Engineering Aspects of the Collapse of the Colossus of Rhodes Statue

The collapse of the Colossus of Rhodes statue in 224 B.C. is usually ascribed to an earthquake. Although details of this statue are available from Philo of Byzantium [1] and from Pliny [2], there appears to have been no scientific assessment as to the reasonableness of the earthquake argument. The investigation described in this paper uses the descriptions of Philo and Pliny to propose a likely model for the statue, and employs the present-day technologies of finite element analysis with representative earthquake engineering data to investigate the effects of an earthquake on the Colossus. The results shed new light on the manner in which the collapse of the Colossus occurred.