COLOSSUS OF NERO, by Wikipedia

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COLOSSUS OF NERO, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Fri Jun 19, 2015 7:32 am

COLOSSUS OF NERO
by Wikipedia
December 26, 2014

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Image
Nero commissioned a 100-foot-tall bronze statue resembling himself and the Roman sun god, Sol. He holds a rudder on the globe which is a symbolic gesture of his power over land and sea. This is an artist's impression as no images have survived to the present day.

The Colossus Neronis was an enormous, 30 m bronze statue that the Emperor Nero (37–68 AD) created in the vestibule of his Domus Aurea, the imperial villa complex which spanned a large area from the north side of the Palatine Hill, across the Velian ridge to the Esquiline Hill. It was modified by Nero's successors into a statue of the sun god Sol. It is last mentioned in the 4th century AD. The statue was eventually moved to a spot outside the Flavian Amphitheatre, which (according to one of the more popular theories) became known, by its proximity to the Colossus, as the Colosseum.

Construction

The statue was placed just outside the main palace entrance at the terminus of the Via Appia in a large atrium of porticoes that divided the city from the private villa.[1] The Greek architect Zenodorus designed the statue and began construction between A.D. 64 and 68. According to Pliny the Elder, the statue reached 106.5 Roman Feet (30.3 m) in height, though other sources claim it was as much as 37 m.[2]

Change to Colossus Solis

Shortly after Nero's death in A.D. 68, the Emperor Vespasian added a sun-ray crown and renamed it Colossus Solis, after the Roman sun god Sol.[3] Around 128, Emperor Hadrian ordered the statue moved from the Domus Aurea to just northwest of the Colosseum (Amphitheatrum Flavianum), in order to create space for the Temple of Venus and Roma.[4] It was moved by the architect Decrianus with the use of 24 elephants.[5] Emperor Commodus converted it into a statue of himself as Hercules by replacing the head,[6] but after his death it was restored, and so it remained.[7]

Fate of the Colossus

The last mention from antiquity of the statue is the reference in the Chronography of 354. Today, nothing remains of the Colossus of Nero save for the foundations of the pedestal at its second location near the Colosseum. It was possibly destroyed during the Sack of Rome in 410, or toppled in one of a series of fifth-century earthquakes, and its metal scavenged.[8] However, it is also possible that the statue was still standing during the Middle Ages, because a preserved medieval poem says: As long as the Colossus stands, Rome will stand, when the Colossus falls, Rome will also fall.[9]

[Claude Lanzmann] There's one thing that troubles me. On listening to you talk about Theresienstadt, one doesn't have the impression that it was a place where misfortune reigned, a place of suffering where thousands of people died, and a stop on the way to Auschwitz for thousands more. Anyone would think you feel nothing as you talk about Theresienstadt.

[Benjamin Murmelstein] After October ...

[Claude Lanzmann] You focused on the organizational aspects.

[Benjamin Murmelstein] It was the only way ...

[Claude Lanzmann] It was hell.

[Benjamin Murmelstein] Listen, I've already told you that. If, during an operation, a surgeon starts crying over his patient, he kills him. You don't get very far by weeping or wavering. I'll give you an example. There's no worse memory than that of cleaning the crematorium. Not the oven itself, the place where the urns were kept. After the October convoys, after the end of the convoys, the order was given to remove the urns from the place where they were kept. So ...

[Claude Lanzmann] What was in those urns?

[Benjamin Murmelstein] The ashes of the dead. All the dead in Theresienstadt ended up there. That was a very bad sign. The people weren't aware of it. But I had heard Mohs say, "As long as the Columbarium ..." -- where the urns were stored -- "As long as the Columbarium stands, Theresienstadt will stand." And now they were emptying it.

[Claude Lanzmann] Why connect the two things?

[Benjamin Murmelstein] The Ancient Romans said, "As long as the Coliseum stands, Rome will stand." The same for Theresienstadt and its Columbarium. It was logical: to wipe out Theresienstadt, they had to wipe out the Columbarium that allowed the dead to be counted. It was logical.

-- The Last of the Unjust, directed by Claude Lanzmann -- Illustrated Screenplay & Screencap Gallery


The remains of the brick-faced masonry pedestal, once covered with marble,[10] were removed in 1936.[11] The foundations were excavated in 1986, and can be viewed by the public.[8]

Connection to Colosseum

Many experts agree that the name for the Colosseum is derived from this monument.[12][13]

Bede (c. 672–735) wrote a famous epigram celebrating the symbolic significance of the statue, Quandiu stabit coliseus, stabit et Roma; quando cadit coliseus, cadet et Roma; quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus ("as long as the Colossus stands, so shall Rome; when the Colossus falls, Rome shall fall; when Rome falls, so falls the world").[14] This is often mistranslated to refer to the Colosseum rather than the Colossus (as in, for instance, Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage). However, at the time that Bede wrote, the masculine noun coliseus was applied to the statue rather than to what was still known as the Flavian Amphitheatre.

References

1. Boethius 1960:110
2. Mentioned in Suetonius, "Nero" 31; Pliny's Natural History XXXIV.45.
3. Mentioned in Suetonius, "Vespasian" 18; Pliny's Natural History XXXIV.45; Cassius Dio LXV.15.
4. Augustan History, "Hadrian" 19.
5. Spartianus Hadrian xix
6. Hist. Aug. Com. 17; Cassius Dio LXXII.22.
7. Herodian I.15.9; Reg. IV.
8. Albertson, Fred C.(2001). "Zenodorus's "Colossus of Nero"". Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
9. Canter, Howard Vernon (1930). "Venerable Bede and the Colosseum". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 61: 150–164.
10. CIL , 21282
11. Nash, Ernest. 1961. Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, Volume 1. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger) p 268.
12. Samuel Ball Platner and Thomas Ashby, 1929. A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, (London: Oxford University Press), s.v. "Colossus Neronis".
13. Roth, Leland M. (1993). Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History and Meaning (First ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-06-430158-3.
14. "The Coliseum". The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. Retrieved August 2, 2006.
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