Colossus

Colossus, a Greek word of unknown origin, used to denote a statue of gigantic size. The colossal was a common feature of all ancient art, and in particular of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture and sculpture. The image set up by Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel, iii. 1) was of enormous proportions. Even Greek art, through Aristotle, laid down the principle that only the large can be noble, and carried it out in its statues of gods and heroes. Of the many colossi of which accounts have come down to us, the most famous was the bronze colossus of Rhodes, representing Helios (the Sun), the national deity of the Rhodians, which was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, though it was by no means a masterpiece of Greek sculpture. It is said to have been the work of Chares of Lindus, a distinguished pupil of Lysippus, who gave twelve years to the casting, and completed his work in 280 B.C. Its height is variously given at from 90 to 120 feet. It stood near the harbour; but the legend that placed it astride the entrance is certainly apocryphal, and probably arose from a misunderstanding of the statement that it was so high that a ship might sail between its legs. Fifty-six years after its erection it was thrown down by an earthquake, and there its ruins lay, the marvel of the place, till in 653 A.D. an Arab general sold them to a Jew from Edessa for old metal. Other famous colossi of antiquity were the Chryselephantine (q.v.) statues of Athena on the Acropolis, 37 feet, and of Zeus at Olympia, 40 feet, both by Phidias; the Zeus at Tarentum, by Lysippus, 107 feet; a bronze Apollo, 66 feet, brought from Apollonia to Rome by Lucullus; and a marble statue of Nero, 131 feet, set up by the emperor before the palace, but removed by Vespasian to the Via Sacra, where Commodus afterwards superseded the head by one of himself. Colossi came in again with the Renaissance, and in later times the most noteworthy have been the S. Charles Borromeo (1697), on the bank of the Lago Maggiore, 72 feet; the 'Bavaria' national statue at Munich, 67 feet; the Arminius (q.v.) statue, 90 feet to the point of the upraised sword; the Virgin of Puy, 51 feet; the figure of Germania in the national monument on the Niederwald, 112 feet; and Bartholdi's 'Liberty enlightening the World' (1886), in New York harbour, 156 feet to the tip of the torch. There are enormous images in Japan, Polynesia, and elsewhere. See Lesbazeilles, Les Colosses Anciens et Modernes (1876); Torr, Rhodes in Ancient and Modern Times (2 vols. 1885-87).