ABSTRACT
There is no important prehistoric settlement here; in this part of Greece such settlement was concentrated in the Argolid to the south, though Mycenaean remains have been found and there is an interesting Mycenaean cemetery of rock-cut chamber tombs, shaped like tholoi, on the promontory of Perachora which faces Corinth from the north. Even so, the standard description of Corinth in the Homeric poems is ‘wealthy’, and these stock epithets seem best attributed to prehistoric circumstances. But wealthy Corinth is subject to Agamemnon of Mycenae,3 and the term may well apply to the district, with its various settlements, rather than a single palace-dominated centre. Classical Corinth developed from the settlement of a group of Dorian Greeks, the Bacchiadai, during the confused period of movement of population that followed the break up and decline of the Bronze Age states.
