CHAPTER X. THE MOST CELEBRATED COLOSSAL STATUES IN THE CITY.
As to boldness of design, the examples are innumerable; for we had statues of colossal bulk, equal to towers in size. Such, for instance, is the Apollo in the Capitol, which was brought by Lucullus from Apollonia, a city of Pontus, thirty cubits in height, and which cost five hundred talents: also the statue of Jupiter, in the Campus Martius, dedicated by the late Emperor Claudius, but which appears dwarfed from its vicinity to the Theatre of Pompey: and the Jupiter at Tarentum, forty cubits in height, the work of Lysippus. It is a remarkable circumstance that although this statue is so nicely balanced as to be movable by the hand, it has never been thrown down by a tempest. This, the artist guarded against, by a column erected at a short distance from it, upon the side on which the violence of the wind required to be broken. On account of its magnitude, and the great difficulty of moving it, Fabius Maximus did not touch it, when he transferred the Hercules from that place to the Capitol, where it now stands.
But far the most worthy of our admiration is the colossal statue of the Sun, which stood formerly at Rhodes, and was the work of Chares the Lindian, a pupil of Lysippus;[216] no less than seventy cubits in height. This statue, fifty-six years after it was erected, was thrown down by an earthquake; but even as it lies, it excites our wonder and admiration. Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms, and its fingers are larger than most statues. Where the limbs are broken asunder, vast caverns are seen yawning in the interior. Within it, too, are to be seen large masses of rock, by the weight of which the artist steadied it while erecting it. It was twelve years before this statue was completed, and three hundred talents were expended upon it; a sum raised from the engines of warfare which had been abandoned by King Demetrius when tired of the long-protracted siege of Rhodes. In the same city are other colossal statues, one hundred in number; which though smaller than the one already mentioned, would, any one of them, wherever erected, have ennobled the place. In addition to these, there are five colossal statues of the gods, which were made by Bryaxis.