Rhodes (; Greek: Ρόδος, romanized: Ródos [ˈroðos]) is the largest of Greece's Dodecanese islands and their historical capital, as well as the ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, Rhodes constitutes a municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the South Aegean administrative region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is the city of Rhodes, home to 50,636 inhabitants according to the 2011 census. By 2022, the island's population had grown to 125,113 people. Located northeast of Crete and southeast of Athens, Rhodes is referred to by several nicknames: "the Island of the Sun" after its patron sun god Helios; "the Pearl Island"; and "the Island of the Knights", a reference to the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who ruled the island from 1310 to 1522.
Historically, Rhodes was famous for the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. During the early 21st century the island was one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. It is often described as a party island, as it has more nightclubs and bars per capita than New York or Paris. Today, the island is completely overwhelmed by tourism. The sheer intensity of visitor activity routinely overwhelms its small population and limited infrastructure.
Name
The island has been known as Ρόδος (Ródos) in Greek throughout its history. Similar-sounding ῥόδον (rhódon) in ancient Greek was the word for the rose, whilst in modern Greek the also similar-sounding ρόδι (ródi) or ρόιδο (róido) refers to the pomegranate. It was also called Lindos (Ancient Greek: Λίνδος). In addition, the island has been called Rodi in Italian, Rodos in Turkish, and רודי (Rodi) or רודיס (Rodes) in Ladino.
Other ancient names were Ρόδη (Rodē), Τελχινίς (Telchinis) and Ηλιάς (Helias).
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville incorrectly reports that Rhodes was formerly called "Collosus", through a conflation of the Colossus of Rhodes and Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, which refers to Colossae.
The island's name might be derived from erod, Phoenician for snake, since the island was home to many snakes in antiquity.
History
Prehistory
During the Late Pleistocene, the island was inhabited by an unnamed species of dwarf elephant. The island has been inhabited by humans since at least the late Neolithic, as evidenced by remains found at Kalythies cave on the northeast of the island.
Early Bronze Age
At the end of the 3rd millennium BC, during the Early Bronze Age, major urban settlements began to develop on Rhodes, such as Asomatos, which is the earliest known urban centre on the island. Duck shaped vases found at Asomatos suggest contact with Cyprus as well as elsewhere in the Aegean region during this time.
Middle Bronze Age
Minoan period
The Minoan Civilisation established a settlement at Tiranda on the northwest of the island during the 16th century BC, presumably to facilitate trade.
Late Bronze Age
Mycenaean period
In the 15th century BC, Mycenaean Greeks settled. After the Bronze Age collapse, the first renewed outside contacts were with Cyprus.
In Greek legend, Rhodes was claimed to have participated in the Trojan War under the leadership of Tlepolemus.
Iron Age
In the 8th century BC, the island's settlements started to form, with the coming of the Dorians, who built the three important cities of Lindus, Ialysus and Camirus, which together with Kos, Cnidus and Halicarnassus (on the mainland) made up the so-called Dorian Hexapolis (Greek for six cities).
In Pindar's ode, the island was said to be born of the union of Helios the sun god and the nymph Rhodos, and the cities were named for their three sons. The rhoda is a pink hibiscus, native to the island. Diodorus Siculus added that Actis, one of the sons of Helios and Rhode, travelled to Egypt. He built the city of Heliopolis and taught the Egyptians astrology.
In the second half of the 8th century BC, the sanctuary of Athena received votive gifts that are markers for cultural contacts: small ivories from the Near East and bronze objects from Syria. At Kameiros on the northwest coast, a former Bronze Age site, At the site where the temple was established in the 8th century BC, archaeologists have identified an additional contemporaneous sequence of carved ivory figurines. The cemeteries of Kameiros and Ialyssos have also produced several notable examples of Orientalizing Rhodian jewelry, which are generally dated to the 7th and early 6th centuries BC.
Classical period
Being the eastern gate to the Aegean Sea, Rhodes was an important stopping point for Phoenician merchants, and prosperous trading colonies and Phoenician communities emerged there, some within the Greek cities.
The Persians invaded and overran the island, but they were in turn defeated by forces from Athens in 478 BC. The Rhodian cities joined the Athenian League. When the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, Rhodes remained largely neutral, although it remained a member of the League. The war lasted until 404 BC, but by this time Rhodes had withdrawn entirely from the conflict and decided to go their own way.
In 408 BC, the cities united to form one territory. They built the city of Rhodes, a new capital on the northern end of the island. Its regular plan was, according to Strabo, superintended by the Athenian architect Hippodamus. In 357 BC, the island was conquered by the king Mausolus of Caria; then it fell again to the Persians in 340 BC. Their rule was also short. Rhodes then became a part of the growing empire of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, after he defeated the Persians.
Hellenistic period
Following the death of Alexander the Great, his generals (Diadochi) vied for control of the kingdom. Three — Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus — succeeded in dividing the kingdom among themselves. Rhodes formed strong commercial and cultural ties with the Ptolemies in Alexandria, and together formed the Rhodo-Egyptian alliance that controlled trade throughout the Aegean in the 3rd century BC.
The city developed into a maritime, commercial and cultural center; its coins circulated nearly everywhere in the Mediterranean. Its famous schools of philosophy, science, literature and rhetoric shared masters with Alexandria: the Athenian rhetorician Aeschines, who formed a school at Rhodes; Apollonius of Rhodes, who wrote about Jason and Medea in the Argonautica; the observations and works of the astronomers Hipparchus and Geminus; and the rhetorician Dionysius Thrax. Its school of sculptors developed, under Pergamese influence, a rich, dramatic style that can be characterized as "Hellenistic Baroque". Agesander of Rhodes, with two other Rhodian sculptors, carved the famous Laocoön group, now in the Vatican Museums, and the large sculptures rediscovered at Sperlonga in the villa of Tiberius, probably in the early Imperial period.
