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Updated: June 19, 2025
The Barbarian was vanquished; the impossible accomplished. Hellas and Athens were their own, with none to take away. They saw the blue bay of Phaleron. They saw the craggy height of Munychia, Salamis with its strait of the victory, farther yet the brown dome of Acro-Corinthus and the wide breast of the clear Saronian sea.
As soon, therefore, as they were come to the turning which led up to the citadel, he desired her to go on before him to the theater, but for himself, bidding farewell to the music, farewell to the wedding, he went on faster than one would have thought his age would have admitted to the Acro-Corinthus, and, finding the gate shut, knocked with his staff, commanding them to open, which they within, being amazed, did.
Besides, Cleomenes sued for that command over the Achaeans as one that would return the honor of that title with real kindnesses to the cities; whereas Antigonus, being declared absolute general by sea and land, would not accept the office unless Acro-Corinthus were by special agreement put into his hands, following the example of Aesop's hunter; for he would not get up and ride the Achaeans, who desired him so to do, and offered their backs to him by embassies and popular decrees, till, by a garrison and hostages, they had allowed him to bit and bridle them.
Aratus was worn out by anxiety, his long march, and night of fighting, and as he stood leaning on his spear he could hardly rally strength to address them, and while giving back to them the keys of their city, which they had never had since Philip’s time, he exhorted them to join the League, which they did. The Macedonians were expelled, and Aratus put an Achaian garrison into the Acro-Corinthus.
It is so commanding that he who stands on the westmost pinnacle can look across the windy hill of the Pnyx, across the brown plain-land and down to the sparkling blue sea with the busy havens of Peiræus and Phalerum, the scattered gray isles of the Ægean, and far away to the domelike crest of Acro-Corinthus.
The trumpets were sounded, and every street was full of lights and swarmed with men; but Aratus, meantime, was trying to climb the steep rocks, and groping for the path leading up to the citadel. Happily the fog lifted for a moment, the moon shone out, and he saw his way, and hastened up to the Acro-Corinthus, where he began to fight with the astonished garrison.
But the Argives had not patience till he could arrive, but, making a sudden insurrection, fell upon Cleomenes's soldiers, and drove them into the citadel. Cleomenes having news of this, and fearing lest, if the enemy should possess themselves of Argos, they might cut off his retreat home, leaves the Acro-Corinthus and marches away by night to help his men.
One can look southward toward Salamis; then to the left rises the rounded slope of brown Pœcilon sundering Eleusis from its greater neighbour, Athens. Look behind: there is a glimpse of the long violet crests of Cithæron and Parnes, the barrier mountains against Bœotia. Look to right: beyond the summits of Megara lifts a noble cone. It is an old friend, Acro-Corinthus.
Aratus, immediately after, made himself master of the temple of Juno and haven of Lechaeum, seized upon five and twenty of the king's ships, together with five hundred horses and four hundred Syrians; these he sold. The Achaeans kept guard in the Acro-Corinthus with a body of four hundred soldiers, and fifty dogs with as many keepers.
In the middle of the Isthmus of Corinth stood the city, and in the midst was a fort called Acro-Corinthus, perched on a high hill in the very centre of the city, so that whoever held it was master of all to the south, and old Philip of Macedon used to call it the Corinthian shackles of Greece. The king of Macedon, Antigonus III., now held it; but Aratus devised a scheme to take it.
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