The celebrity of Rhodes was no less great in arts and letters than in commerce. After the reign of Alexander, it became the seat of a famous school of sculpture and painting, from which issued Protogenes and the authors of the _Laocoon_ and the _Farnese Bull_. The town contained three thousand statues,[465] and a hundred and six colossi, among others the famous Statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world, a hundred and five feet high, the cost of which had been three thousand talents (17,400,000 francs [£696,000]).[466] The school of rhetoric at Rhodes was frequented by students who repaired thither from all parts of Greece, and Cæsar, as well as Cicero, went there to perfect themselves in the art of oratory. The other islands of the Ægean Sea had nearly all lost their political importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its port the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favourable position an extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she became corrupted like Byzantium and Zacynthus (_Zante_), which Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of luxury.[467] [Sidenote: Sardinia.] XXI. The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of independence.[468] From 541[469] to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken, or sold.[470] The number of these last was so considerable, that the expression _Sardinians to sell_ (_Sardi venales_) became proverbial.[471] Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000 inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of corn, and numerous herds of cattle, made of this island the second granary of Carthage.[472] The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552, the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the freight.[473] The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a superior quality[474] occupied thousands of hands. [Sidenote: Corsica.] XXII. Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly more than 30,000 inhabitants,[475] and Strabo represents them as savages, and living in the mountains.[476] According to Pliny, however, it had thirty towns.[477] Resin, wax, honey,[478] exported from factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocæans on the coasts, were almost the only products of the island. [Sidenote: Sicily.]