped out. It was. It would have taken a tremendous it.
(31:16):
It did take a tremendous amount of effort to re
establish trade. But if the colossus fell at that point,
it probably was not restored simply because there were so
many other things to do well after such a huge earthquake.
The distraction of the city would have been almost total,
as well as all all the buildings and the rest
of it.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Now, in the last chapter of the book, you discuss
the idea of reconstructing modern replicas of the Seven Wonders,
which which I thought was a wonderful way to round
out the book, especially given you know, the book has
this has this great focus of lie on geology, often
bringing up the aspects of the local geology and the
(32:05):
sourcing of materials for the different Wonders that I'd never
really considered before. I guess i'd, you know, and often
focus more on just sort of the historical tidbits. I
loved all of that, and I love the focus on
the engineering. So with the Colossus of Roads in particular,
how colossal of an undertaking, if you will, would it
be to rebuild it today, and to do it right?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
I don't think it would have actually been particularly difficult
to do to rebuild now. I mean, we do have
the Statue of Liberty, which is a little smaller, but
not that much smaller. The Statute of Liberty is built
again on a metal frame. It's made of copper. It's
not bronze. But of course the Statue of Liberty is
(32:50):
not in an earthquake, So whereas Roads, we definitely know
it is. There is a plate tectonic boundary, probably about
ten kilometers south of Roads, where the floor of the
Mediterranean drops down from the kind of platform which Roads
is on right down into the deep ocean. So it's
(33:11):
a place where we regularly get big earthquakes, and like
I said, we can have ones with fourteen feet of displacement,
which is a huge earthquake. So you need to build
an earthquake resistant structure. There certainly are. There's a lot
of expertise in building such structures, especially in places like
Chili where they regularly have very large earthquakes. And I
(33:34):
think the way to do it would be to build
a platform, a metal platform, and isolate it seismically from
the underlying rock. So you would have a slab of concrete,
you'd have rubber blocks, and then on top of that
there would have been a metal frame, and the metal
(33:55):
frame could be relatively rigid. Then the statue would have
a framework which would be built onto that base. Again,
it would have to have a certain amount of flexibility
so that the amount of vibration that did get transmitted
through there would not make the plates of bronze come
(34:16):
off the framework. They'd have to be carefully to sign
in that way, but I don't think it would be
a particularly big challenge to do. The big challenge would
be that everybody would expect to rebuild it as a
statue straddling the harbor. And so when I've seen pictures
(34:38):
of reconstructions that they're going to do, it's been announced
several times that they're building a reconstruction. It's you know,
often portrayed as straddling the harbor. Now it is actually
a harbor that's used now. So the choice is you
then have to build a much bigger colossos, which I
think is what they're thinking of doing, one that would
be not one hundred feet high but three hundred feet high.
(35:00):
Then of course it gets to be a little bit
more complicated. But you know, the question is do they
want to rebuild it as something that is somewhat resembles
what it was in antiquity, or do you want it
as a model symbol of roads, in which case it
doesn't have to resemble anything that it did. Did it
look like an antiquity? But it's an interesting problem. It's
(35:23):
more of a political problem than anything else. I mean,
I rather hope that none of it is ever reconstructed,
because I rather like visiting roads, and Roads is a
rather nice place on its own, with that very large
statue in it.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
But the fact that it was there was ever it
was ever built at all. You know, what what do
you what does this reveal about like the nature and
the scope of the original construction and about the place
of roads in the ancient world.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I think it was it's celebrated. Their worship of Helios,
and Helios is as a Greek odd is somewhat neglected.
I mean, nowhere else in Greece do you find statues
or worship of Helios in any significant So it was
essentially their own kind of personal island god. I mean,
(36:14):
his place of Helios is usually taken by Apollo, who
had a similar kind of responsibilities. Now Helios we always
talk about the sun god. Actually he is not quite that.
He was the guy in charge of transporting the sun,
so he dragged it on a chariot across the sky
and then kind of pushed it through hades and pulled
it up on the other side. So it was more
(36:36):
of a kind of wagoneer than than a God. But
you know, every city, every community wants to have its
kind of what was it starchitect a building now and
this was their starchitect building from the third century BC,
and perhaps nothing really has changed. People want to have
(36:58):
a symbol of their town, something they can put on
their coins, something they can use to attract tourists. And
that's what it was at those times, I say, and
not unusual when you look at the other Wonders they
were essentially perhaps partly there to attract tourists too, but
also for worship as well. I mean, the Zeus Statue
(37:19):
of Zeus was certainly a very very important destination for
people to view. The Mausoleum was a similar in that
kind of way, and of course the pyramids still are
the greatest symbol of Egypt.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Well, Michael, thanks again for coming on the show to
discuss the book again. The title is The Seven Wonders
of the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology. I encourage
listeners to check this book out because it has the history,
it has the mythology, it has the engineering and the geology.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
It's just a treat Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Thanks again to Professor Michael Dennis Higgins for chatting with
us today. The book again is The Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World, Science, Engineering, and Technology from Oxford University Press.
It's available now in hardback and as an ebook. I
highly recommend it. I think you can love it. If
you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to
(38:16):
Blow your Mind, well just find us in the Stuff
to Blow Your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.
We have core episodes of the show on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
listener mails on Mondays, short form artifactural monster fact episodes
on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. Thanks again to the excellent JJ Possway for
(38:40):
producing the show, and if you would like to get
in touch with us, well, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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