olive-groves. The fertility of this region was alluded to by the witty oracle, which answered a person who inquired what he should do to become rich, that he needed only to get all the land between Corinth and Sicyon. We arrived on the Isthmus, and about evening entered the town. We were hospitably received at the house of a Greek named Gorgonda Notara, a baratary, or person under the protection of the English ambassador at Constantinople. In the morning we were visited by the archons, or principal Greeks in a body, as at Athens, and by Mr. Robart, a Frenchman, agent of Mr. Keyrac, who had engrossed the trade of the Morea. The city of Corinth stands in the Isthmus on the side of the Peloponnesus, a situation once peculiarly happy, from which also its ancient prosperity was derived. Its ports were commodiously disposed by nature, to receive the ships of Europe, and of Asia, and to render it the centre of their commerce. The circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus was tedious and uncertain to a proverb; while at the Isthmus not only their cargoes, but, if requisite, the smaller vessels, were easily transported from sea to sea. Moreover it held the keys of the peninsula, and taxed both the ingress and egress. The Isthmian games, likewise, by the concourse of people at their celebration, contributed to its opulence, which was immense. The temple of Venus possessed above a thousand female slaves, consecrated as courtezans. The prodigality of the merchants made the place so expensive, it was a saying, that not every man could go to Corinth. Amid this luxury it produced many able statesmen, as well as capital masters in painting, sculpture, and the fine arts in general, all which were principally nurtured there, and at Sicyon. The acrocorinthus, or citadel, was one of the horns, on which Philip was advised to lay hold, in order to secure the heifer, or the Peloponnesus. It has been also styled one of the fetters of Greece. The port of Corinth, on the side of Asia, was named Cenchreæ, and distant as much as seventy stadia, or eight miles and three quarters. It was forty-five stadia, or above five miles and a half by sea from the port of Schoenus. The port toward Italy was called Lechæum. It lay beneath the city, the road to it between long walls reaching twelve stadia, or a mile and a half. When Xerxes had defeated the party, which guarded the strait of Thermopyla, the Peloponnesians first destroyed the Scironian way, and then erected a wall, across the Isthmus, from the sea of Cenchreæ to that of Lechæum. A dispute, in which the Roman senate interposed, produced a war equally fatal to Grecian liberty and to Corinth. The general of the Achæans was defeated, and flying into Arcadia, abandoned this city. Lucius Mummius, who commanded the Roman army, apprehensive of some stratagem, did not enter until the third day, though the gates stood open. The Corinthians were put to the sword, or sold as captives, and the city pillaged and subverted. The historian Polybius, who was present, laments, among other articles, the unworthy treatment of the offerings, and works of art; relating that he saw exquisite and famous pictures thrown neglectfully on the ground, and the soldiers playing on them with dice. The precious spoil was among the prime ornaments of Rome, and of the places, in which it was dispersed. The town lay desolate until Julius Cæsar settled there a Roman colony, when, in moving the rubbish and digging, many vases were found, of brass or earth finely embossed. The price given for these curiosities excited industry in the new inhabitants. They left no burying place unexamined, and Rome, it is said, was filled with the furniture of the sepulchres of Corinth. Strabo was at Corinth soon after its restoration by the Romans. He describes the site, as follows. "A lofty mountain, in perpendicular height as much as three stadia and a half,* the ascent thirty stadia,† ends in a pointed summit called Acrocorinthus. Of this the portion to the north is the most steep, beneath which lies the city on a level area, at the foot of the Acrocorinthus. The circuit of the city alone has been forty stadia,‡ and as much of it as was unsheltered by the mountain has been walled about. Within the inclosure was comprehended also the Acrocorinthus, where the mountain was capable of receiving a wall; and as we ascended, the vestiges were plain; so that the whole circumference exceeded eighty-five stadia. On the other sides, the mountain is less steep, but rises very high, and is visible all around. Upon the summit is a small temple of Venus; and below it, the spring Pirene, which does not overflow, but is always full of pellucid and potable water. They say, it unites with some other hidden veins, and forms the spring at the mountain foot, running into the city, and affording a sufficient supply for the use of the inhabitants. In the city is plenty of wells, and in the Acrocorinthus, as they say, for we did not see any.-There they relate, the winged horse Pegasus was taken, as he was drinking, by Bellerophon.-Below Pirene is the Sisyphéum, some temple or palace of white stone, the remains not inconsiderable. From the summit is *Near half a mile. + Three miles and three quarters. beheld, to the north, Parnassus and Helicon, lofty mountains covered with snow; and below both, to the west, the Crissæangulf bounded by Phocis, by Bæotia and the Megaris, and by Corinthia and Sicyonia opposite to Phocis. Beyond all these are the mountains called the Oneian, stretching as far as Boeotia and Citharon from the Scironian rocks on the road to Attica." Strabo saw likewise Cleonæ from thence. Cenchrea was then a village, Lechæum had some inhabitants. New Corinth had flourished two hundred aud seventeen years when it was visited by Pausanias. It had then a few antiquities, many temples and statues, especially about the agora, or market place, and several baths. The emperor Hadrian introduced water from a famous spring at Stymphalus in Arcadia; and it had various fountains alike copious and ornamental. The stream of one issued from a dolphin, on which was a brazen Neptune; of another, from the hoof of Pegasus, on whom Bellerophon was mounted. On the right-hand, coming along the road leading from the marketplace toward Sicyon, was the odeum, and the theatre, by which was a temple of Minerva. The old gymnasium was at a distance. Going from the market-place toward Lechaum was a gate, on which were placed Phaeton and the Sun, in gilded chariots. Pirene entered a fountain of white marble, from which the current passed in an open channel. They supposed the metal called Corinthian brass to have been immerged, while red-hot, in this water On the way up to the Acrocorinthus were temples, statues, and altars; and the gate next Tenea, a village with a temple of Apollo sixty-stadia, or seven miles and a half distant, on the road to Mycena. At Lechæum was a temple and a brazen image of Neptune. At Cenchreæ were temples; and by the way from the city, a grove of cypress-trees, sepulchres and monuments. Opposite was The bath of Helen, water tepid and salt, flowing plentifully from a rock into the sea. Mummius had ruined the theatre of Corinth, and the munificence of the great Athenian Atticus Herodes was displayed in an edifice with a roof, inferior to few of the most celebrated structures in Greece. The Roman colony was reserved to suffer the same calamity as the Greek city, and from a conqueror more terrible than Mummius, Alaric, the savage destroyer of Athens and universal Greece. In a country harassed with frequent wars as the Peloponnesus has since been, the Acrocorinthus was a post too consequential to be neglected. It was besieged and taken in 1459 by Mahomet the second; the despots or lords of the Morea, brothers of the Greek emperor, who was killed in defending Constantinople, refusing payment of the arrears of the tribute, which had been imposed by Sultan. Morat in 1447. The country became subject to the Turks, except such maritime places as were in the possession of the Venetians; and many of the principal inhabitants were carried away to Constanstinople. Corinth with the Morea, was yielded to the republic at the conclusion of the war in 1698, and again by it to the Turks in 1715. Corinth retains its old name, and is of considerable extent; standing on high ground, beneath the Acrocorinthus, with an easy descent toward the gulf of Lepanto; the houses scattered or in parcels, except in the bazar or market place.. Cypresses, among which tower the domes of mosques, with corn fields, and gardens of lemon and orange trees, are interspersed. The air is reputed bad in summer, and in autumn exceedingly unhealthy. The principal Corinthians |