Helike

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Coin from Helike

Coordinates: 38 ° 13 '  N , 22 ° 8'  E

Map: Greece
marker
Helike​
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Greece

Helike ( Greek  Ἑλίκη ) was an important city in ancient Greece and the leading power in the early Achaean League of twelve Greek city-states. It was in the north of the Peloponnese , on the Gulf of Corinth , near today's Egio .

history

Already during the Early Helladic (Early Bronze Age, approx. 3000–2000 BC) the area of ​​Helike was settled. Finds of valuables suggest a certain wealth of the city. However, like its classical Greek counterpart, this prehistoric helike also fell victim to an earthquake and subsequent tidal wave.

During the time of the Greek colonization , Helike founded colonies in Asia Minor ( Priene ) and in southern Italy ( Sybaris ). In the 4th century BC It was the leading city in the Achaean League. The city's patron god was Poseidon , the temple of Poseidon Helikonios was, according to Pausanias, the "most sacred sanctuary of the Ionians ". Ironically, Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, drowned the city "because the citizens kept away and killed those seeking protection from the sanctuary," Pausanias said.

Downfall

In the winter of 373 BC Chr. Shook a major earthquake Helice and let all the buildings collapse. Shortly thereafter, a huge tidal wave inundated the city and ten warships from Sparta anchored in the port. The flood water did not recede but formed a kind of lagoon for several centuries . Several ancient authors (including Pausanias and Ovid ) report that the ruins of Helike could still be seen from the surface of the water in their time (1st / 2nd century AD).

There are considerations that the downfall of Helike is said to have inspired the contemporary witness Plato to write his story about Atlantis . Although neither a large island nor a civilization perished in the earthquake, it was at least one of the most serious and costly natural disasters in the Aegean since the Minoan eruption of the volcanic island of Thera at the beginning of the Late Minoican . (See: Localization hypotheses for Atlantis , under: Helike hypothesis )

Contemporaries linked the appearance of the Great Comet of 373 BC with the catastrophe.

archeology

Remains of a former dye works

A Greek-American research team led by Steven Soter and Dora Katsonopoulou has been digging in the Eliki plain since 1991. They began with several drillings and investigations with the magnetometer until the exact location of the sunken city was found.

In 2000 and 2001 the remains of 373 BC were finally found. Chr. Helike drowned. Until 2003, traces of settlement from earlier times up to the 3rd millennium BC were found. The excavations are not finished until today (2015).

literature

  • Adalberto Giovannini: Peut-on démythifier l'Atlantide? In: Museum Helveticum 42 (1985), pp. 151–156 ( doi : 10.5169 / seals-32623 ).
  • Dora Katsonopoulou: Helike and her Territory in Historical Times. In: Pallas 58 (2002), pp. 175-182.
  • Yves Lafond: The disaster of 373 BC And the sinking of the city of Helike in Achaia. In: Eckart Olshausen and Holger Sonnabend (ed.): Natural disasters in the ancient world (= Stuttgart Colloquium on the historical geography of ancient times 6). Stuttgart 1998, pp. 118-123.
  • Spyridon N. Marinatos: Helike. A submerged town of classical Greece. In: Archeology 13 (1960), pp. 186-193.
  • Holger Sonnabend: Natural disasters in antiquity. Metzler, Stuttgart & Weimar 1999, ISBN 3-476-01548-3 , pp. 1-8.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pausanias : Travels in Greece : 7,24,13.
  2. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 15, 293-295
  3. ↑ http://www.helikeproject.gr/

Web links