Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/239

 ACCESSIBILITY BY SEA. 228 lakes : Xenophon boasts of the double sea which embraces so large a proportion of Attica, Ephorus of the triple sea, by which Boeotia was accessible from west, north, and south, the Eu- boean strait, opening a long line of country on both sides to coasting navigation. 1 But the most important of all Grecian gulfs are the Corinthian and the Saronic, washing the northern and north-eastern shores of Peloponnesus, and separated by the narrow barrier of the Isthmus of Corinth. The former, espe- cially, lays open JEtolia, Phokis, and Bceotia, as well as the whole northern coast of Peloponnesus, to water approach. Co- rinth, in ancient times, served as an entrepot for the trade between Italy and Asia Minor, goods being unshipped at Lechasum, the port on the Corinthian gulf, and carried by land across to Cenchrese, the port on the Saronic : indeed, even the merchant-vessels themselves, when not very large, 2 were con- veyed across by the same route. It was accounted a prodigious advantage to escape the necessity of sailing round Cape Malea : and the violent winds and currents which modern experience attests to prevail around that formidable promontory, are quite sufficient to justify the apprehensions of the ancient Greek merchant, with his imperfect apparatus for navigation. 3 1 Xenophon, DC Vcctigal. c. 1 : Ephor. Frag. 67, ed. Marx; Stcphan. Bya. Boiuria. chreas illinc, angustiarum termini, longo et ancipiti navium ambitu (i. e. round Cape Malea), quas magnitude plaustris transvehi prohibet: quam ob causam perfodere navigabili alveo angustias eas tentavere Demetrius rex, dictator Caesar, Caius princeps, Domitius Nero, infausto (at omnium exita patuit) incepto." The dfo/U-df, less than four miles across, where ships were drawn across, if their size permitted, stretched from Lechamm on the Corinthian gulf, to Schcenus, a little eastward of Cenchrese, on the Saronic gulf (Strabo, viii. p. 330). Strabo (viii. p. 335) reckons the breadth of the SIO/.KO; at forty stadia (about 4| English miles) ; the reality, according to Leake, is 3i English miles (Travels in Morea, vol. iii. ch. xxix. p. 297). 3 The north wind, the Etesian wind of the ancients, blows strong in the ^Egean nearly the whole summer, and with especially dangerous violence at three points, under Karystos, the southern cape of Euboea, near Capo Malea, and in the narrow strait between the islands of Tenos, Mykonos, and Delos (Ross, Reisen auf den Griechischen Inseln, vol. i. p. 20). Se also Colonel Leake's account of the terror of the Greok boalmon, from tha
 * Pliny, H. N. iv. 5, about the Isthmus of Corinth : " Lechaete hinc, Cen