Isthmus

After the division of the spoils, the Greeks sailed to the Isthmus, there to award the prize of excellence to him who had shown himself most worthy of it in that war.

But when the admirals came and at the altar of Poseidon gave their votes to judge who was first and who second among them, each of them voted for himself, supposing himself to have done the best service.

First of all they set apart for the gods, among other first-fruits, three Phoenician triremes, one to be dedicated at the Isthmus, where it was till my lifetime, the second at Sunium, and the third for Ajax at Salamis where they were.

and, going with good fortune, he won the crown at the Isthmus and at Nemea, and he gave the Muses a field to plough, since he won three times at the gates of the sea, and three times on the sacred ground, according to the ordinance of Adrastus.

And if the life that guides him straight along the path of his fathers has given him as an adornment to great Athens, it must be that the son of Timonous will often reap the finest bloom of the Isthmian games, and be victorious in the Pythian contests.

Zeus the king of the immortals, and he promised that soon he would make one of the Nereids of the golden distaff the sea-dwelling wife of Peleus, after gaining the consent of their brother-in-law Poseidon, who often comes from Aegae to the famous Dorian Isthmus.

And then there were two other joyous victories at the gates of Corinth, and others won by Epharmostus in the vale of Nemea;

With the flowers from these Diagoras has had himself crowned twice, and at the renowned Isthmus four times, in his good fortune, and again and again at Nemea and in rocky Athens;

at Pytho and at the Isthmus, the Graces who love them both brought garlands of flowers to his equally blessed brother for his four-horse team, victorious in the twelve courses of the race.

The following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies proceeded as far as the Isthmus for the invasion of Attica, under the command of Agis son of Archidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians;

For a small force of Lacedaemonians happened too, just at the time when they were in commotion on these subjects, to have advanced as far as the Isthmus, in pursuance of some scheme with the Boeotians.

Yet so far from prosecuting, they actually proposed me for public services, first as Gymnasiarch at the Hephaestia, then as head of the state deputation to the Isthmus and to Olympia, and finallyas Treasurer of the Sacred Monies on the Acropolis.

Yet that thin air will not bring it about that a man should listen to Zeno, or to Arcesilaus, or to Theophrastus, nor will the thick air make him seek victory at Nemea rather than at the Isthmus.

But you set out along the narrow Isthmus, and go to Cecropia’s blessed hill.

But after waiting a brief space he began saying he was on his way to the plains amid the valleys of the Isthmus;

For if I am tamely to submit to this treatment from such as thee, no more will Sinis, robber of the Isthmus, bear me witness how I slew him, but say my boasts are idle, nor will those rocks Scironian, that fringe the sea, call me the miscreants’ scourge.

And to the god resign as sacred land the spot where their bodies were purified by fire, there by the meeting of the triple roads that lead unto the Isthmus.

No, no, indeed, he replied; I want you to trounce him.

but the Athenian horsemen, setting out from Eleusis, had taken dinner at the Isthmus and, after having passed through Cleonae also, chanced to be approaching Mantinea or to be already quartered within the wall in the houses.