The volume is the edition of a series of graffiti from a remote cave in Crete. The cave
¿Latsida ston Keramo¿ was not well known and was difficult to locate. Although there were
reports of archaeological findings on the surface no official archaeological work has ever
been undertaken. The introduction to this volume is divided into two chapters. The first one
contains a collection of the described or published Greek inscriptions and graffiti carved or
written on the walls either inside or in the entrances of natural caves and caverns dated
from the fifth century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. The second chapter is an English
translation of a paper published in Greek by the speleologists K. Foteinakis and K. Paragamian
in the third Pancretan Speleological Symposium. This is included as it will help the reader to
understand the natural underground space and environment of the cave. The graffiti are carved
or scratched (graffiti) into or written (dipinti) on the flowstones the walls the stalagmites
or the columns of the cave. About 40 names masculine or feminine appear. None of the bearers
of the names can be identified with a certain person known from other Cretan inscriptions or
literature. The possible origin of the identifiable names in the cave is Crete (mostly cities
of the eastern Crete) but other areas e.g. Thessaly Boeotia and the Aegean islands should
not be excluded. Based on the internal evidence and the palaeographical details a date that
could be assigned to these graffiti is from the first century B.C. until the end of the second
century or early third century A.D. The people who inscribed these names were either natives or
migrants who found themselves in this area of Crete for a certain purpose and found a good
reason to spend some time visiting this remote place. They might have been local farmers or and
shepherds or travelers or and traders or people who were trying to escape from their social
condition within the community and or from its laws who found shelter in this cave. If the
graffiti (or some of the graffiti) are dated to the Hellenistic period in Crete a second
possibility is that all these men could have been members of a garrison or a patrol whose duty
was to protect the countryside or the roads from ¿enemies¿ or ¿outsiders¿. The third
possibility concerns the well-known ritual kidnapping of young boysby adults which has been
recorded by Ephorus (cited by Strabo).
