"Alastor" <rossmcp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:6e7d40d8-9f02-4b0f-b3c0-19a457c48536@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Apr 7, 1:24 am, "Ed Cryer" <e...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Sic hunc orbem terrarum angustum tamquam colossus superstat.
>
> He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus
>
> (Some artist's impressions of how the original statue
> looked;http://tinyurl.com/5nwgvl)
>
> Ed
The New York Statue of Liberty is the paradigm the artists should be
working from as the ancients could hardly have exceeded the moderns in
colossal engineering. It's basically a cylinder with one arm raised
straight up to reduce the gravitational stresses. But even that was
surely beyond the ancients. The Rhodes job was probably just a brick
cylinder with wooden add-ons, painted to look something like a man. Or
maybe it was a giant dancing girl. Or would that be stretching the
imagination too far?
**********************
I'd bet it was pretty spectacular. The ancients seem to have had
engineering and construction skills now lost to the world.
The statue of Zeus at Olympia; Athene Parthenos on the Athenian
Acropolis.
The Roman amphitheatres (including the Colosseum) often had awnings that
could be retracted. Modern engineers can't agree just how they did them.
And then how did they flood the arena to stage sea-battles?
And then you find massive walls built of blocks of stone that are laid
together so well that you couldn't get a razor blade between them. How
did they do it? Some claim they must have had laser cutters.
The Rhodes Colossus stood for over fifty years until it collapsed in an
earthquake; broken at the knees.
"Ancient accounts describe the structure as being built with iron tie
bars to which brass plates were fixed to form the skin. The interior of
the structure, which stood on a 15 meters (50 ft) high white marble
pedestal near the Mandraki harbor entrance, was then filled with stone
blocks as construction progressed. Other sources place the Colossus on a
breakwater in the harbor. The statue itself was 30 meters (100 ft) tall.
Much of the iron and bronze was reforged from the various weapons
Demetrius's army left behind, and the abandoned second siege tower was
used for scaffolding around the lower levels during construction. Upper
****tions were built with the use of a large earthen ramp. During the
building, workers would pile mounds of dirt on the sides of the
colossus. Upon completion all of the dirt was moved and the colossus was
left to stand alone."
Ed
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