The Greeks hauled ships across the Isthmus of Corinth on the Diolkos. The surviving paving is real; the wheeled carrier is a reconstruction. Ancient accounts support warship crossings, but how often the road carried ships remains debated.

• ✓ajaonline.org
• ✓penelope.uchicago.edu
• ✓corinthcanal.com

The ancient Greeks built a road for ships. Not beside the water. Across dry land. Here is why. A narrow neck of land joins southern Greece to the mainland. Two seas, only about four miles apart. But a ship had to sail around the whole peninsula. That meant hundreds of miles, past Cape Malea and its dangerous winds. So the Greeks took the ship out of the sea. The Diolkos was a paved stone trackway across the isthmus. A wheeled carrier is the usual reconstruction: support the hull, then haul it along the road. Grooves survive in parts of the paving. The exact hauling equipment does not. Ancient accounts describe warships crossing the isthmus. But this was not a constant conveyor belt of merchant ships. How often it was used is debated. Nero tried digging a canal. That Roman project was abandoned. A canal finally opened here in eighteen ninety-three. Long before ships could sail through this land, people found a way to haul them across it. The carriers are gone. The stone road remains. Would you choose the road, or risk the sea? Follow for more interesting facts.