In 305 BC, Antigonus directed his son, Demetrios Poliorketes, to besiege Rhodes in an attempt to break its alliance with Ptolemaic Egypt. Demetrius created huge siege engines, including a 180 ft (55 m) battering ram and a siege tower called Helepolis that weighed 360,000 lb (163,293 kg). Despite this engagement, in 304 BC after only one year, he relented and signed a peace agreement, leaving behind a huge store of military equipment. The Rhodians sold the equipment and used the money to erect a statue of their sun god, Helios, the statue since called the Colossus of Rhodes. The Rhodians celebrated in honour of Helios a grand festival, the Halieia.
Throughout the 3rd century BC, Rhodes attempted to secure its independence and commerce, particularly its virtual control over the grain trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Both of these goals depended on none of the three great Hellenistic states achieving dominance. Consequently, the Rhodians pursued a policy of maintaining a balance of power among the Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies, even if that meant going to war with its traditional ally, Ptolemaic Egypt. To this end, they employed their economy and their excellent navy as leverage, which was manned by proverbially the finest sailors in the Mediterranean world: "If we have ten Rhodians, we have ten ships."
The Rhodians also established their dominance on the shores of Caria across from their island, which became known as the "Rhodian Peraia". It extended roughly from the modern city of Muğla (ancient Mobolla) in the north and Kaunos bordering Lycia in the south, near the present-day Dalyan, Turkey.
Rhodes successfully carried on this policy through the course of the third century BC, an impressive achievement for what was essentially a democratic state. By the end of that period, however, the balance of power was crumbling, as declining Ptolemaic power made Egypt an attractive target for Seleucid ambitions. In 203/2 BC the young and dynamic kings of Antigonid Macedon and Seleucid Empire, Philip V and Antiochus III, agreed to accept—at least temporarily—their respective military ambitions: Philip's campaign in the Aegean and western Anatolia and Antiochus's plan for Egypt. Heading a coalition of small states, the Rhodians checked Philip's navy, but not his superior army. Without a third power to which to turn, the Rhodians (along with ambassadors from the kingdom of Pergamum, the Ptolemaic kingdom, and Athens) appealed in 201 BC to the Roman Republic.
Despite being exhausted by the Second Punic War against Hannibal (218–201 BC) the Romans agreed to intervene, still angry over the Macedonian alliance with Carthage that had led to the First Macedonian War from 214 to 205 BC. The Senate saw the appeal from Rhodes and her allies as the opportunity to pressure Philip. The result was the Second Macedonian War (200–196 BC), which Rome won and greatly reduced Macedon's power, prestige, and territory. Rhodian independence was preserved. Rhodian influence in the Aegean was cemented through the organization of the Cyclades into the Second Nesiotic League under Rhodian leadership.
The Romans withdrew from Greece after the end of the conflict, but the resulting power vacuum quickly drew in Antiochus III and subsequently the Romans. The Roman–Seleucid War lasted from 192 to 188 BC with Rome, Rhodes, Pergamon, and other Roman-allied Greek states defeated the Seleucids and their allies, the last Mediterranean power that might even vaguely threaten Roman dominance. Having provided Rome with valuable naval help in her first foray into Asia, the Rhodians were rewarded with territory and enhanced status by the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC). The Romans once again evacuated the east – the Senate preferred clients to provinces – but Roman hegemony over the Mediterranean was clear now and Rhodian autonomy was ultimately dependent upon good relations with Rome.
Those good graces soon evaporated in the wake of the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC). In 169 BC, during the war against Perseus, Rhodes sent Agepolis as ambassador to the consul Quintus Marcius Philippus, and then to Rome in the following year, hoping to turn the Senate against the war.
Rhodes remained scrupulously neutral during the war, but in the view of hostile elements in the Senate she had been a bit too friendly with the defeated King Perseus. Some actually proposed declaring war on the island republic, but this was averted.
Roman period
In 164 BC, after several Rhodian embassies, Rome and Rhodes concluded a formal alliance. The agreement marked a significant reduction in Rhodes's freedom of action in foreign affairs and confirmed Rome's predominance in the eastern Mediterranean, although Rhodes continued to remain nominally independent. The republic remained militarily active, fighting Crete in 155–153 BC, resisting Mithridates VI in 88 BC, and later providing naval forces to Julius Caesar during the Alexandrian War.
After losing its independence, Rhodes became a cultural and educational center for Roman noble families. It was especially noted for its teachers of rhetoric, such as Hermagoras and the unknown author of Rhetorica ad Herennium. At first, the state was an important ally of Rome and enjoyed numerous privileges, but these were later lost in various machinations of Roman politics. Cassius eventually invaded the island and sacked the city in 43 BC. In the early Imperial period Rhodes became a favorite place for political exiles.
In the 1st century AD, the Emperor Tiberius spent a brief term of exile on Rhodes. By tradition, Paul the Apostle evangelized and helped establish an early Christian church on the island during the first century.
In ancient times there was a Roman saying: "Hic Rhodus, hic salta!"—"Here is Rhodes, jump here!" (as translated from Ancient Greek "Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα"), an admonition to prove one's idle boasts by deed, rather than boastful talk. It comes from an Aesop's fable called "The Boasting Traveller" and was cited by Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard.
Middle Ages
Byzantine period
In 395 with the division of the Roman Empire, the long Byzantine period began for Rhodes. In Late Antiquity, the island was the capital of the Roman province of the Islands, headed by a praeses (hegemon in Greek), and encompassing most of the Aegean islands, with twenty cities. Correspondingly, the island was also the metropolis of the ecclesiastical province of Cyclades, with eleven suffragan sees.