The inevitable penalty of navigating close to a precipitous, 

 rocky shore was the risk of being wrecked, not only because of the 

 inherent danger of unseen rocks, but because the winds near the 

 promontories were often violent and unpredictable. Cape Malea 

 had a particularly bad reputation from this point of view, and was 

 used as an excuse by the Corcyrans when they arrived late to help 

 the Athenians at the battle of Salamis. Thus in antiquity the head- 

 lands achieved dual significance for sailors : friend and guide from 

 afar, but deceiver and wrecker from close to. To ensure that a 

 headland would serve as friend and guide, temples were built on 

 cliff edges, even in the remotest spots. Today the bleached columns 

 of Sunion towering above the dark sea is a sight to make even the 

 most hardened globe-trotter pause in genuine wonder. 



The greatest danger to classical mariners were submerged rocks 

 rising from the sea floor to within only a few feet of the surface. 

 Called a sec by the French, and a secca by the Italians, these rocks are 

 fatally common off all the steep coasts of the Mediterranean. Often 

 they are not marked on charts — which does not matter much since 

 large ships rarely go near the shore nowadays — but they can be 

 seen from the air or from a hilltop and they can be found with an 

 echo sounder. Sees serve as a valuable tip to a diver, for if he searches 

 around these submerged pinnacles on a known trade route, he has 

 a very good chance of finding not one, but several wrecks. This 

 was the method Gianni Roghi used at Spargi, and which will be 

 discussed in detail later. 



Local fishermen and sponge divers often can be helpful to a 

 diver investigating a small area in detail. Peter Throckmorton, 

 mentioned later, achieved almost incredible results while he was 

 working from a sponge boat off the coast of Turkey. Sometimes 

 the local authorities offer rewards to fishermen who bring in antiq- 

 uities. But this can be expensive, especially if the antiques happen 

 to be Roman anchors, since the reward must exceed the current 

 price of lead. And a man discovering a complete cargo is tempted 

 to deliver it to the local authorities piece by piece without revealing 

 the site, in order to obtain a steady income and to avoid the risk of 

 a small down payment for the whole cargo. This results in the 

 systematic destruction of the arrangement of the objects in situ, 

 which is often the primary value of such finds. 



Fishermen are not the only guilty ones. Tourists with their own 

 diving equipment sometimes pillage a site for what amounts to an 

 archaeological cheap thrill. This was the fate of the wrecked cargo 

 of Roman amphorae at Antheor, which is now no more than a 

 smashed heap of fragments. It is all but impossible to protect 

 wrecks from looting. Nothing short of an armed police launch 

 with day and night guards permanently over the site would keep 

 the vandals at bay. In spite of the laws against stealing antiquities, 

 divers continue to work at night by torchlight, and fishermen 

 continue to drag their anchors over wrecks in hopes of catching 

 one amphora, but smashing hundreds in the process. 



Finding a submerged city requires search techniques quite dif- 

 ferent from those used in searching for wrecks. The diver-archae- 

 ologist must refer to ancient geographers and historians, such as 

 Strabo, Herodotus, and Thucydides, and the itineraries of Antoni- 

 nus and Peutinger. He also should consult the many excellent 

 classical atlases and the Admiralty charts which show coastal ruins. 



The remains of a temple at Lindos, Rhodes, 

 dedicated to Athena. Lighthouses of the 

 ancient world, many such temples were built 

 on the cliff edges of dangerous promontories 

 to warn and guide mariners from afar. 



135 



