GREEK ANTIQUITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 40, 16 February 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

GREEK ANTIQUITIES.

MODERN PIRATES AT WORK. PRICELESS TREASURES FROM THE SEA. ANCIENT ART FROM ROMAN GALLEY.

Sub-chasers of the Greek Navy are at present engaged in protecting the coast, not from pirates and rum runners, but from antiquaries. These gentry, whom Dickens depicted as innocent enough, were discovered despoiling Greece of what may prove to be some of the finest inheritances of its past. When a sponge fisher from Chalcis came to the authorities and told a strange tale of a sunken galley and beautiful bronze fished from the sea, they thought him crazy. But he led them to the north end of the Island of Euboea, where they found modern pirates in the employ of respectable antiquaries stealthily salvaging priceless art objects from a sunken Roman galley, which they had discovered. Face Heavy Penalties. Greek law provides heavy penalties for the exportation of treasures of antiquity, but once these thin.es are in Paris, London, or Berlin, they would be bought for millions under competitive bidding. The strange breed of pirates actually were engaged, when caught, in hauling up a bronze statue of Poseidon, tlie god of the sea, which iu a bath of distilled water, in the national museum, appears to be one of the finest bronzes in existence. It is life sized and apparently the work of a master of the early fifth century B.C. Will Watch All Divers. At several other points on the Greek coast there are sunken Roman and even Turkish ships loaded with artistic plunder, which they were carrying from Greece when disaster overtook them, and the Government sleuths discovered that antiquaries had searched out these wrecks and were preparing to salvage them. The navy was instructed to mount guard and investigate all diving operations until the authorised organisations can get to work. It is expected to find chiefly bronze and marble pieces in the sea. The bronzes are precious and rare because of the bad habit among various conquerors of Greece of melting up all bronzes available for purposes of war.