Helike

38.21916666666722.132777777778Koordinaten: 38 ° 13 ' N, 22 ° 8' O

Helice (Greek Ἑλίκη ) was an important city in ancient Greece and the leading power in the early Achaean Confederation of twelve Greek city-states. She lay in the north of the Peloponnese on the Gulf of Corinth, near the present-day Egio.

History

Even in the early Bronze Age (2600-2300 BC) was the area colonized by Helice. Finds valuables suggest a certain level of prosperity of the city. But even this early historical Helice fell like its classical Greek counterpart an earthquake and subsequent tsunami victims.

During the period of Greek colonization founded Helice colonies in Asia Minor ( Priene ) and southern Italy ( Sybaris ). In the 4th century BC, it was the leading city in the Achaean Confederation. Patron god of the city was Poseidon, the Temple of Poseidon Helikonios was loud Pausanias the " sacred sanctuary of the Ionians ". Ironically, Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, can go under the city, " because the citizens kept and killed persons seeking protection from the sanctuary had ," says Pausanias.

Downfall

In the winter of 373 BC a severe earthquake shook Helice and let all the buildings are coincident. Shortly thereafter, a huge tsunami inundated the city and ten warships from Sparta, which lay anchored in the harbor. The waters of the flood did not decrease, but formed for several centuries a sort of lagoon. As reported by several ancient authors (eg Pausanias and Ovid ), that the ruins of Helice still in their time ( 1st / 2nd century AD) were visible on the water surface.

There are considerations, after the demise of Helice to have the witnesses Plato inspiration for his story about Atlantis. While still went in the earthquake neither a large island with a civilization, but it was after all one of the heaviest and most victims of natural disasters in the Aegean since the Minoan eruption of the volcanic island of Thera in the late Bronze Age. (See: Location hypotheses of Atlantis, at: Helice hypothesis)

Contemporaries brought the appearance of the Great Comet of 373 BC with the disaster in conjunction.

Archeology

Since 1991, digs a Greek- American research team led by Steven Soter and Dora Katsonopoulou in the plane of Eliki. It began with several holes and investigations with the magnetometer until they had found the exact location of the sunken city.

2000 and 2001, finally they found the remains of 373 BC under gone Helice. By 2003, they found more traces of settlement from early times to the 3rd millennium BC The excavations are still (2008) not complete.