These droll scenes raise a thorny question: Do you have to recognize a thing's operational principle to lay claim to discovering it? Should we credit the inventor of a steam-driven toy with the discovery of steam power? In the Tom Stoppard play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," dimwitted Rosencrantz repeatedly stumbles onto notable scientific and technical discoveries, often via toys (neither he nor Guildenstern grasp what he's done).
Liszt Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images Although we think we know Greek fire's basic fixings, the method of putting the stuff together remains a mystery - a reminder that, as with chemistry and baking, knowing the recipe is not always enough. Oh, well - that's the problem with taking state secrets to your grave. Some have argued that the true Greek fire, invented by Callinicus of Heliopolis, a Jewish refugee from Syria, was already lost by then, and that the Constantinople formula was a weak imitation. Sources claim the Greek ships launched the fire in pots or spat from tubes, possibly powered by Roman pumps. There, in the year 673, true Greek fire - petroleum-based, self-lighting and impervious to water quenching - was said to have been used to devastating effect by Byzantine emperor Constantine IV's forces against an attacking Arab fleet. It was once believed that the statue stood with one leg on each side of a harbor, but most scholars now agree that the statue’s legs were most likely built close together to support its immense weight.But for the real deal, scholars focus on a certain event that took place in seventh-century Constantinople (that's modern Istanbul, in case you don't know the They Might Be Giants song).
Most believe that it depicted the sun god standing naked while he lifted a torch with one hand and held a spear in the other. Because of this, archeologists do not know much about the exact location of the statue or what it looked like. Hundreds of years later, Arabs invaded Rhodes and sold the remains of the statue as scrap metal. and stood for sixty years until it was toppled in an earthquake.
Designed by the sculptor Chares, the statue was, at 100 feet, the tallest of the ancient world. and, according to legend, the Rhodians sold the tools and equipment left behind by the Macedonians to pay for the Colossus. The city was the target of a Macedonian siege early in the fourth century B.C. The Colossus of Rhodes was an enormous bronze sculpture of the sun god Helios built by the Rhodians over 12 years in the third century B.C. He was put to death and the government declared it illegal to utter his name.įine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images It was torched by a Greek citizen named Herostratus, who claimed he burned the marvel so that his name would be known to history. The building burned on July 21, 356 B.C., according to legend the same night that Alexander the Great was born. The original Temple of Artemis was designed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes and decorated by some of the most celebrated artists of the ancient world. “Apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on anything so grand,” the writer Antipater of Sidon wrote of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The most fabulous of these structures were two marble temples built around 550 B.C.
Ancient works lost to time series#
There was actually more than one Temple of Artemis: A series of several altars and temples was destroyed and then restored on the same site in Ephesus, a Greek port city on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. Was Commodus the Worst Emperor in Ancient Roman History? Still, all seven continue to inspire and be celebrated as the remarkable products of the creativity and skill of Earth’s early civilizations. Furthermore, it is possible that at least one of the wonders might not have existed at all. Ultimately, human hands joined with natural forces to destroy all but one of the wonders. The original list comes from a work by Philo of Byzantium written in 225 B.C. They are also, however, reminders of the human capacity for disagreement, destruction and, possibly, embellishment.Īs soon as ancient writers compiled a list of “seven wonders,” it became fodder for debate over which achievements deserved inclusion. The amazing works of art and architecture known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World serve as a testament to the ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work of which human beings are capable.