Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1920 — Divers in Ancient History. [ARTICLE]

Divers in Ancient History.

The earliest mention of diving is made by Homer, about 850 B. C n in the “Iliad,” when Patroclus compares the fall of Hector's charioteer to a diver diving for oysters; and Thucydides tells of divers being used to remove submarine barriers placed with the object of impeding or injuring the Grecian fleet at the siege of Syracuse. These divers had no apparatus save a stone to carry them quickly to the bottom and to ding to for the brief period, about two minutes, they could stay below. This is called natural diving and Is still in use for collecting sponges and pearls at Ceylon and in the Mediterranean.