Corinth is called “wealthy”
because of trade, since it is situated on the Isthmus and is mistress of two
harbors, of which the one leads straight to Asia, and the other to Italy.
It facilitates the exchange of goods between these far-distant lands. Just
as the straits of Sicily were difficult to sail long ago, so too was the
sea, especially that part of it off Cape Malea on account of crosswinds.
For this reason there is the saying: “When you double ‘round Malea,
forget your home!” At any rate, it was a welcome alternative to traders
from Italy and Asia to avoid the voyage to Malea and to land their cargoes
here. In addition, the duties on whatever was exported on foot from the Peloponnesus
and what was imported to it fell to whoever held the keys, and this has remained
the case until the present time.
(Strabo, The Geography 8.6.20, writing near the beginning of
the Christian era.)
Strabo’s sophisticated explanation
for the wealth—and importance—of Corinth is right on the money,
as you can see for yourself by climbing the city’s massive natural citadel,
called Acrocorinth. The Saronic Gulf on the east (which communicates with
the Aegean and beyond) comes to within only a few kilometers of land from
the western Gulf of Corinth, which communicates with Italy. Corinth, mistress
of this short overland portage, was the best route for east-west trade, growing
immensely rich and powerful from the late tenth century BC on. Her intensive
trade contact with the Levant made Corinth one of the first Greek cities
to absorb the profound artistic and intellectual patrimony of the Near East
in the eighth and seventh centuries BC: the sphinxes, griffins, and other
common Near Eastern images populating her renowned pottery are the most visible
traces of this influence. In Roman times the trade route through Corinth
was still so important that the Emperor Nero resurrected an age-old plan of
piercing the Isthmus with a canal to eliminate the costly transisthmus haul,
but the canal remained a dream until the twentieth century. (You can still see
the traces of Nero’s abortive attempt south of the western mouth of the
modern canal, as well as the recognizable path of the ancient diolkos,
a by no means easy portage across which even entire ships were occasionally
hauled.)
Acrocorinth can be seen from the
Athenian Acropolis on a rare smog-free day. It was too high for regular habitation
(it dwarfs the Acropolis) having only a few sanctuaries and a fountain house
atop. Not much of the fabric of the Greek city, which was at its base, is
visible, thanks mostly to the Roman sack of 146 and the Roman colony of 44 BC,
which has chiefly absorbed excavators’ interests. In its day, however,
Corinth rivalled even Athens as a center of trade and artistic production,
and it is not surprising to find that the two cities hated one another, or that
enmity between the two contributed to the Peloponnesian War which ended
Athens’ greatest epoch. The Athenians in turn spiritedly played up the
ostensibly reprehensible sensuality of Corinth, their poets coining terms
like “Corinthize” for “fornicate”, and propagating
stories of legions of sacred prostitutes dedicated to Aphrodite.
Strabo relates an apposite joke,
however (8.6.20): “A certain prostitute is recorded as having retorted
to a woman insulting her for laziness and refusing to engage in woolworking
(a respectable woman’s work): “yet even so, I have just now taken
down three looming beams.” This clever riposte is a triple entendre:
there is the obvious reference to the loom; and a reference to ships coming
to port, since ancient ships removed their stiff jutting masts and stowed them
when landing (the word for mast and loom are close enough in Greek for punning);
and of course the third entendre plays on the second, with an erect phallus
(cumulatively, of the sailors) understood for the mast. In other words, she
has just deflated three shiploads!
There is much worth seeing at Corinth.
From the Greek period, the archaic Temple of Apollo (c. 575-550 BC: near
the Forum of the Roman city), with its unusual monolithic columns (rather
than superimposed drums) is a must-see; its ruins sheltered Greek patriots
from gunfire in the war of independence against Turkey (1821-1828).
When on Acrocorinth, it is possible to look around and see how small classical
Greece was: to the northwest lie Mt. Helicon and Delphi; to the northeast
are Athens and the famous island of Salamis. The impressive Forum of the Roman
city, which was famously host to St. Paul, and the archeological museum are
worth seeing.
Near Corinth, and well worth a detour, are the Corinthian port
of Cenchreai (modern Kehries) and the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Isthmia
(in modern Kyra Vrysy). Cenchreai has been largely submerged by seismic shifts,
but in the museum there is an absolutely splendid set of late antique art-glass
panels. These had been damaged in antiquity and set aside and were excavated
more or less intact within the ruin of their packing crates under the present
water level. Isthmia, on the other hand, was the site of biennial games similar
to those at Olympia. They were established in 582 BC by the Corinthians and
had a prize a philosopher must approve of: a modest wreath of celery.
Corinth also had a rich mythological
history; the Fountain of Peirene on Acrocorinth was said to have been created
when a hoof of the horse Pegasus first struck earth; but another legend states
that the fount was created in a cruel bargain struck by the mythical founder
of Corinth, Sisyphus: he told the river-god Asopus the fate of his daughter
(raped by Zeus) on the price that Asopus create the fount to nourish the new
city. For his shady cunning Homer (Odyssey 11.593-600) imagined
Sisyphus suffering torments in Hades, forced forever to roll a stone uphill,
only to have it roll right back down.
Again, in another set of myths reported
in Pausanias’ Description of Greece (3.8-11), Medea and
her husband Jason (of Argonautic fame) ruled Corinth for a time before the
tragic dissolution of their marriage and slaughter of their children, at which
time Sisyphus inherited the kingdom. Oedipus, in Sophocles’ play,
rejoices to hear of the natural death of a Corinthian King, Polybus: for having
been (unsuccessfully) exposed as an infant by his real father King Laius of
Thebes, he wound up raised by Polybus as his son. Knowing himself fated
to kill his father, he had fled Corinth; but in his wanderings he killed a rude
passerby in an altercation: his father Laius!
Outside the city gate on the road
leading to Cenchreai, though no longer visible, was the tomb of the philosopher
Diogenes the Cynic as reported by Pausanias (2.4). An exile from his native
Sinope, Diogenes practiced a mode of living which honored living in accordance
with nature and the jettisoning of convention above all else. His noble paring
down of his behavior to what he considered the elemental ethical basics was
too often missed by those who jeered at his attendant bad manners and snappy
insults (they thought him shameless, like a dog: kynikos in Greek).
Asked by Alexander the Great if he would like anything, Diogenes merely asked
that Alexander cease to stand between him and the sun.