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[1] As you go up to the summit of the Acrocorinth, there is a shrine [
nāos] of Aphrodite. The statues [
agalmata] there are Aphrodite herself, armed, also Hēlios, also Eros with a bow. The spring [
pēgē], which is behind the shrine [
nāos], they say was the gift of Asopos to Sisyphus, who knew, so they also say, that Zeus had abducted Aegina, the daughter of Asopos, but refused to give information to the seeker before he had some spring-water given him on the Acrocorinth. When Asopos granted this request, Sisyphus turned informer, and because of that he receives—if anyone believes it—punishment in Hādēs. I have heard people say that this spring-water and Peirene are the same, and that the water in the city flows there underground all the way from here.
[2] This Asopos rises in the Phliasian territory, flows through the Sikyonian, 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 Oinone, while from Thebe is named the city below the Kadmeia. The Thebans do not agree, but say that Thebe was the daughter of the Boeotian, and not of the Phliasian, Asopos.
[3] The other stories about the river are current among both the Phliasians and the Sikyonians, for instance that its water is foreign and not native, in that the Maeander, descending from Kelainai through Phrygia and Caria, and emptying itself into the sea at Miletus, goes to the Peloponnesus and forms the Asopos. 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.
[4] Such is the account I heard of the Asopos. When you have turned from the Acrocorinth into the mountain road you see the Teneatic gate and a sanctuary of Eileithuia. The town called Tenea is just about sixty stadium-lengths 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.
[5] As you go from Corinth, not into the interior but along the road to Sikyon, there is on the left not far from the city a burned 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 Pyrrhos 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.
[6] The Sikyonians, the neighbors of the Corinthians at this part of the border, say about their own land that Aigialeus was its first and aboriginal inhabitant, that the district of the Peloponnesus still called Aigialos was named after him because he reigned over it, and that he founded the city Aigialeia on the plain. Their citadel, they say, was where is now their sanctuary of Athena; further, that Aigialeus begat Europs, Europs Telchis, and Telchis Apis.
[7] This Apis reached such a height of power before Pelops came to Olympia that all the territory south of the Isthmus was called after him Apia. Apis begat Thelxion, Thelxion Aigyros, the Thourimakhos, and Thourimakhos Leukippos. Leukippos had no male issue, only a daughter Calchinia. There is a story that this Calchinia mated with Poseidon; her child was reared by Leukippos, who at his death handed over to him the kingdom. His name was Peratos.
[8] What is reported of Plemnaios, the son of Peratos, seemed to me very wonderful. All the children borne to him by his wife died the very first time they wailed. At last Demeter took pity on Plemnaios, came to Aigialeia in the guise of a strange woman, and reared for Plemnaios his son Orthopolis. Orthopolis had a daughter Khrysorthe, who is thought to have borne a son named Koronos to Apollo. Koronos had two sons, Korax and a younger one Lamedon.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .