Byzantine Basilica 



forty-nine feet of water to sixteen feet above the surface. De Fazio 

 dived around these piers and found stone mooring rings six feet 

 below the surface, proving a subsidence of at least ten feet. The out- 

 ermost pier has marine borings in it to a height of twelve feet above 

 the present water level, showing that the land has been lower in the 

 past. Unfortunately the Roman breakwater has been used as the 

 base for a modern sea wall ; the result is that little of it is now to 

 be seen. 



Continuing west, we come to the submerged ruins of Baiae, a 

 Roman pleasure resort of infamous luxury, and finally to Misenum, 

 the great Roman naval port. The harbor of Misenum was protected 

 by a double row of piers erected by the engineers of Agrippa in 

 twenty-five feet of water. They were arranged in such a way that 

 waves passing between the piers of the first row broke against 

 those of the second, but this ingenuity was not enough to prevent 

 the port from silting up. The tops of the piers are now hidden 

 nearly six feet below the surface of the water; even so, the indefat- 

 igable de Fazio found a mooring ring on one of them, again indicat- 

 ing subsidence of more than ten feet. 



Giinther continued his survey all round the Sorrentine peninsula 

 and Capri. Every^where the erosion Hne on rocks and buildings, 

 together with the positions of the buildings themselves, told the 

 same story. The shore line, when the Romans used the great coast 

 road, was about sixteen feet lower than it is today. By the twelfth 

 century the land had fallen some thirty to sixteen feet below the 

 present level, and it remained that low for at least three hundred 

 years. But by the sixteenth century it had risen almost to its present 

 level. On Capri itself, clues provided by the numerous grottos, the 

 Roman harbor at Annacapri, and the partly submerged Baths of 

 Tiberius, indicate that the island has pivoted : it has been uplifted 

 by about twenty-two feet in the east, but by only twelve feet or so 

 in the west. 



The roof of the famous Blue Grotto is about twenty feet above 

 sea level today, and the walls have erosion marks sixteen feet up 

 from the floor. This is the twelfth-century land-level mark. At the 

 back of the grotto is a flight of Roman steps which are supposed 

 to continue twenty feet down into the water, showing that the 

 Roman land level was twenty feet higher than at present. At the 

 Roman level is a great opening in the rock wall, but the opening is 

 now completely submerged. Even so, sunlight is filtered through 

 by the clear water so that it rises blue into the cave, as if from the 

 depths of the ocean itself. You can enter the Blue Grotto through a 

 second, although minute, opening half above the present water 



This section through the harbor at Apol/onia 

 shows the rise in sea level since Roman 

 times and the retreat of the coast line over 

 the past 150 years. Positions of some 

 of the more important parts of the 

 ancient harbor, excavated by the author, 

 are also shown. 



143 



