Sample Chapter from ‘Hidden History’
The Lost City of Helike
The ancient city of Helike, situated on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, roughly 150 km west of Athens, Greece, was originally founded in the Early Bronze Age (2600-2300 BC). The first prehistoric settlement was submerged beneath the waves about two thousand years before the Classical city was destroyed. In the 8th century BC Homer wrote of Helike sending ships to the Trojan War under the command of Agamemnon.
By the time of its destruction in the 4th century BC, Helike had become a wealthy and successful metropolis, the leader of the twelve cities of the first Achaean league (a union of local city states), and founder of colonies abroad such as Priene, on the coast of Asia Minor, and Sybaris in Southern Italy. Helike’s temple and sanctuary of Helikonian Poseidon was famous throughout Classical Greece, and was rivalled only by the oracle at Delphi, across the Gulf of Corinth.
But all this was to change one terrible night in the winter of 373 BC. For a period of five days citizens of the city had gazed in bewilderment as snakes, mice, martens and other creatures fled from the coast and made for higher ground. Then, on the fifth night, ‘immense columns of flame’ (now known as ‘earthquake lights’) were witnessed in the sky, followed by a massive earthquake and a towering 10 meter high tsunami wave. The coastal plain was submerged, and as Helike collapsed the tsunami rushed in and dragged its buildings and its inhabitants back down into the retreating waters. The city and its surroundings disappeared beneath the sea along with ten Spartan ships that had been ancored in the harbour. The neighbouring city of Boura, south east of Helike, and the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, were also destroyed.
When a rescue party arrived the next morning, nothing remained of the once great city but the tops of the trees in Poseidon’s sacred grove, peeping above the waves. Perhaps because Helike had been a revered centre for worship of Poseidon, the god of earthquakes and the sea, a tradition originated amongst its jealous neighbours that the city’s destruction was punishment sent by the angry god for desecrating his sanctuary. Following the disaster the former territory of Helike was shared out between its neighbours, with the city of Aegio, 7km to the northwest, taking over leadership of the Achaean League.
Hundreds of years later a Roman city was built on the site, which also appears to have been partly destroyed by an earthquake in the 5th century A.D.
For centuries after the disaster ancient writers like Pliny, Ovid, and Pausanias reported that the submerged ruins of Helike could still be glimpsed on the sea floor. Greek scientific writer, astronomer, and poet Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) visited to the site and recorded reports by local ferrymen of an upright bronze statue of Poseidon submerged in an inland lagoon, where it often trapped the nets of fishermen. But soon afterwards the area silted over and the location became lost.
In 1861, German archaeologists visiting the region obtained a bronze coin of Helike featuring a splendid head of Poseidon, but nothing else surfaced from the ancient site. Ancient writers had all stated that the remains of the city lay submerged beneath the Corinthian Gulf, but for decades numerous expeditions searched for it without success.