Description of Greece

The Acrocorinthus is a mountain peak above the city, assigned to Helius by Briareos when he acted as adjudicator, and handed over, the Corinthians say, by Helius to Aphrodite. As you go up this Acrocorinthus you see two precincts of Isis, one if Isis surnamed Pelagian (Marine) and the other of Egyptian Isis, and two of Serapis, one of them being of Serapis called “in Canopus.” After these are altars to Helius, and a sanctuary of Necessity and Force, into which it is not customary to enter.

Above it are a temple of the Mother of the gods and a throne; the image and the throne are made of stone. The temple of the Fates and that of Demeter and the Maid have images that are not exposed to view. Here, too, is the temple of Hera Bunaea set up by Bunus the son of Hermes. It is for this reason that the goddess is called Bunaea.

On the summit of the Acrocorinthus is a temple of Aphrodite. The images are Aphrodite armed, Helius, and Eros with a bow. The spring, which is behind the temple, they say was the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus. The latter knew, so runs the legend, that Zeus had ravished Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, but refused to give information to the seeker before he had a spring given him on the Acrocorinthus. When Asopus granted this request Sisyphus turned informer, and on this account he receives—if anyone believes the story—punishment in Hades. I have heard people say that this spring and Peirene are the same, the water in the city flowing hence under-ground.

This Asopus rises in the Phliasian territory, flows through the Sicyonian, and empties itself into the sea here. His daughters, say the Phliasians, were Corcyra, Aegina, and Thebe. Corcyra and Aegina gave new names to the islands called Scheria and Oenone, while from Thebe is named the city below the Cadmea. The Thebans do not agree, but say that Thebe was the daughter of the Boeotian, and not of the Phliasian, Asopus.

The other stories about the river are current among both the Phliasians and the Sicyonians, for instance that its water is foreign and not native, in that the Maeander, descending from Celaenae through Phrygia and Caria, and emptying itself into the sea at Miletus, goes to the Peloponnesus and forms the Asopus. I remember hearing a similar story from the Delians, that the stream which they call Inopus comes to them from the Nile. Further, there is a story that the Nile itself is the Euphrates, which disappears into a marsh, rises again beyond Aethiopia and becomes the Nile.

Such is the account I heard of the Asopus. When you have turned from the Acrocorinthus into the mountain road you see the Teneatic gate and a sanctuary of Eilethyia. The town called Tenea is just about sixty stades distant. The inhabitants say that they are Trojans who were taken prisoners in Tenedos by the Greeks, and were permitted by Agamemnon to dwell in their present home. For this reason they honor Apollo more than any other god.

As you go from Corinth, not into the interior but along the road to Sicyon, there is on the left not far from the city a burnt temple. There have, of course, been many wars carried on in Corinthian territory, and naturally houses and sanctuaries outside the wall have been fired. But this temple, they say, was Apollo's, and Pyrrhus the son of Achilles burned it down. Subsequently I heard another account, that the Corinthians built the temple for Olympian Zeus, and that suddenly fire from some quarter fell on it and destroyed it.

The Sicyonians, the neighbours of the Corinthians at this part of the border, say about their own land that Aegialeus was its first and aboriginal inhabitant, that the district of the Peloponnesus still called Aegialus was named after him because he reigned over it, and that he founded the city Aegialea on the plain. Their citadel, they say, was where is now their sanctuary of Athena; further, that Aegialeus begat Europs, Europs Telchis, and Telchis Apis.