Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/546

Rh 526 R H R H winds, though they are exposed to the north and north-east winds. The two harbours are separated by a mole which runs obliquely into the sea. At the eastern entrance is the fort of St Elmo, with a lighthouse ; but the light is very feeble, and visible only a few miles. History. The numerous poetical legends current among the Greeks with respect to Rhodes bear testimony to the importance which it attained in very early times. Of these the most familiar is that celebrated by Pindar in one of the most beautiful of his odes (01. vii.), according to which the island was raised from the depths of the sea by Helios, the god of the sun, who always con- tinued to be its tutelary deity, and whose image is found upon all its coins. The poet as usual derives its name from a nymph Rhoda, but there is no doubt that it was really derived from f>65oi>, a rose, the symbol that invariably accompanies the head of Helios on its coins. Another set of legends connected it with the Telchines, a mythical people celebrated for their skill as workers in bronze and other metals, while another version of the same tale represented these Telchines as themselves expelled by the Heliadee, who became the first introducers of civilization. It is not improbable that both traditions had some reference to the Phoenicians, who may well have been the first to establish settle- ments in an island that lay so directly on their way to the ^Egean. But the first record that can claim anything like an historical character is that of the occupation of the island by a body of Doric emigrants from the Peloponnesus, who founded the three cities of Lindus, lalysus, and Camirus, which long continued to divide the island among them, and together with those of Cos, Cnidus, and Halicarnassus formed the Doric Hexapolis or league of six cities. These cities, like the more important Ionic confederacy, had a common sanctuary on the Triopian Promontory near Cnidus, but they do not appear to have formed a political union, though the distinct predominance in them all of the Doric element would naturally lead to a community of interest as well as of feeling. Nothing is known of their history for several centuries, during which they appear to have developed a remarkable amount of mari- time power and enterprise, and became the founders of numerous colonies in distant parts of the Mediterranean, including Gela in Sicily, as well as Rhoda on the coast of Spain, and Salapia on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Towards the east also they were the recog- nized founders of Corydalla and Phaselis in Lycia and Soli in Cilicia. Notwithstanding these evidences of early prosperity and power, we meet with very scanty notices of the Rhodian cities in the first period of Greek history. After the Persian War they appear to have passed into the condition of tributaries to Athens, and were compelled as such to join in the Athenian expedition to Sicily, but in 412 B.C. they deserted the Athenian cause and joined that of the Peloponnesians. It was shortly after this (in 408) that they adopted a resolution which became the foundation of their future greatness, the inhabitants of the three cities having agreed to abandon their homes and found a new city on the site which has ever since con- tinued to be the capital of the island. The architect was Hippodamus of Miletus, who had planned and embellished the Piraeus at Athens ; and the new city soon became one of the most splendid in the world, adorned with magnificent buildings and exquisite works of art. When Conon and his fleet restored the Athenian power by his victory off Cnidus (394 B.C.), Rhodes again embraced the victorious cause ; but her fidelity during the subsequent contests was not very great. Sparta afterwards received the allegiance of the island ; and in the Social War (357-5) it joined the alliance against Athens, and, with the assistance of the Carian monarch Mausolus, succeeded in achieving independ- ence. But, finding the power of that king dangerous to their liberties, the Rhodians once more sued for the Athenian protection, which they obtained through the eloquence of Demosthenes. But neither they nor the rest of Greece could resist the overwhelming power of Macedonia, though Memnon, a Rhodian, was one of the ablest generals under the last Persian king, and attempted to check the career of Alexander. Rhodes received a Macedonian garrison ; but it was expelled after the death of Alexander, and a resolute resistance was begun to the Macedonian power. This formed one of the most illustrious periods in the history of the island. The capital was besieged in 304 B. c. by Demetrius Poliorcetes, with a large army and a complete train of the artillery of that age. Although a breach was effected in the walls, the desperate valour of the defenders foiled all the attempts to carry it by assault, and cost the besiegers the lives of some of their generals and a great number of their soldiers. This heroic resistance obtained for the Rhodians great renown ; and the period which followed was one of the most brilliant in the history of the city. They enjoyed the friendship of Rome, and obtained possession of some of the adjacent Islands and coasts, including a considerable district on the main- land which was known as the Rhodian Persea. For arts as well as arms the island was then renowned ; the Rhodian laws, especially on maritime affairs, were reckoned the best in antiquity, and many of them adopted into the Roman code. JEschines, who had contended