The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face the entrance to the principal port of the Island of Rhodes; and ships in full sail passed easily, it is said, between its legs; for, according to Pliny the ancient, its height was seventy cubits. This Colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the six others being, as is well known, the hanging gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympus; the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the Pharos of Alexandria, completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1303. Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the harbour of the island and admitted the passage of vessels in full sail between its wide-stretched limbs. No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of the ignorant. Nevertheless, the historian Rollin, several French dictionaries, and even some encyclopedias, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors. A century ago, the Comte de Caylus, a distinguished French archeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the school books[7] for young people, but he sought in vain to trace its origin. Vigenère, in his _Tableaux de Philostrate_, is supposed to have been the first who ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the Colossus. He was followed by Bergier and Chevreau,[8] the latter adding a lamp to the hand of the statue. A fictitious Greek manuscript, quoted by the mythologist Du Choul,[9] further adorns the Colossus by giving him a sword and lance and by hanging a mirror round his neck. The Count Choiseul-Gouffier, in his _Picturesque journey through Greece_, published about the year 1780, declares the Colossus with the outstretched legs to be fabulous. He says: “This fable has for years enjoyed the privilege so readily accorded to error. It is commonly received, and discarded only by the few who have made ancient history their study. Most persons have accepted without investigation an assertion which is unsupported by any authority from ancient authors.” Nevertheless the Belgian Colonel Rottiers, and the English geologist Hamilton,[10] do not yield to this opinion, but endeavour still to place the site of the statue at the entrance to one of the smaller harbours of the island, scarcely forty feet wide. Rottiers goes even further, and gives a superb engraving of the Colossus, under the form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver on his shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, and a beacon flame above his head.