Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/97

 76 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. the Phoenicians doubtless seized this safe anchorage and kept it as long as they could. Then, too, despite his Greek name and his figuring among Achaean dukes arrayed against Troy, Palamides, as the inventor of nautical art, of beacons set burning at the mouth of harbours, of weights and measures, of ciphering and letters, is the very embodiment of Phoenician culture. That all this is not mere invention and trick of the fancy, is deduced from the perfect agreement of these stories ; they seem to point to the fact, that on this shore the strangers from over the sea began sooner and carried farther the education of the Hellenic tribes. There is yet another district, the isthmus connecting Pelop- onnesus with Central Greece, where we also find indications of positions that once were in the hands of Phoenicians. Tradition places here, as guardian of the passes, that Sisyphus whom it credits with the perfidious craftiness which it imputed to the Semite trader.^ Here Sisyphus establishes the worship of the sea-god Melicertes. who is no other than the Tyrian Melkarth ; and in Corinth, which he founds, we recognize a Phoenician name.'^ Corinth was the home of Aphrodite ; she remained the chief god- dess of that town as long as the town itself endured. But as at Paphos and Cythaera, here also she ever preserved the stamp of her foreign origin, proved by the ceremonial performed by a crowd of eunuch-priests attached to the temple. Keen-sighted traders, such as the Phoenicians unquestionably were, could not but have taken in at a glance the enormous advantages of the low-lying isthmian ridge as a standard-point for navigation, parting as it does two seas. It may well be that they were the first to grasp how much would be gained — though at the cost of immense expenditure of time and labour — in connecting the Ionian with the -^gean sea, by a road, or **diolkos" as they said, which should convey merchandise and vessels over the isthmus, rather than expose them to the risks of a long voyage round Peloponnesus and its stormy headlands. On this spot, the meeting-place of all the routes which united Peloponnesus with Central Greece, they established a market for all time. When they had to yield up to others the privilege of being universal arbiters in commercial transactions, the industries which 2 The name of Corinth is but an Hellenized form of the Semitic word karih^ "town.'
 * Homer, Odyssey,