The absence of a canal in antiquity was not so inconvenient as might be supposed, for light ships could be transferred on land from one port to another by means of a portage or tramway, of which traces are still visible. This “Diolkos” was invented even before the age of the tyrants, when the Corinthians were first developing their naval resources. At Lechæum they built the first artificial harbour, and at its docks the trireme was gradually perfected through the necessity of protecting the slow and heavy merchantmen by a fighting convoy. Thucydides refers to the Diolkos in describing the events of 412 B. C., when a general revolt against Athens began under Chios. The Spartans had sent word that thirty-nine ships lying at anchor at Lechæum must be dragged across the Isthmus as quickly as possible to the port on the Gulf of Ægina and thence despatched to Chios. Twenty-one had been transferred and were eager to set sail, but the Corinthians insisted on waiting till the Isthmian Games had been celebrated. The result was that the Athenians who went to the games discovered what was going on and Athens was able to balk her enemies.
The Isthmian Games were held biennially in the Corinthian territory less than a mile southwest of the little modern town of Isthmia, at the eastern end of the canal. The Athenians frequented them especially because they were said to have been instituted by Theseus. Socrates visited them on the only occasion of his leaving Athens “except with the colours.” The sacred precinct, excavated by the French, has yielded small remains of the temples and statues, theatre and stadium, and Pindar’s Isthmian odes are still the noblest memorial of the ancient contests. In the Stadium, now but a natural hollow, two dramatic events took place. In 336 B. C. Alexander had himself proclaimed leader of the Greeks before his Persian expedition, and in 196 B. C. Flaminius announced to the Greeks their “freedom.” It was probably also here, at least it was at the Isthmian Games, that Nero perpetrated his mocking renewal of Greek independence.
In this Stadium, within reach of the two seas which had been highways for wealth and luxury, vigorous youths from century to century gave proof of restrained and temperate living. Even those Corinthians to whom Paul’s preaching was “foolishness” would be hospitable to his illustration:—
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.”
CHAPTER XI
DELPHI
“When to Apollo’s world-famed land we came,
Three radiant courses of the sun we gave
To gazing and with beauty filled our eyes.”
Euripides, Andromache.[[25]]
If leisure is the nurse of sympathetic understanding, “three radiant courses of the sun” are none too many to give to Delphi. The inner meaning of this centre of Greece needs not only to be quarried out of history and literature, but also to be garnered from the abundant beauty of a landscape which created as well as framed a unique religious life.