Worth seeing here are a theater and a white-marble race-course. Ever since, they say, the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helius (Sun) about the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, assigning to Poseidon the Isthmus and the parts adjoining, and giving to Helius the height above the city. A legend of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, for I believe that the Athenians were the first to relate a similar story to glorify Attica. So difficult it is for man to alter by violence what Heaven has made. The Cnidians began to dig through their isthmus, but the Pythian priestess stopped them. Alexander the son of Philip wished to dig through Mimas, and his attempt to do this was his only unsuccessful project. So it still is mainland as its nature is to be.
Where they began to dig is still to be seen, but into the rock they did not advance at all. He who tried to make the Peloponnesus an island gave up before digging through the Isthmus. For this is what makes the region to the south mainland. The Corinthian Isthmus stretches on the one hand to the sea at Cenchreae, and on the other to the sea at Lechaeum. For Theseus rid of evildoers the road from Troezen to Athens, killing those whom I have enumerated and, in sacred Epidaurus, Periphetes, thought to be the son of Hephaestus, who used to fight with a bronze club. This was the way in which Sinis himself was slain by Theseus. Thereupon each of the pines used to drag to itself the bound man, and as the bond gave way in neither direction but was stretched equally in both, he was torn in two. All those whom he overcame in fight he used to tie to the trees, and then allow them to swing up again. At the beginning of the Isthmus is the place where the brigand Sinis used to take hold of pine trees and draw them down. At this place, they say, the boy was brought ashore by a dolphin Sisyphus found him lying and gave him burial on the Isthmus, establishing the Isthmian games in his honor. Farther on the pine still grew by the shore at the time of my visit, and there was an altar of Melicertes. Here they say that Phaea was bred overcoming this sow was one of the traditional achievements of Theseus. In the Corinthian territory is also the place called Cromyon from Cromus the son of Poseidon. Carthage, too, they say, was refounded in his reign. Corinth was laid waste by Mummius, who at that time commanded the Romans in the field, and it is said that it was afterwards refounded by Caesar, 4 who was the author of the present constitution of Rome. When the Romans won the war, they carried out a general disarmament of the Greeks 3 and dismantled the walls of such cities as were fortified. 2 The Corinthians, being members of it, joined in the war against the Romans, which Critolaus, when appointed general of the Achaeans, brought about by persuading to revolt both the Achaeans and the majority of the Greeks outside the Peloponnesus. This change is due to the Achaean League. Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans.
Eumelus, the son of Amphilytus, 1 of the family called Bacchidae, who is said to have composed the epic poem, says in his Corinthian History (if indeed the history be his) that Ephyra, the daughter of Oceanus, dwelt first in this land that afterwards Marathon, the son of Epopeus, the son of Aloeus, the son of Helius (Sun), fleeing from the lawless violence of his father migrated to the sea coast of Attica that on the death of Epopeus he came to Peloponnesus, divided his kingdom among his sons, and returned to Attica and that Asopia was renamed after Sicyon, and Ephyraea after Corinthus. That Corinthus was a son of Zeus I have never known anybody say seriously except the majority of the Corinthians. The Corinthian land is a portion of the Argive, and is named after Corinthus.
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