Strabo Geography 8.6.22
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[8.6.22] The beginning of the seaboard on the two sides is, on the one
side, Lechaeum,
and, on the other, Cenchreae,
a village and a harbor distant about seventy stadia from Corinth.
Now this latter they use for the trade from Asia,
but Lechaeum
for that from Italy.
Lechaeum
lies beneath the city, and does not contain many residences; but long walls
about twelve stadia in length have been built on both sides of the road
that leads to Lechaeum.
The shore that extends from here to Pagae
in Megaris
is washed by the Corinthian
Gulf; it is concave, and with the shore on the other side, at Schoenus,
which is near Cenchreae,
it forms the "Diolcus."1
In the interval between Lechaeum
and Pagae
there used to be, in early times, the oracle of the Acraean Hera;
and here, too, is Olmiae, the promontory that forms the gulf in which are
situated Oenoe
and Pagae,
the latter a stronghold of the Megarians
and Oenoe
of the Corinthians. From Cenchreae
one comes to Schoenus,
where is the narrow part of the isthmus, I mean the "Diolcus"; and then
one comes to Crommyonia. Off this shore lie the Saronic and Eleusinian
Gulfs, which in a way are the same, and border on the Hermionic Gulf. On
the Isthmus
is also the temple of the Isthmian Poseidon,
in the shade of a grove of pinetrees, where the Corinthians used to celebrate
the Isthmian Games.
Crommyon
is a village in Corinthia,
though in earlier times it was in Megaris;
and in it is laid the scene of the myth of the Crommyonian sow, which,
it is said, was the mother of the Caledonian boar; and, according to tradition,
the destruction of this sow was one of the labors of Theseus.
Tenea,
also, is in Corinthia,
and in it is a temple of the Teneatan Apollo;
and it is said that most of the colonists who accompanied Archias,
the leader of the colonists to Syracuse,
set out from there, and that afterwards Tenea
prospered more than the other settlements, and finally even had a government
of its own, and, revolting from the Corinthians, joined the Romans,
and endured after the destruction of Corinth.
And mention is also made of an oracle that was given to a certain man from
Asia,2
who enquired whether it was better to change his home to Corinth:
8,6,22,n2.
This might be the country of Asia
or the city of Asea
(in Arcadia),
the name of which, according to Herodian 2.479, was also spelled "Asia."
8,6,22,n3.
For the story of King
Tennes of Tenedos,
see Paus.
10.14.1 and Diod.
Sic. 5.83.
8,6,22,n4.
The quotation is a fragment otherwise unknown.
"Blest is Corinth,
but Tenea
for me."
But in ignorance some pervert this as follows: "but Tegea
for me!" And it is said that Polybus
reared Oedipus
here. And it seems, also, that there is a kinship between the peoples of
Tenedos
and Tenea,
through Tennes3
the son of Cycnus,
as Aristotle
says;4
and the similarity in the worship of Apollo
among the two peoples affords strong indications of such kinship.
8,6,22,n1.
See 8. 2. 1 and footnote, and cp. 8. 6. 4.