Halicarnassus

The History and Legacy of the Ancient Greek City and Home to One of the Seven Wonders of the World

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Scott Clem

Length: 1 hr and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

In 353 BCE, when King Mausolus of Halicarnassus passed away, his sister and queen Artemisia was inconsolable, but she found a way to honor him through finishing a project that they had started together during his life: the construction of a mausoleum that was so marvelous it would later be considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. She sent messengers across the ancient world to persuade the best sculptors and architects to come to southeast Anatolia to work on the king's memorial, employing only the finest craftsmen and sparing no expense in making the final resting place of Mausolus the finest tomb the world had ever seen. They labored for years, creating marvelous statues of the king's dynasty.

This great monumental tomb was completed in the middle of the fourth century BCE so that the name of Mausolus would be famous forever, as indeed it has been ever since. Like one of the other wonders, the Temple of Artemis, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was huge for its type of building, being about 150 feet tall and possessing 36 columns of marble on its four sides, nine to a side. Also like the Temple of Artemis, the site of the Mausoleum includes ruins that have been excavated in modern times. Using this, an accurate scale replica has been successfully constructed in Istanbul, Turkey, and pieces of the beautiful sculpture on the Mausoleum have been retrieved. Therefore, it is one of the few wonders that survived in some form and have directly inspired modern artists and architects.

On top of it all, this is the only known major architectural Hellenistic work devoted to a secular theme (the burial of two mortals) rather than religious art dedicated to the Greek pantheon. The themes of the carvings even included many mythical enemies of the Greeks, such as the Amazons and centaurs, and the architecture was a marvel of engineering that was copied by neo-Classical buildings.

The ultimate fate of the Mausoleum itself is unknown, though it was known to have survived the city's conquest by Alexander the Great in 334 BCE intact. Pirates who occupied the city in the first century BCE also left it unharmed, and though a series of earthquakes had reduced it to foundations by the 15th century CE, it was still intact enough to be considered a "wonder" by a Christian pilgrim, the Archbishop Eustathius of Thessalonica, in the 12th century.

Unfortunately, the arrival of the Knights of St. John (the Hospitallers) in Rhodes and Bodrum spelled doom for the great structure. They used materials from it to reinforce their castle at Bodrum when it was threatened by the Turks in 1522 and burned the marble for lime, though at least they did retrieve and install the best of the sculptures in their castle. The burial chamber of Mausolus and Artemisia, which had been underground, was also looted at some point over the centuries, though husband and wife were likely cremated in the Greek fashion and buried in urns. The famous marbles were also looted in the 19th century during a three-year expedition by English archeologist Sir Charles Thomas Newton and carted off to the British Museum.

©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2016 Charles River Editors

Need the Whispersync

historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, historical-setting, Turkey

I learned a lot. The story of how and why the building came about includes historical background of the entire region and political interactions. The first attractive fact was was that the word mausoleum was inspired by the dramatic tomb built for King Mausolus. The final was that after it had been damaged by earthquakes the very stones were looted by the Knights Hospitaller for their purposes on the Isle of Malta. Lots of ancient accounts and a decent bibliography.
Tidbits: Cyrene is now Libya; Castell San Angelo was originally Hadrian's tomb.
I got the audio but was disappointed by the nasal quality and pronunciations of the narrator.

Meh

What made the experience of listening to Halicarnassus the most enjoyable?

I don't know that I had an enjoyable experience listening to this.

Who was your favorite character and why?

None.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

This is a rough one. I felt like there was some decent information. However I would say that this felt more like a treatise that a student would write for a mandatory school paper. I didn't feel like the contributors were excited or passionate about the knowledge they were dispensing. I love works by David McCullough and he has set the standard in my opinion. That may be a high standard. But I have listened to other histories by other Authors that have met that standard or at least come close enough.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Nope. In fact it was kind of blah. I only give it a decent rating because of the information it contained.

A Very Condensed Historical Narrative

This work is excellent as a very densely packed body of information. The work is about a fairly specific aspect of ancient history, Halicarnassus, and will not be of interest to some readers. As always, I needed to do a good deal of parallel reading to maximize my personal study experience.

As far as the reading itself, the pace was rapid. I needed to adjust the speed and re listen to a good bit. I had the accompanying Kindle and I am really glad that I had it. It made studying a lot easier. Thank You...