Message #240237

[Harvest Moon]

Posture

The harbor-straddling Colossus was a figment of medieval imaginations based on the dedication text's mention of "over land and sea" twice. Many older illustrations (above) show the statue with one foot on either side of the harbor mouth with ships passing under it: "...the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land..." ("The New Colossus", a poem engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty in 1903). Shakespeare's Cassius in Julius Caesar (I,ii,136–38) says of Caesar:

    Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world
    Like a Colossus, and we petty men
    Walk under his huge legs and peep about
    To find ourselves dishonorable graves