The idea of cutting a canal is said to date as far back as the reign of Periander, already mentioned, who was accounted one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. It was entertained by Demetrius Poliorcetes and Julius Cæsar, but Nero was the first to make any serious attempt to carry it out. “A great multitude of soldiers and prisoners, including apparently 6000 Jews sent by Vespasian from Judæa, were assembled at the isthmus, and operations were begun with much solemnity, apparently about the end of 67 A.D. The emperor himself, after chanting hymns in honour of the marine deities, set the example by giving a few strokes with a golden pickaxe, which the governor of Greece formally handed to him. Then the multitude fell to work in earnest, the soldiers turning up the earth, and the prisoners hewing at the rocks. A beginning was made on the western side of the isthmus, but excavations had been carried for a distance of only about four furlongs when they were suddenly suspended in consequence of evil tidings which Nero received of conspiracies at Rome and disaffection among the armies of the West.”[4] The modern canal, which was undertaken by a French Company in 1881, was completed by a Greek Company in 1893. To one sailing through it has a much more striking appearance than the Suez Canal, owing to the height of its banks on either side, for the most part cut out of sandy or alluvial soil, and rising like walls to a height of more than 100 feet. At one point the railway passes over it at a height of about 170 feet above the water. The canal is about three and a half miles long. It reduces the voyage from the Ionian Islands to Athens to about half the distance involved in sailing round Cape Matapan, but unfortunately it is too narrow (only about 75 feet wide) to be of much use for the larger ships. As a rule it is only the Greek coasting vessels that take advantage of it, and there is little or no prospect of its ever becoming one of the great highways to the East. Not far from the eastern end of the canal is the precinct that was sacred to Poseidon, where the Isthmian Games were held every second year. The stadium can still be traced, memorable, among other things, as the scene of the inauguration of Alexander the Great as the acknowledged prince of Greece, and of the proclamation of liberty to the Greeks, one hundred and forty years [Illustration: OFF CAPE MATAPAN, SOUTHERN GREECE Sketch from the Messageries steamer _Nerthe_.]