Thus far on our Hellenic journey we have been able to contrast cities which were swept away for ever in days which we call ancient with cities which have kept on an uninterrupted being to our own day. The city of the two seas, the city which guards the Isthmus, the city beside whose hill-fortresses all rival hill-fortresses seem as molehills, has a history which is unlike either, a history which, among the great cities of Greece, is wholly her own. And, as none of the great cities of Greece has seen such ups and downs of fortune as Corinth, so none has won for itself a more varied fame. There is no Greek city whose name has entered into more familiar sayings; it even sank to be a kind of a byword in very modern times. Holding, never a first, but always a high secondary place, alike in Grecian legend and in the most brilliant times of Grecian history, Corinth came to be the centre of all Grecian history in the days of the second birth of Grecian freedom; it was swept from the earth by Roman vengeance as none other of the great Grecian cities ever was; it arose afresh as a Roman colony, again under the influence of sky and soil to change into a Greek city; it kept on its Greek character through the ages of Slavonic invasion, to become one of the points most fiercely struggled for in the warfare of Turk and Venetian, to be taken and retaken by the patriots and the oppressors of yet later warfare. And now, after so long and so busy a life, after the endurance of so many blows at the hand of man, the last blow has been dealt by the hand of nature. The last of many earthquakes has sealed the doom of Corinth yet more effectually than it was sealed when Mummius swept it with the besom of destruction. Mummius simply destroyed, and what Mummius destroyed Cæsar could restore. But the last overthrow of Corinth has given her a neighbour and a rival. Old Corinth is forsaken; New Corinth has sprung up by the shore. New Corinth may well grow, and she may have ages of prosperity in store for her. But while New Corinth grows and flourishes by the shore, the only chance for Old Corinth at the foot of the mountain is that New Corinth may grow to such a degree as some day to annex the venerable site as one of its suburbs.