Geography

​Let us next speak of the places situated under Mycenae and Agamemnon in the Catalogue of Ships; the verses run as follows: ‘And those who held Mycenae, the well-built citadel, and wealthy Corinth and well-built Cleonae, and inhabited Orneiae and lovely Araethyrea and Sicyon, where Adrastus first was king; and those who held Hyperesia and steep Gonoessa and Pellene, and inhabited around Aegium, and all along the coast-land and around wide Helice.’ Now Mycenae no longer exists; Perseus founded it, Sthenelus succeeded him, and then Eurystheus; and these same men also ruled over Argos. Now Eurystheus, having made an expedition to Marathon against the children of Heracles and Iolaus with the assistance of the Athenians, is recorded to have fallen in the battle, and his body to have been buried at Gargettus, but his head separately at Tricorynthus, Iolaus having cut it off near the spring Macaria beside the carriage road; and the place is called Eurystheus’ Head. And Mycenae fell into the hands of the Pelopidae who had set out from Pisatis, and then to the Heracleidae, who also held Argos. But after the naval battle at Salamis, the Argives, along with the Cleonaeans and Tegeatans, attacked and utterly destroyed Mycenae, and divided its territory. Because of their proximity, the tragic poets address the two cities synonymously as one, and Euripides even in the same play calls the same city at one time Mycenae and at another Argos, as in Iphigenia and Orestes. Cleonae is a small town situated on the road from Argos to Corinth, on a hill inhabited all around and well fortified, so that the phrase ‘well-built Cleonae’ seems to me to have been appropriately used by Homer. And here is also Nemea, between Cleonae and Phlius, and the grove in which the Argives are accustomed to celebrate the Nemean games, and the place of the myth of the Nemean lion, and the village Bembina. Cleonae is distant one hundred and twenty stadia from Argos, and eighty from Corinth. And we ourselves viewed the town from the Acrocorinth.

​And Corinth is called wealthy because of its emporium, being situated on the Isthmus and master of two harbors, of which one is near Asia and the other near Italy; and it makes easy the reciprocal exchange of cargoes on both sides for people so far apart. And just as the strait near Sicily was of old not easy to sail, so too were the open seas, and especially the sea beyond Maleae, because of the contrary winds; whence the proverb, ‘But when you double Maleae, forget your home.’ Therefore, it was welcome to both classes of merchants, those from Italy and those from Asia, to avoid the voyage around Maleae and to land their cargoes here; and the duties on goods carried out of the Peloponnesus by land and on those imported fell to those who held the keys. This continued ever afterwards, and to those of later times even greater advantages accrued; for the Isthmian games, celebrated there, attracted crowds, and the Bacchiadae, who ruled as tyrants, being wealthy, numerous, and of noble descent, held the government for nearly two hundred years and enjoyed the fruits of the emporium without fear. Cypselus, having overthrown them, himself became tyrant, and his house lasted to the third generation; and a proof of the wealth of this house is the dedication of Cypselus at Olympia, a large statue of beaten gold. Demaratus, too, one of those who held power in Corinth, fleeing the factions there, carried away so much wealth from home to Tyrrhenia that he himself ruled over the city that received him, and his son became king of the Romans. And the temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it possessed more than a thousand temple-slaves as courtesans, whom both men and women dedicated to the goddess. And on account of these women, therefore, the city was crowded and grew rich; for the shipmasters easily spent all they had, and because of this the proverb says, ‘The voyage to Corinth is not for every man.’ And indeed, a certain courtesan is remembered to have said, in reply to a woman who reproached her because she was not industrious and did not touch wool: ‘Yet, such as I am, I have already taken down three masts (looms) in this short time.’