Chapter XX: The Colossus of Rhodes

PRETEND this is not the twentieth century, but 288 B.C., and that, with many other young people, your home is hundreds of miles away on a little island in the Mediterranean Sea called Rhodes. Here the weather is sunshiny and bright, and children do not have to remain indoors because of the rain, for on this delightful island the sun comes forth in all its glory nearly every day during the year. The people think so much of the sun that they erect statues to it, which they call “sun gods”; they even have the head of a sun god on one side of their coins, and on the other side they print a rose, for the citizens of Rhodes are almost as fond of that flower as they are of the sun. Such quantities of roses grow on the island that all girls can have as many as they wish.

Now, we will play that

=Your Name is Chares=

of Lindus, that you are a great sculptor and can model all sorts of wonderful and beautiful objects, and that the city of Rhodes has commissioned you to make a gigantic bronze statue of Apollo, their sun god. So you must pretend that you have built two small islands at the entrance to the port of Rhodes, and that on each island you have erected immense stone pedestals fifty feet high, so that your Colossus need not be obliged to stand in the water. The statue must be made to span the harbor with “legs wide apart,” as Napoleon stands in the pictures of history.

Apollo must be very large, about one hundred and eleven feet high, in order that every ship entering the harbor may pass between the legs of this

=Towering Colossus=

as a tribute to the god; and when sailors approach the statue and pass beneath it they will marvel at the beautiful figure of polished metal and carry news of it all over the world.

Make the Colossus of bronze filled in with stone. Use stiff fine lawn or fine batiste as the outer bronze covering of the statue; let the cloth be perfectly smooth, without a wrinkle. Take raw cotton batting for the stone filling. Enlarge very carefully on stiff, smooth paper the pattern (Fig. 310); make it measure nine and one-fourth inches from the tip-top line to the bottom line; then cut it out and lay the paper pattern down flat over a double fold of the cloth. With a soft lead pencil run a line on the cloth entirely around the figure; be particular about having all the curves of the figure correct. Baste the two layers of cloth together and machine-stitch them around the outside edge of the pencil outline.

=Do not Sew the Lines Straight=

where they should curve; remember this and devote the best of your talents to the work.

Leave a half-inch opening at the shoulder of the upraised arm A (Fig. 311). Pull off a bit of the soft, raw cotton and force it in at the opening A (Fig. 311) between the front and back of the figure. With a smooth, slender, dull-pointed stick push the cotton well up into one of the points surrounding the head, which represent the rays of the sun. When you have the cotton in the tip of the point, pack in another piece and continue to stuff the point with cotton until it is filled out firmly. Stuff all the points and the head in the same way; then fill the opposite shoulder and upper part of the arm which is held down at the side, and next the uplifted hand and arm, and the body.

=Begin at the Sole=

of the left foot and stuff the lower half of the partially filled hanging arm, then the lower part of the body and the entire length of the leg, and fill in the other leg. Before stuffing the feet take two strong, stiff hat-pins and break off the heads. If you bend the ends in removing the heads, hammer them out straight again; the pins must be perfectly straight. Very carefully work a pin, broken end first, up each leg well into the body. The dotted lines along the legs in Fig. 311 represent the pins placed inside; the points of the pins extend not less than an inch and a half below the feet B, B (Fig. 311). C, C (Fig. 311) shows the raw cotton, which has not yet been packed into the feet. Lift the figure by the two pin points, and if it is firm and stiff finish stuffing the feet; if it bends when held by the pin points, carefully twist out the pins and insert them again, adjusting them until they keep the figure stiffly upright when held by the points.

Sew up all the openings and

=Cut Out the Statue,=

then slowly punch open the centre of the divisions between the rays around the head and the uplifted arm, with the point of a blade of the scissors. Enlarge each hole by twisting the pointed end of a penholder around and around until the opening is sufficiently large. Turn the Colossus over on the other side and carefully cut away the fringe of cloth that surrounds each opening. In like manner open the space between the body and the arm extending down the side.

When stuffing the figure, use the cotton soft; do not roll it into hard wads, and be careful not to run the end of the stick through the cloth covering and tear it; the same care must be taken when inserting the pins up the legs. With thread and needle stitch an outline between the fingers and around the lower portion of the raised hand. Filling in the figure with cotton will give you an idea of the labor your great-grandmothers expended upon their bedquilts when they stuffed elaborate designs of grapes and vines on the coverings. Such quilts are now highly valued. Give Apollo an

=All-over Coat of Varnish=

When the statue is perfectly dry bronze it with liquid bronze, and if the small openings by the side of the arms seem partially to have closed, twist the end of the pen handle through each one to enlarge the spaces.

