RHODES rōdz (̔Ρόδος, G4852, rose). Modern Gr. Rhodhos.
A large island of the Dodecanese group, over 500 square m. in area, twelve m. off the coast of modern Turkey, and ancient Caria. Rhodes is hilly, but cut by fertile and productive valleys. Its name may be an assimilated formation, for roses are not, and, to the best of modern knowledge, never were a characteristic flower of the island.
The island was originally settled by Dorian Greeks and three city states emerged originally from the occupation. In the 5th cent. these states were members of the Athenian Confederacy with, presumably, democratic constitutions. Strife with Athens broke out in 411 b.c. and lasted for five years. The result was the federation of the three states into one unit with a new capital—Rhodes. The three constituent city-states appear to have retained a large measure of autonomy, and kept democratic institutions—a situation interrupted, in the second half of the 4th cent. b.c., by a period of Pers. domination.
After Alexander’s conquests, Rhodes, aided by her advantageous position and her maritime skill captured and held a considerable carrying trade with the eastern end of the Mediterranean, which was opened by Alexander to the commerce and penetration of the western world. Rich, powerful, and naturally garrisoned by the sea, she maintained her independence under the “successors” of Alexander, policed the seas against the perennial piracy of the Asiatic coast, and functioned, as Athens had once done as a center of exchange and capital. Generally in the Hel. period, Rhodes sided with Egypt rather than with Syria.
Shrewdly appraising the rise of Rom. power, Rhodes assisted the Republic in the wars against Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus of Syria (201-197 b.c.), and was rewarded with territory in Caria and Lycia. In the third war with Macedon, Rhodes angered Rome by an attempt at neutrality and in spite of a vigorous oration by Cato, the famous censor, an oration which survives in part as the earliest sample of Lat. oratory, Rhodes was punished by the institution of Delos as a rival port (166 b.c.). It was a shrewd economic blow, and this, with the amputation of the mainland territories in Caria and Lycia, went far to destroy Rhodes’ commercial prosperity.
Rhodes regained some of her standing as a Rom. ally when she withstood a siege by Mithridates when that dynamic king of Pontus all but destroyed Rome’s position E of the Aegean in 88 b.c. Rhodes assisted Pompey with her fleet when he cleared the eastern end of the Mediterranean of pirates in 67 b.c., and later when he fought against Caesar. After Caesar’s victory in the Civil War, Rhodian ships assisted him in the siege of Alexandria. When Paul passed that way, traveling from Troas to Caesarea (Acts 21:1), Rhodes was little more than a port of call with a degree of prosperity and distinction as a beautiful city, but no more than that. It was the place of self-exile of Tiberius when Augustus rejected him as his successor. It is still a beautiful city, full of ancient and Crusader remains, on a lovely island.
Bibliography CAH VIII, 617ff.