The trade within the city is suggested by the traces of “shops” and by the ruins of the Propylæum of the Agora and of fine colonnades and stoas. Of buildings almost nothing remains, and, save for the foundations of a small unidentified temple, the Temple of Apollo alone represents the numerous sacred precincts of ancient and restored Corinth. The scanty ruins of a theatre recall picturesque stories. The Corinthian theatre of the sixth century, according to Plutarch, was the scene of the discovery of the murderers of the poet Ibycus, an important figure in the history of Greek lyric. A native of Rhegium, he led an adventurous life in harmony with his passionate temperament, and was finally killed by robbers on some lonely unknown shore. In dying he called upon a flock of cranes above his head to avenge him. Their sudden appearance over the theatre at Corinth so startled the assassins that they betrayed themselves, and thus the cranes kept their promise to a poet who had sung with equal ardour of birds and flowers and of the beauty of youth. In the Roman auditorium, according to a story attributed to Lucian, Nero had his servants crush in with the sharp edges of their writing tablets the larynx of a popular professional who had the temerity to out-sing the royal amateur. Lucian also tells a delightful story connected with the Craneum—Skull Place—a frequented suburb of Corinth, where Diogenes the Cynic had set up his jar (not the “tub” of English tradition). When the news came that Philip of Macedon was advancing on the city, the Corinthians, in a fever of anxiety, set to work on their defences. Diogenes, mocking their activity, girded up his blanket, and with a great show of energy went bowling his jar up and down the Craneum. When some of his intimates asked him “Why do you do this, Diogenes?” he said, “I too roll my jar so as not to be the only idle one among so many workers.” The most fortunate result of the excavations at Corinth was the uncovering of the well-house of Peirene. This spring, compared with which the temple columns are young, shared with Acrocorinth the ancient solitude of the plain; gave its waters to the first nameless adventurers who made their way from north and east; served the city of Dorians and Romans; and before the excavators enclosed it was still being used by the washer-women of the neighbouring hamlet. From Periander to the Byzantines, the grateful inhabitants were ever and again moved to build for Peirene a suitable enclosure, and traces of six building periods have been discovered. In the fifth century B. C. the natural rock was hewn into shape. Later generations added architectural panels, façades and colonnades.