pakdoktergolfblog: The Greek Island of Rodos ( Rhodes Island)...

October 2007

Another overnight cruise took us to this eastermost Greek island of Rodos or Rhodes island. This huge island is full of history and one would need a full week at least to explore and discover the many facets of this beautiful island.

Its history dated back to hundreds of years before Christ during the Greek civilisation. In Greek mythology, when the god Zeus shared out the world, he forgot to give anything to Helios, the sun god. Helios settled for the newly erupted Rodos island and fell in love with the nymph, Roda, the daughter of Poseidon, from whom the island was given its name.

For 300 to 500 years before Christ Rodos was a major commercial force in the Aegean seas. Sports and theathre flourished and its School of rhetroic was attended by great orators like Julius ceaser, Brutus and Cassius.

Under Alexander the Great, Rodos sided with the Ptolemies and refused King Antigonos to fight the Egyptians. For this reason, King Antigonos sent an army of 40,000 and plundered Rodos. The military hardware he conquered was melted down and used to make the most famous landmark of the city, the giant Colossus of Rhodes , a statue of 128 feet high standing with one foot on either side of the harbour entrance, so huge it was that ships could pass underneath the statue to enter the harbour. This statue was supposed to be the representation of Apollo. However this statue which stood for more than a century fell to the ground during the earthquake of 226 BC.

The Romas took control of the island about 100 years or so before Christ and in AD 43, the Apostle Paul landed on the island and brought Christianity and by AD 395 the island became under the rule of the Christian Byzantine rulers.

But in 1522, Suleiman the Great from Turkey took over and ruled the island for 390 years. In 1912, Italy and Mussolini ruled the island only to be returned back to Greece after the war ended in 1943.

With such a history, one can discover elements of these different periods throughout the island. No justice could be done over a one-day stop to this island.