a word of uncertain origin, used by the Greeks and Romans, to signify a statue of a gigantic size. The most celebrated work of this kind was the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue of Apollo or the sun, so high that ships in full sail, according to the common account, could pass between its legs. There is, however, no authority for the statement that its legs were extended across the harbour. This colossus, which was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, was the work of Chares, who spent twelve years in making it. (See Chares.) It was upwards of 105 feet in height; and there were few, says Pliny, that could embrace its thumb. It cost 300 talents. A spiral staircase led to its summit, whence might be descried Syria, and the ships proceeding to Egypt, in a great mirror suspended to the neck of the statue. This famous statue was overthrown and shattered by an earthquake about 56 years after its erection, B.C. 224. The fragments had lain on the ground for 923 years, when they were sold by the Saracens to a Jew of Emesa, who loaded 900 camels with the brass, A.D. 672.

According to Pliny, Rhodes was adorned by no fewer than 100 colossal statues of the sun; but all greatly inferior in size to the one here described.

Of the various colossi at Rome, the most famous were the following:—1. That of Jupiter, in bronze, upon the capitol; 2. a bronze statue of Apollo at the Palatine library; 3. a bronze statue of Augustus in the Forum Augusti; 4. a marble statue of Nero, said by Suetonius to have been 120 feet in height, and which originally was placed in the vestibule of the "golden house;" but, after the conflagration of that edifice, supplied with a new head by Vespasian, and converted into a statue of the radiated Apollo; 5. a gilded bronze equestrian statue of Domitian, in the forum. Frequent mention too is made in Herodotus of the colossi of Egypt. Probably the largest modern work of this kind is the bronze colossal statue of Carlo Borromeo, the good archbishop of Milan, 66 feet in height. See Arona, and Borromeo.