Cut a strip of cloth according to Fig. 312 for drapery. Hold one end against the figure at the side where the arm joins the body and fold the cloth loosely across the front and around the back of the figure, bringing the other end of the drapery forward through the space between the arm and the body. Fasten it in place with a pin (Fig. 313). Bronze the scarf so that no portion of unbronzed cloth is visible; then allow the statue to dry, and with sharp scissors trim off any little ravellings along the edges of the stitching. With pen and ink

=Mark the Features=

on the face. The chin being held up foreshortens the face; this means that the position causes the features to look as if they were closer together than they actually are, and that the eyebrows are nearer the top of the head, which makes all the features seem higher than when the chin is held level. Do not forget this while inking the face. Draw rather high on the forehead two curved lines for the eyebrows; under these mark two curved oblongs for the eyes, a curve for the nose, with two elongated dots for nostrils, a larger curve for the mouth and a little one for the lower lip. Practise drawing the face on a piece of paper before attempting to ink it on the bronze head.

Find or make two boxes of heavy cardboard each about two and a half inches high, an inch and a half wide, and two and a half inches deep. Open the boxes and give the outside a thin coating of glue. While the glue is wet sprinkle with sand, and, when dry, replace the covers and the boxes will be two stone pedestals for the statue.

=Erect Apollo=

upon the stone foundation by pushing the projecting pin points through the tops of the boxes; work a cork on the end of each pin point, having the cork large enough to rest firmly on the bottom of the box after it is attached to the pin point; then, holding each cork in place, fasten them in turn to the bottom of the box by pushing a common pin up through the bottom of the box into the cork. Fig. 314 shows the inside of the sanded box with the point of the hat-pin firmly planted in the top of the cork, while the cork is held securely to the bottom of the box by means of the pin run into it from the outside of the box. Apollo must stand firm; the statue and foundation boxes should be so securely fastened together as to seem made in one piece.

There, the famous Colossus of Rhodes, one of the renowned Seven Wonders of the World, is completed, and now that you have made the statue you can never forget it. Pretend that Apollo towers in the air at least one hundred and fifty feet when on the pedestals. Of course, such a remarkable piece of sculpture could not be constructed in a moment’s time, so make-believe that you, the sculptor, Chares, of Lindus, have been twelve years at work on the wonderful bronze figure. Get a sheet of blue tissue paper to serve as the water, stand Apollo on it, and make two or three

=Tiny Paper Boats with Masts;=

set them on the water under the bronze statue that the vessels may be sailing beneath the statue into the harbor of Rhodes (Fig. 313).

When you have erected the Colossus on a table and everything is ready, invite the girls and boys in to see the work; tell them all about the statue’s being one of the “Seven Wonders of the World” and what fun you had making Apollo, and that you intend to make another of the “Wonders,” which you will show to them.

Play that the Colossus has stood guard over the harbor of Rhodes for fifty-six years; then make an earthquake

=Tumble it Down=

Double up your hand and give a hard knock on the under side of the top of the table, exactly beneath the spot on which Apollo stands. With a little aid of the imagination the noise produced will sound like the rumbling of an earthquake, and the shock will cause the earth, or the top of the table, to tremble and quake violently, and down will fall the Colossus.

Make believe that

=The Statue is Broken=

in many pieces and that the people of Rhodes allow the fragments to lie scattered on the ground, for you know that after the real Colossus had been thrown down, it remained where it had fallen for many centuries, until the year 656 A.D., when Rhodes was conquered by the Saracens, who sold many of the pieces of the bronze sun god to a Jew of Syria Edessa. This man had nine hundred camels carry the fragments on their backs to Alexandria.

Nearly three centuries after the disaster, Pliny saw the pieces of the Colossus still lying where it fell: “And even as it lies there prostrate,” he reports, “it stirs to wonder. Few men can clasp its thumb with their arms; the fingers alone are greater than most statues; vast caverns yawn in its shattered limbs; within one sees blocks of stone by whose weight the builder established it.”

=The Colossus=

cost about $500,000, which was obtained from the sale of the engines of war presented to the Rhodians by a man named Demetrios Poliorketes, after they had made him give up the siege of their city, 303 B.C.

There were several thousand statues in Rhodes but none so large as the Colossus, which is said to have weighed 720,900 pounds. The famous Laocoön and the Farnese Bull were both modelled in Rhodes. In Roman time Rhodes was thought the fairest city in the world and is described by historians as superior to all other cities of its era, for the beauty and convenience of its ports, streets, walls and public edifices, all of which were profusely adorned with works of art. Among the students in its university were Brutus, Cassius, Cæsar and Cicero, and the first Greek grammar, the one which became the model of Greek and Latin grammars, was written in this city, so you find that Rhodes has played a very important part in the world. But the island of Rhodes is no more a powerful state; it is now a possession of Turkey, and is ruled by a pasha, who holds office for life, governing also the adjoining islands belonging to Turkey, and collects the revenues. We will have interesting news from time to time from this same island, for one of the newspapers has stated that a Danish scientific expedition will go to discover all that remains of the Colossus of Rhodes. You must be on the lookout, therefore, to know how much they find of the statue and how the pieces look; then you will wish to compare your Colossus of Rhodes with the facts stated and any pictures which may be published on the subject to see how closely your Apollo resembles the original “Wonder” of the world.