Apollonia, the port for the once-proud city 

 of Cyrene, is today half submerged. Eroded 

 marble columns embedded in sand mark its 

 remains on land. Under Roman domination in 

 96 B.C., Apollonia was one of the chief export 

 centers of the North African coast. 



Ini958andi959 the present writer led expeditions to the sunken 

 Greek city of Apollonia on the Cyrenaican coast of Libya. The 

 expeditions were financed and supported by the Royal Geographical 

 Society, the British School at Athens, the British Academy, and the 

 Faculty of Archaeology at Cambridge. The divers were all members 

 of the Cambridge University Underwater Exploration Group. 



Herodotus gives two versions of the foundation of a Greek 

 colony in Libya — one the Therean story, the other the Cyrenaican. 

 According to the Cyrenaican version, Battus, the son of one of the 

 chief citizens of Thera, founded the city of Cyrene in the mountains 

 (in 631 B.C.), and on the coast nearby he founded the port of 

 Apollonia. In 525 b.c. Cyrene came under Persian domination; 

 Alexandrian in 331 b.c; and Roman in 96 b.c. The main exports 

 of the area were chariots and sylphium, a drug used by the priest- 

 esses of the oracles. Under Roman rule Cyrene became fabulously 

 rich by exporting enormous quantities of grain from the port of 

 Apollonia to Ostia, the port of Rome. 



Today Cyrene has only a single street, shaded by whispering 

 eucalyptus trees and twisting between the low, white Arab shops. 

 All round the village lie magnificent ruins of the old temples, 

 market places, baths, and theaters. Beyond these are the scattered 

 remains of the suburbs of the once-great city, now half-buried in 

 sand and overgrown with thorns. 



At Apollonia itself there is a little fishing village to the west of 

 the ancient city, and some of the poorer members of the community 

 today live in the dark tombs and fallen ruins. Now more than half 

 of the city is beneath water. In rough weather the waves plunge 

 and boil over the outermost walls, thunder across the ruined harbor 



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