The Isthmian games were trietêric, that is, celebrated in every alternate year; in one of the spring months, about April or perhaps the beginning of May (the Greek months being lunar, no one of them would coincide regularly with any one of our calendar months, year after year); and in the second and fourth Olympic years. From Thucydides, viii, 9, 10, we know that this festival was celebrated in April 412 B.C.; that is, towards the end of the fourth year of Olympiad 91, about two or three months before the festival of Olympiad 92.
Dodwell (De Cyclis Diss. vi, 2, just cited), Corsini, (Diss. Agonistic. iv, 3), and Schneider in his note to this passage of Xenophon,—all state the Isthmian games to have been celebrated in the first and third Olympic years; which is, in my judgment, a mistake. Dodwell erroneously states the Isthmian games mentioned in Thucydides, viii, 9, to have been celebrated at the beginning of Olympiad 92, instead of the fourth quarter of the fourth year of Olympiad 91; a mistake pointed out by Krüger (ad loc.) as well as by Poppo and Dr. Arnold; although the argumentation of the latter, founded upon the time of the Lacedæmonian festival of the Hyakinthia, is extremely uncertain. It is a still more strange idea of Dodwell, that the Isthmian games were celebrated at the same time as the Olympic games (Annal. Xenoph. ad ann. 392).
[652] See Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen in Griechenland, chap. i, p. 3. The modern village and port of Lutráki derives its name from these warm springs, which are quite close to it and close to the sea, at the foot of the mountain of Perachora or Peiræum; on the side of the bay opposite to Lechæum, but near the point where the level ground constituting the Isthmus (properly so-called), ends,—and where the rocky or mountainous region, forming the westernmost portion of Geraneia (or the peninsula of Peiræum), begins. The language of Xenophon, therefore, when he comes to describe the back-march of Agesilaus is perfectly accurate,—ἤδη δ᾽ ἐκπεπερακότος αὐτοῦ τὰ θερμὰ ἐς τὸ πλατὺ τοῦ Λεχαίου, etc. (iv, 5, 8).
[653] Xen. Hellen. iv, 5, 4.
Xenophon here recounts how Agesilaus sent up ten men with fire in pans, to enable those on the heights to make fires and warm themselves; the night being very cold and rainy, the situation very high, and the troops not having come out with blankets or warm covering to protect them. They kindled large fires, and the neighboring temple of Poseidon was accidentally burnt.
[654] Xen. Hellen. iv, 5, 5.
This Œnoê must not be confounded with the Athenian town of that name, which lay on the frontiers of Attica towards Bœotia.
So also the town of Peiræum here noticed must not be confounded with another Peiræum, which was also in the Corinthian territory, but on the Saronic Gulf, and on the frontiers of Epidaurus (Thucyd. viii, 10).
[655] Xen. Hellen. iv, 5, 5-8.
[656] Xen. Hellen. i, 5, 14. See Vol. VIII, Ch. lxiv, p. 165 of this History.