Diolkos
A paved trackway across the Isthmus of Corinth used to transport ships overland, functioning as an ancient railway for nearly 700 years.
The Story of Diolkos
The Diolkos was a stone-paved road built across the 6-kilometre Isthmus of Corinth around 600 BC by the tyrant Periander. Ships or their cargoes were loaded onto wheeled vehicles (holkoi) and dragged across grooved tracks cut into the limestone pavement. This allowed merchants and navies to avoid the dangerous 400-kilometre voyage around the Peloponnese. Corinth's wealth derived from controlling both ports — Lechaeum on the Gulf of Corinth and Cenchreae on the Saronic Gulf — and the Diolkos was the link between them. Poseidon, lord of the sea, was Corinth's patron deity, and the Isthmian Games at his nearby sanctuary celebrated the maritime culture the Diolkos served. The trackway was used continuously from the 7th century BC into the 1st century AD. Augustus transported warships across it during the Actium campaign. Remains of the grooved pavement are still visible at the western end near the modern canal.
Parents
Periander (builder)
Symbols
Fun Fact
The Diolkos was a railway 2,200 years before Stephenson's Rocket. Grooved stone tracks, wheeled vehicles, a fixed route — it meets every definition of a rail transport system except using steam power. When engineers planned the Corinth Canal in the 19th century, they were solving the same problem Periander tackled in 600 BC. The canal, finally completed in 1893, replaced the world's oldest railway with the world's narrowest major shipping canal.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
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