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