The Wonders of the Ancient World - Part 1/7

In this history video take a look at the seven wonders of the Ancient world, this video focus' on the Colossus of Rhodes.

The Colossus of Rhodes was a giant statute of the god Helios. It was created between 292 and 280 BC. It stood on the Greek island of Rhodes. It was approximately the same size as the Statute of Liberty and some say that the French sculptor who created the Statute of Liberty in fact used the Colossus as inspiration. An attempted siege by Demetrius in 305 BC was unsuccessful and the Rhodians decided to celebrate by building the Colossus of Rhodes. In fact, they say that it was financed by selling all the weapons that Demetrius had left behind in front of Rhodes. Different accounts of how the construction took place exist but many would say a lot of the weapons left behind were melted down to build the Colossus of Rhodes. After standing for 56 years and earthquake destroyed much of the city, it caused the statute to break at the knee and fall. A claim that they had offended the god Helios, so they refuse to rebuild the statute and the following statute lay there for 800 years until in 654 AD, it was sold to a traveling salesman. He broke up the remaining pieces and supposedly had traveled on the back of 900 camels to Syria.