Colossus Of Nero

What the fuck happened to it? It is without any doubt one of the greatest monuments of the Roman empire.

And it’s completely gone... We know that the colossus survived the fall of the western empire, medieval scholars even wrote about it still standing in rome -

”As long as the Colossus stands, Rome will stand, when the Colossus falls, Rome will also fall, when Rome falls, so falls the world” - bede - c. 672–735

So, we know the colossus survived the most turbulent times, it survived the fall the city, it survived the sacking of Rome in the gothic wars, and it survived the mutiple sieges between the Ostrogoths, Byzantines, and Lombards. But then just disappeared without a trace during the middle ages, any theories?

bump out of interest

>the statue of liberty is shorter than the colosseum
Damn, I thought it was a lot bigger than that. Must look pretty unimpressive nowadays.

Lady Liberty is taller than the Colossus tho.

only by 8 feet tho, and the colossus was built about 2000 years before

Liberty is on a pedestal almost as tall as it is, and the torch is another 40 feet up, so the whole thing is three times taller than the Colossus. I'm not saying it's more impressive from an engineering point of view, but it's not unimpressive to look at.

i wouldn’t count the pedestal as part of the statue.

Yeah but I'm talking about the overall impression of the monument.

It was most probably taken down by the papacy at some point due to the statues pagan origins.
This is just a guess of course but I see very few other ways that it could have come down.
They most likely used the metal to make modest crosses or even arms of war.

They have one of its feet or something. I was at his palace this autumn and somewhere among the other ruins there is this really huge foot.

I am anngry now

This is a good guess, after Nero’s death the statue was praised as the a ”statue of the sun”

But what baffles me is that there is no mention of it. The statue seemed to be a symbol of the might of rome, and people seemed to praise it long after the fall. Maybe the pope saw it as threatening that the normal citizens were praising a sun god.

Yeah except for the other dozens of pagan monuments littering Rome

Please think before you type

Well then friend, I’m sure that you with your towering intellect can formulate an alternative of equal merit, am I correct?

Bede is the only person who mentions it after the 4th century, and it's not even completely clear he was referring to it, he only mentions a generic and possibly metaphorical "coliseus". We know that it wasn't the only colossal statue in Rome, he might've been referring to any one of them.

Don’t you think it likely that the papacy would view a giant monument to the might of paganism as a threat? I do.

Think before you type.

Earthquake, natural wear and tear, pillaged for metal, any number of things.

>Don’t you think it likely that the papacy would view a giant monument to the might of paganism as a threat?
It wasn't a giant monument to anything other than Nero's egomania, what reason would they have to destroy it? As has been pointed out, the last definite reference to the statue is in the mid 4th century, any number of things could've happened to it between then and the medieval period.

Yeah. It was quite likely destroyed in all the 5th century shit the city went through. It's quite doubtful it survived as long as OP states.

While I agree that a many number of things could have happened, I don’t believe it to be fair to completely discount the theory presented.

I don’t see bede writing about snything else than the colossus of Nero when talking about a colossal statue standing in rome during the middle ages.

The statue was unique in getting called the colossus, so i think it’s pretty established that it stood in the early middle ages.

The colossus of Rhodes was bought as scrap metal by a Jew and recycled, probably the same happened to the colossus of Nero

This.

...

>three colossal statues in Rome
>only one, the smallest one, has survived to the modern day
>one of the ones that has not survived was of a pagan Emperor, the other was of a Christian Emperor
>THE CHRISJUNS TORE IT DOWN!!!!!

The Colossus of Constantine was broken apart and pillaged for its metal in the 5th century, the same thing probably happened to the Colossus of Nero

Explain why this isn’t a legitimate theorem?

If that's true then all the colossi probably had the same fate as this

>Statues were also destroyed because medieval Christians thought that they were pagan idols. The statue of Marcus Aurelius was not melted down because in the Middle Ages it was incorrectly thought to portray the first Christian Emperor, Constantine.[3] Indeed, it is the only fully surviving bronze statue of a pre-Christian Roman emperor; the Regisole, destroyed after the French Revolution, may have been another.

BTFO

God this guy got gang raped.

This actually isn't true, the only source for it is a children's art history book from the 1970s. I wrote an essay on this during my Master's year. Constantine and Marcus Aurelius were known in the middle ages to have very different likenesses, and Marcus Aurelius himself was very well-respected as an Emperor and a Philosopher. On top of that, we know for certain that bronze statues of Constantine *were* melted down. He wasn't granted any sort of special exemption.

This has been discredited bullshit for like 40 years. Why the fuck are you posting it.

This isn't true and I wish people would stop buying into it. It doesn't make any sense. The art style of monuments during those periods was completely different and Aurelius' features are extremely distinctive--extremely voluminous curly hair and beard, heavy-lidded eyes, forlorn or careworn expression. Christian authors were actually extremely influenced by his Meditations and would have every reason to recognize and maintain a statue of him!

There are hundreds of artistic depictions of pagan emperors that have survived until the present day. It's a lot easier to smash a small marble bust than it is to melt down a gigantic bronze statue, but there are still a bunch of busts of Marcus Aurelius floating around. Did they think all of those were Constantine? Even though there are just as many artistic depictions of Constantine himself and he looks completely different?

I absolutely understand that older material often gets repurposed for practical reasons without much regard for what it originally was, I imagine that happened to quite a few bronze Roman statues. What I have a problem with is the claim that it wasn't melted down because Christians thought it was Constantine. It just doesn't make any sense to me. On top of the other issues, like Marcus Aurelius and Constantine looking completely different, and Marcus Aurelius not exactly being a reviled figure in the broader consciousness of western Christianity, surely we'd be swarming in standing bronze Constantine statues if he had some sort of special exemption? As far as I'm aware there are two. Never mind the fact that the Marcus Aurelius statue had a plaque saying it was Marcus Aurelius.

It depends on where you measure the base. The statue itself is on top of a very large platform, which makes the statue much easier to see from a distance. The statue probably wouldn't look very big if the platform wasn't there to give it a more visible presence.

I don’t think the base of a statue should be measured, by that logic tou could build a madsive tower-like base and put a tiny statue on top, and claim it’s the largest statue in existance.

This is what’s left of the bronze colossus of constantine, looks kinda scary in a way. Don’t know how to describe it.

That must have looked awesome, before the gold washed off.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

...

103 > 111

>What the fuck happened to it?

Melted down for the bronze.