Page 173 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

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The walls of the city, together with the arsenals, and the narrow passes in the haven, where the ships of that island were ]aid up, were reduced to a very ru­ inous condition ; and the mous Colossus, which passed r one of the wonders of the world, was, sixty-six years a er its erection, thrown down and entire1y destroyed.
3. This Colossus was, as I have observed, a brazen statue of a prodigious size ; and some authors have a rmed, that the money arising om contributions r its re-erection, amounted to ve times as much as the loss which the Rhodians had sustained. This people, instead of employing the sums they had re­ ceived in replacing that statue, agreeably to the in­ tention of the donors, pretended t!rnt the oracle of Delphi had prohibited them om the attempt, and grven them a command to preserve the money r other purposes, by which means they afterwards en­ riched themselves.
4. The Colossus lay neglected on 'the ground r the space of eight hundred and ninety-four years, at the expiration of which (A.D. 672), Nioawias, the sixth emperor of the Saracens, made himself master of Rhodes, apd sold this statue to a Jewish merchant, who loaded nine hundred camels with the metal, which, computed at eight quintals r each load, after a deduction of the diminution the statue had sustained by rust and other casualties, amounted to more than thirty-six thousand pounds sterling.
ROLLIN.
THIRD BOOK OF