in eloquence with the greatest of orators, opened a school of rhetoric here, which became the parent of a new school of oratory, regarded by the ancients as possessing a Grseco-Asiatic character. Protogenes embellished the city with his paintings, and Chares of Lindus with the celebrated colossal statue. The Colossus, erroneously supposed to have occupied a position striding over the entrance to the narbour, stood for fifty-six years, till an earthquake prostrated it in 224 B.C. Its enormous fragments con- tinued to excite wonder in the time of Pliny, and were not removed till 656 A.D., when Rhodes was conquered by the Saracens, who sold the remains for old metal to a dealer who employed nine hundred camels to carry them away. Besides this not less than three thousand statues are said to have adorned the city, which was said by Strabo to surpass all others in beauty and ornamental character. Being the sovereigns of the seas, the Rhodians by their fleets ren- dered good service to Rome, with whom they were in alliance, and retained their independence for a long time. The severest blow they suffered was from Cassius in 42 B.C., who plundered the island even to the bare temple walls in the nominal cause of liberty, for it Lad embraced the side of Caesar. Under the empire the liberty of Rhodes was repeatedly permitted and withdrawn according to the caprice of the sovereign ; but ultimately it became a part of the Roman empire, and, after its partition, of the Eastern, till 616 A.D., when Chosroes the Persian obtained possession of it for a short time. It was subsequently conquered by Moawiyah, one of Othman's generals ; but, recovered by the Byzantine empire, it proved the last of their Asiatic possessions that succumbed to the infidel. In 1308 it was granted by the emperor Emmanuel to the Knights of St John, who soon after resisted a siege by the sultan Othman. They strengthened the natural advantages of the place by skilful fortifications, and by discipline and equipments made themselves nearly a match for the superior numbers of the Turks. Nor did the knights restrict their efforts to self-defence ; they conquered Smyrna, and established an outpost there in 1344, and at a later period formed a league against the common enemy of Christendom. But in 1 401 Smyrna was taken by Timur ; in 1480 Mohammed II. besieged Rhodes with a vast train of artillery; and, though then averted by the courage of its few defenders, the downfall of the place could not long be delayed. The last and most famous siege of Rhodes took place in 1522, when, after a desperate resistance for four months to the overwhelming numbers of the Ottomans, the knights, being left unassisted by all the European powers, capitulated on honourable terms, and evacuated the island. On the first day of 1523 iVilliers de Lisle Adam, the grandmaster, embarked the last of the small band, carrying away all the property of the order, and leaving the ruins of their city to the enemy. The knights subsequently settled in Malta, where they also gained great renown. Rhodes has since been in the pos- session of the Turks, and is now the residence of the pasha of the Archipelago, The sites of Lindus, lalysus, and Camirus, which in the most ancient times were the principal towns of the island, are clearly marked, and the first of the three is still occupied by a small town with a mediaeval castle, both of them dating from the time of the knights, though the castle occupies the site of the ancient acropolis, of the walls of which considerable remains are still visible. There are no ruins of any importance on the site of either lalysus or Camirus, but excavations at the latter place have produced valuable and interesting results in the way of ancient vases and other antiquities, which are now in the British Museum. The population of the island is estimated at about 27,000, of whom 6000 are Turks, 3000 Jews, and the remainder Greeks. Of these nearly 20,000 are cortained in the city and its suburbs ; the rest of the island is very thinly peopled, though numerous small villages are scattered over its whole extent. A large mass of matter relating to the ancient history and institutions of Rhodes are collected by Meursius in his dissertation (Opera, vol. iii.)i the present con- dition of the island, and the objects of interest still visible there, are fully described by Ross (Reisen avf den Griechischen, Inseln, vol. iii., Stuttgart, 1840) and Newton (Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, vol. i., London, 1865). The inscriptions that have been discovered there, which are very numerous, have un- fortunately been published in a very irregular manner, and are scattered through a number of works, many of them not easy of access. By far the most com- plete collection of all that relates to the ancient condition of the island, as wrll as its history and antiquities, will be found in a treatise by Mr C. Torr, entitled Rhodes in Ancient Times, which is passing through the Cambridge University Press while this article has been in preparation. (K. H. B.) RHODIUM. See PLATINUM. RHODODENDRON. Classical writers, such as Dios- corides and Pliny, seem, from what can be ascertained, to have called the oleander (Nerium Oleander} by this name, but in modern usage it is applied to a large genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the order of heaths (Ericaceae). No adequate distinction can be drawn be- tween this genus and Azalea, the proposed marks of dis- tinction, however applicable in particular cases, breaking down when tested more generally. The rhododendrons,