Mythology
The original name of Corinth was Efyra. Sisyphus was the first of the king, who is recorded in our mythology as the only man who twice managed to cheat death. For this insult, he was punished in Hades for constantly rolling a stone to the top of a hill, which resembled Acrocorinth, but always just before it reaches the top, the rock leaves its hands and ends up at the foot again. The legend wants Sisyphus to solve, in some way, the problem of water scarcity in the region of Corinth thanks to an agreement he concluded with the river Asopos. The wicked king of Efyra revealed to the river god the thief of his daughter Aegina, who was none other than Zeus, and in return took a spring on the rock of Acrokorinthos.
Sisyphus’ grandson is the famous Bellerefont, who managed to tame the winged horse Pegasus and kill with the help of the gods Chimera, the strange creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a snake’s tail. Bellerophon, however, was punished by the gods with a tragic death when, arriving at the insult, just like his grandfather, he wanted to climb Mount Olympus with Pegasus and live with the gods.
According to the legends, the royal couple Iason and Medea arrived in Corinth, chased, according to one version of the legend, the cruel crime of pedophilia was committed by the princess of Colchis. That is, when Jason, at the urging of the king of Corinth, Creon, decided to marry Glafkis’ daughter, the deceived and betrayed Medea, avenging her husband, slaughtered her two minor children with her own hands. The child killer then took refuge in Heraion of Perachora to hide. Oedipus, who was adopted by the royal family of the city and raised as a prince in Tenea, also arrived in Corinth, chased in a sense and by his own tragic fate. Growing up, Oedipus, in order to amuse his doubts about whether he is a real descendant of Polybus and Merope, asked for an oracle from the oracle of Delphi. Pythia told him that one day he would kill his father and marry his mother, without revealing the truth about his origin. Bitter, he decided not to return to Corinth, to go to Thebes, where he met his real father Laius, whom he killed, while at the entrance of the city he solved the famous riddle of the Sphinx and married his mother Jocasta.
According to the myth, the city of Corinth owes its name to the eponymous hero Corinth, who was the son of Marathon and a distant descendant of the god Hermes.
The Isthmus, the narrow piece of land that connects the Peloponnese with Central Greece, was a point of friction with Corinth, between Poseidon and the Sun. The other gods who judged the controversy decided the Sun to hold the region of Corinth, while Poseidon to rule in the region of the Isthmus.
There, according to legend, the sea washed away Melikertis’s corpse on the back of a dolphin. Melikertis, son of Inos, the mother of Frixos and Elli, from Orchomenos in Boeotia, drowned in the Aegean waters, when his mad mother fell into the sea holding him in her arms.
The rescue of Palaimon. The inhabitants of the area collected the corpse of the unfortunate child, named him Palaimonas and worshiped him as a deity, establishing fights in his honor, the famous Isthmia.
