Helike: Greek city lost for 2,000 years found inland after translation error of 'poros'

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Key facts

• Helike was the foremost city in Achaea, named by Homer in the Iliad and listed by Herodotus among the 12 Achaean cities
• In winter 373 BC, an earthquake struck at night and a massive wave destroyed the city at daybreak
• Ancient texts claimed the city was swallowed by the sea, prompting centuries of seabed searches in the Gulf of Corinth
• The Helike project began sonar scanning in 1988, finding nothing; from 1991 they drilled soil samples inland
• In 1995, archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou argued that the word 'poros' meant an inland lagoon, not the open gulf
• By 2001, trenches on the coastal plain hit ancient walls 3 m down buried beneath thick layers of silt
• The coastal ground had dropped during the earthquake, forming a temporary lagoon that slowly filled with dirt over the next 2,000 years

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