Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/194

 ISO Outlines of Europe aji History Expansion of Athenian commerce than her later triumphs in art, literature, philosophy, or war. Her factories must have assumed a size quite unprecedented in the Greek world, for of the painted Greek vases — discovered Fig. 76. The Isthmus of Corinth, the Link between the Peloponnesus and Northern Greece The observer stands on the hills south of ancient Corinth (out of range on the left) and looks northeastward along the isthmus, on both sides of which the sea is visible. On the left (west) we see the tip of the Gulf of Corinth (see map, p. 146), and on the right (east) the Saronic Gulf. The commerce across this isthmus from the Orient to the West made the Gulf of Corinth an important center of traffic westward, and Corinth early became a flourishing commercial city. Through this sole gateway of the Peloponnesus (see map, p. 146) passedbackandforthfor centuries the leading men of Greece, and especially the armies of Sparta, some sixty miles distant (behind the observer). The faint white line in the middle of the isthmus is the modern canal — a cut from sea to sea, about four miles long and nearly two hundred feet deep at the crest of the watershed by excavation — which are signed by the artist, about half are found to have come from only six factories at Athens. It is not a little impressive at the present day to see the modern excavator