The destruction of Corinth is a painful event, and excites our horror, although the Corinthians have no claim upon our affection: the barbarity of Mummius was far worse than that of Alaric, its second destroyer. For a period of one hundred years the city lay in ruins, until it was restored by Julius Caesar; but the colony was one of freedmen, and for centuries afterwards it remained a Latin town, of which many coins with Roman names, and the inscription _Colonia Laus Iuli Corinthus_, have come down to us. Pausanias says, that, although it was the centre of Greece, it was yet a foreign city with a foreign population. It was, comparatively speaking, a small place without any important buildings;[22] but, like all Italian towns, it had a forum, and the temples all around the place, which had been destroyed by the savage Mummius, lay in ruins. In the middle ages, at the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Corinth was of some importance as a manufacturing town; it was taken by Robert Guiscard under the last despots of Peloponnesus. When in 1204 the peninsula came into the hands of the Franks, it had sunk very low, and was sinking still more during the repeated wars, ever since 1460, down to its conquest by the Turks under Amurath II., until at length, ten years ago (1817), even the village of Corinth (called Cordos by the Turks) was completely reduced to ashes. Its two harbours are entirely filled up with sand, and unfit for large vessels, so that the sources of the prosperity of Corinth seem to be dried up for ever. At present, when ships sail to Europe, they steer round Peloponnesus, and no one can think of Corinth as an intermediate staple of commerce. Julius Caesar, properly speaking, had restored Corinth only to gratify his own feelings, but he ought to have peopled it with Greeks; it would, however, have been impossible to make it a great city. Delos had taken its place in commerce, the sea had become unsafe in parts, Greece was desolate and deserted, commerce had altogether taken a different route, the great commercial roads had taken other directions, and the chief places were in Egypt, Syria, and on the Euxine; Alexandria and Italy were now the central points; and it was impossible for Corinth to rise again. Its whole prosperity now depended upon the productiveness of its olive plantations, and even very recently a person might walk for hours among olive trees, which grow there wild; but few parts of its territory are fit for agriculture. A misunderstanding may easily arise in regard to the well _Pirene_: it is not situated below the rock, but on the acropolis, though not on the summit of it. At the foot of the rock there is another spring, which was believed to be connected with Pirene by subterraneous passages.