[3][4] After graduating highschool in 1855, Rhoides settled in Berlin in pursuit of higher education, as well as treatment for the hearing problem he had developed during his school years.

Due to the deterioration of his hearing, he moved to Iași, Romania in 1857, where his merchant father had transferred the headquarters of his business, and worked in the correspondence of his uncle's trading company.

[3] He secretly began working on the translation of Chateaubriand's Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, which his uncle discovered and urged him to publish.

He first heard about the legend in Genoa as a child and, intrigued by the story, he did extensive research in Germany, Italy, and Greece, collecting important material for his novel.

Though a romance with satirical overtones, Rhoides titled his work a "medieval study" and asserted it contained conclusive evidence that Pope Joan had truly existed.

It was admired by Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry and freely translated by Lawrence Durrell as The Curious History of Pope Joan in 1954.

Rhoides often adopted a clear-cut critical stance against the romanticism in literature and poetry, and was often poignant and sarcastic to the romantic writers and poets of his time.

He considered the vernacular Demotic to be equal to Katharevousa in richness, precision, and clarity and advocated for the merging of the two in one language, so as to avoid the diglossia of the time.