Rhodes

Rhodos

The principal island of the Dodecanese (now belonging to Greece), measuring fifty by twenty-two miles, off the coast of Caria (southwestern Asia Minor).

According to Pindar, Rhodes had emerged from the sea to comprise the special possession of Helios, the sun-god, who became the principal local deity, celebrated in the annual Halieia festival, and whose grandsons, together with the nymph Rhodos the daughter of Aphrodite, were the mythical founders of the island's three cities, Ialysus and Camirus on the west and Lindus on the east coast. Already in early times Rhodes was a stepping stone to other islands and mainland centers, as Mycenaean finds at all three centers (especially Ialysus) testify, and many legendary traditions suggest. Thus the Telchines, magical metalworkers, came from Crete via Cyprus; Danaus and Cadmus stopped at Rhodes; and Tlepolemus the son of Heracles, whose Dorian followers, according to Homer, had settled in the island (perhaps in the thirteenth century BC), was said to have commanded a Rhodian flotilla in the Trojan War.

By c 900 many other Dorians had arrived on the island, whose three towns, joining three others (Cos, Cnidus, Halicarnassus) to form a confederation (Hexapolis), became prosperous from about 700, and gained fame for their seamanship. In the sixth century Lindus was ruled for many years by Cleobulus, one of the Seven Sages and author (with his daughter) of a famous collection of riddles. Among colonies founded by Lindus—acting on behalf of the whole island community—were Gela in Sicily, Rhode (Rosas) in northeastern Spain and Phaselis (Tekirova) in Lycia (southern Asia Minor). In the later sixth century the Rhodian communities were subject first to Battus III of Cyrene and then to the Persians, and after the Persian War they became members of the Delian League under the direction of Athens.

They broke, however, with the Athenians in 412/11, during the Peloponnesian War; and the hostilities that followed brought about the amalgamation, in 408, of the island's three cities into a single state with the new federal capital of Rhodes (Rhodos), on the northern tip of the island. In 394 this returned to Athenian sponsorship, and joined a local maritime league. A series of internal political upheavals resulted in the establishment of a moderate democracy, temporarily suspended during a period of Persian rule (355–333). Successfully withstanding one of the most famous of all sieges, at the hands of Demetrius I Poliorcetes `the Besieger’ (305–304), Rhodes now became preeminent in Greek commerce and especially in the grain-carrying trade; it was protected against pirates by a highly efficient fleet, and renowned for the imaginative institutions of its welfare state. The most destructive of several earthquakes, in 227 BC, elicited financial relief from far and wide.

Collaborating with Rome in its wars against Philip V of Macedonia (200–197) and the Seleucid Antiochus III the Great (191–188), the Rhodians were rewarded with territory in Caria and Lycia on the mainland of Asia Minor (the Rhodian Peraea). Their equivocal conduct, however, in the subsequent hostilities against the Macedonian king Perseus (171–168) earned the displeasure of the Romans, whose elevation of Delos to become a rival free port may have crippled Rhodian commerce (although this has lately been contested). After successfully resisting a siege by Mithridates VI of Pontus in 88, Rhodes was reduced to ruins by Julius Caesar (against whom it had sided with Pompey the Great) and then suffered pillage and capture in 42 from Caesar's assassin Cassius, who also destroyed the greater part of its fleet.

Throughout this period Rhodes had become and remained one of the principal cultural centers of Hellenism. Its hundred-and-ten-foot high statue of the sun-god Helios, which was created by Chares of Lindus in 292/280 to commemorate the repulse of Demetrius, did not span the harbor, as legend suggested, but exemplified new bronze-casting skills and ranked as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was destroyed by the earthquake of 227, but the dynamic group of the Laocoon, the work of three Rhodian sculptors of second-century BC date (or of copyists of the first century AD) has survived, in the Vatican museum. The leading Stoic philosopher Panaetius (c 185–109) was a Rhodian, and his encyclopedic pupil Posidonius of Apamea (c 135–51/50) became a member of the same eminent school, which was attended by Cicero and many other leading Romans. In the reign of Augustus, his stepson Tiberius retired to Rhodes for eight years (6 BC–AD 2). A coin of Antoninus Pius (AD 138–61) depicts Poseidon Asphaleois, the god who presided over the safety of ships and harbors. Further disastrous earthquakes devastated the city in AD 345 and 515, but Rhodian maritime law still remained authoritative in Byzantine times.

The city of Rhodes possessed four harbors, and was surrounded by famous walls, of which portions have been identified. According to Strabo, its `grid’ design was the work of the great town planner Hippodamus of Miletus, although, if so, he must have been over ninety at the time of the city's foundation. It comprised both a lower and upper town. The former, beside the harbors, contains remains of temples of Aphrodite and Dionysus, and of ship sheds. In the upper town or acropolis, located on a plateau about three hundred feet above sea level, a shrine of Zeus and Athena, a precinct of Pythian Apollo, a stadium (displaying three phases of construction), and a small theater have been located. Although recently discovered pebble mosaics of the fourth century are of the finest quality, there is relatively little left to justify the superlative terms in which Strabo describes the city's `harbors and roads and walls and arrangements in general,’ or the even more glowing testimonies of Aristides and Lucian. Extensive cemeteries lie outside various sectors of the walls.

The even more scanty traces of Ialysus, of which the commanding acropolis (Mount Philerimos) served as an observation post and fortress, include several temples and a nymphaeum (fountain building) of the fourth century BC. Not far away, at Kastonioi (Tholos), are the ruins of a temple of Apollo Erethimios. The upper and lower towns of Camirus display temples, a sacrificial area, a long colonnade, aqueducts, cisterns and drains, and bear witness to comprehensive Hellenistic town planning. Lindus possessed two harbors overlooked by a precipitous acropolis, on the summit of which stood a famous sanctuary of Athena Lindia, founded by Danaus according to Greek mythology but mainly represented today by remains of the fourth century BC. The complex precinct in which the shrine was set displayed an elaborate series of colonnades at different levels, of which the longest opened onto a great terrace extended on vaulted substructure. An inscription of 99 BC, the Temple Chronicle, lists notable dedicated objects (many of which were destroyed in a fire of 348) and miraculous interventions of the goddess. A small theater was built into the slope of the same hill, and monumental tombs are to be seen in the neighborhood. Two ancient wrecks have recently been found off Lindus, one of which apparently dates to c 500 BC.