The human urge for personal hygiene has had many improbable side-effects, and I can confidently assert that through the ages, sponge-divers have punched consistently above their weight. Bronze-age tools, 10th-century Islamic glassware, a Byzantine ship whose plunge to the bottom was cushioned by the fourth-century Roman wreck it alighted upon, anchors, amphorae, sculpture: if it’s down there, they’ll bring it up.
And so, around Easter 1900, there they were, waiting out the bad weather in the shelter of Potamós on Antikythera, a small island northwest of Crete.
They decided to use their time profitably, took an exploratory plunge, and one of them, Ilias Lykopantis, discovered a life-size bronze arm, subsequently fetched up by the ship-owner’s brother-in-law Dimitrios Kontos.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life, legacy and lastings greatness – Listen and subscribe to the Spectator Books podcast, hosted by Sam Leith:
The authorities were informed, by optical telegraph (set up three years earlier, to foil the dastardly Turks; plus ça change), that a great treasure had been found; but the authorities declared that it was Eastertime, and so the telegraph operator was clearly drunk.
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