CHAPTER V.
On the ascent to Acro-Corinthus there is also a temple of Aphrodite: and statues of her in full armour, and the Sun, and Cupid with a bow. And the fountain behind the temple is they say the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus: for he, though he knew that Zeus had carried off Ægina the daughter of Asopus, refused to tell him unless he would give him this water on Acro-Corinthus. And Asopus giving this water he vouchsafed the required information, and for his information pays the penalty in Hades, if indeed this is credible. But I have heard people say that this fountain is Pirene, and that the water in the city flows down from it. This river Asopus has its rise in the neighbourhood of Phlius, flows through the Sicyonian district, and has its outlet in the Corinthian Gulf. And the people of Phlius say that Asopus’ daughters were Corcyra and Ægina and Thebe: and that from Corcyra and Ægina the islands Scheria and Œnone got their present names, and that Thebe gave its name to Thebes the city of Cadmus. But the Thebans do not admit this, for they say that Thebe was the daughter of the Bœotian Asopus, and not the Asopus that has its rise at Phlius. The Phliasians and Sicyonians say further about this river that it is foreign and not indigenous, for Mæander they say flowing down from Celænæ through Phrygia and Caria, and falling into the sea at Miletus, travelled to the Peloponnese and made the river Asopus. And I remember to have heard something of the same kind from the people of Delos of the river Inopus, which they say came to them from the Nile. And moreover there is a tradition that the same Nile is the river Euphrates, which was lost in a lake and re-emerged as the Nile in the remote part of Ethiopia. This is what I heard about the Asopus. As you turn towards the mountains from Acro-Corinthus is the Teneatic gate, and a temple of Ilithyia. Now Tenea is about 60 stades from Corinth. And the people of Tenea say that they are Trojans, and were carried away captive by the Greeks from Tenedos, and located here by Agamemnon: and accordingly Apollo is the god they hold in highest honour.
And as you go from Corinth along the coast in the direction of Sicyon there is a temple, which was burnt down, not far from the city on the left hand of the way. There have been several wars in the neighbourhood of Corinth, and fire has consumed, as one would indeed expect, both houses and temples outside the city walls: this was they say a temple of Apollo, and burnt down by Pyrrhus the son of Achilles. I have also heard another account, that the Corinthians erected this temple to Olympian Zeus, and that it was some accidental fire that burnt it down. And the people of Sicyon, who are near neighbours to the Corinthians, say of their region that Ægialeus the Autochthon first dwelt there, and that what is now called Ægialus in the Peloponnese was called after him its king, and that he was founder of Ægialea a city in the plain: and that the site of the temple of Apollo was the citadel. And they say that the son of Ægialeus was Europs, and the son of Europs Telchis, and the son of Telchis Apis. Now this Apis had grown to such magnitude before Pelops came to Olympia, that all the land inside the Isthmus was called after him Apian. And the son of Apis was Thelxion, and the son of Thelxion was Ægyrus, and his son was Thurimachus, and the son of Thurimachus was Leucippus, and Leucippus had no male children, and only one daughter Chalcinia, who they say bore a child to Poseidon, who was called Peratus, and was brought up by Leucippus, and on his death succeeded to the kingdom as his heir. And the history of Plemnæus the son of Peratus seems to me most marvellous. All his children died that his wife bare to him directly they were born and had uttered the first cry, till Demeter took compassion on him, and coming to Ægialea as a stranger to Plemnæus reared his child Orthopolis. And Orthopolis had a daughter Chrysorthe: she had a child, supposed to be Apollo’s, called Coronus. And Coronus had Corax and a younger son Lamedon.