A critical edition · twenty-one fragments
ΥΠΗΝΟΡΟΣ
ΚΑΤΑΒΑΣΙΣ
The Descent of Hypenor
and the sea, which keeps whatever it is given,
kept it — as it keeps the roof-beams of drowned cities,
the oars of the unlucky, and the smallest rings of children —
τὸ δ’ ὄνομα δῶκε θαλάσσῃ ·
he gave his name to the water.
In 373 BC the city of Helike, on the Gulf of Corinth, was swallowed by the sea in a single winter night. The Hypenoriad — a poem that survives only in fragments — tells what happened next: how a sponge diver of Aigilia, Hypenor, “the man beneath,” dove nine times to the drowned city to bring back the bronze tablet bearing the names of its dead, and what each descent cost him.