"NULLUS IN ORBE SINUS BAIIS PRAELUCET AMOENIS"… No gulf in the world shines more than the pleasant Baia

So the poet Horace, two thousand years ago, recited for the aristocrats and patricians first and for the posterities then, the immense charm of the bay of Baia.

Nevertheless, that quite and bright gulf in 1969 changed his admirable aspect. The sea rose and, fed with a strong wind, destroyed irreparably some ships riding at anchor in the roadstead and some port infrastructures, provoking a big crisis to the economy of the small Phlegraean city.

Few days later, as the sea-storm calmed down and the everyday activity started again, a fisher signalled to the Archaeological Superintendence, the presence of two statues near Punta Epitaffio.

So, preserved by sea, sand and detritus, after many centuries they came to light again two statues of exceptional manufacture. The first to come afloat was the one of Ulysses and soon after the one with the goatish wineskin which was called Baios.

Baios, according to the Alexandrian poet Licofrone (III sec. B.C.), was Ulysses' helmsman who had his burial in this place.

The two statues were found at the entrance of the apse, still in situ, in the same places where they were placed in the first years of the I century A.D., at a distance of 6.40 metres the one from the other.

In 1981, after this first extraordinary and accidental discovery, the archaeologist B. Andreae began the first campaign of submarine excavations, bringing to light other statues and many ruins of historical interest. In the autumn of 1982, completed the exploration and the surveying of the site, the excavation had to be preserved from possible damage and predators, and so it was covered with cement slabs and metallic nets.

Beyond Ulysses and Baios they were found other sculptures: two statues of Dionysus, another beautiful one of Antonia Minor and a copy-portrait of a little girl of about 6 - 8 years, initially known as Octavia Claudia.

Thanks to the submarine survey it was discovered a big rectangular room made of an apse (once covered with a vault) - 18 metres long and 9.530 metres large - built in such a way to form an aquatic triclinium which offered coolness. The marble table bed (triclinium), horseshoe-shaped, looked like a stibadium, equal to the one described by Pliny in his villa. The stibadium, or triclinium aquatic room, was made of convivial beds placed on a wide marmoreal quay; this latter was located between a waste-canal which girded the walls of the big central bath and the lateral ones.

From the statues on the niches of the long sides of the Nymphaeum and those situated in the apse, it gushed water, thanks to the little lead tubes inserted in the marble.