DISASTROUS FIRE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22025, 7 August 1933, Page 7

DISASTROUS FIRE

CORINTH DEVASTATED THOUSANDS HOMELESS (United Press Association.) (By. Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) ATHENS, August 6. (Received August 5, at 5.5 p.m.) Fire has devastated historic Corinth, destroying 500 houses and shops, mostly of wood, built after the earthquake in 1929, The panic-stricken populace fled to the beach. Five thousand people are homeless. Corinth, lying midway between the Aegean and Adriatic, on a rocky isthmus which connects the Peloponnesus with the mainland, has had a long and chequered history. It has in the past been the centre of commerce, art and religion in the Greek archipelago, now pre-eminent, now sacked or ruined, tossed about from ruler to ruler like a child’s shuttlecock, qnd finally in more modern times the victim of severe earthquakes which all but razed it to the ground. It has a legendary origin in 1350 B.c. when it was said to have been founded by iEolian Sisyphus. With varying fortunes it waged wars with surrounding principalities and States until it was finally destroyed by Romans in 146 b.o. It quickly became once more “ the citadel and star of Greece ” under the Roman rule, and it was just before the completion of its rebuilding that St. Paul visited it and established the church there to which he addressed his two epistles. The Qorinthians delighted to worship the deities of love and the sea. Aphrodite’s temples there were the oldest and holiest in Greece. After the Roman era, however, it suffered frequent despoilment. In the third century Alarie sacked it, and in the eighth century the Slavs despoiled it. In 1205 it was taken by the Franks and then fell into the hands of the Turks in 1459. It was held by the Venetians from 1699 to 1715, when it was retaken by the Turks, under whom it sank to a . miserable village. Taken from the Turks in 1822 and returned to Greece, Corinth slowly progressed until it was utterly destroyed by earthquake in 1858. In 1929 after the rebuilding of twin cities which finally joined into one, another earthquake caused heavy damage and loss. The population of Corinth to-day is estimated at about 10,000.