Locrinus agreed to marry Corineus's daughter Gwendolen, but fell in love instead with Estrildis, a captured German princess.

[4] Archbishop Michael Joseph Curley suggests that this name was chosen by Geoffrey due to its similarity to the word Cornwall, and his "naive (or ironic) fondness for eponymy as a form of historical research".

[5] Curley also suggests there is a parallel between Corineus and Hercules in Lucan's Pharsalia, who defeated the giant Antaeus in a wrestling match by lifting him from the earth, the source of his strength.

[7][note 3] The second is a variant of the story of Goídel Glas, in which the hero travels from Egypt to Iberia via a sequence of named places – Africa, then Aras Philaenorum, Lacus Salinarum, between Rusicada and the Mountains of Azaria, along the River Malua through Mauretania to the Pillars of Hercules, then the Tyrrhenian Sea – Geoffrey uses precisely the same sequence of locations for Brutus' journey after getting his prophecy from Diana, and even explains the backtracking from the Pillars of Hercules to the Tyrrhenian Sea by saying Brutus was fleeing from Sirens; it is at this point in the story of the History of the Kings of Britain that Brutus finds Corineus on "the shores" of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

[9][10][11] The fight between Corineus and Gogmagog is described in the History of the Kings of Britain as ending at a place called Saltus Goemagog or 'Goemagog's Leap', which Geoffrey says still retained the name.

[15] Researcher Peter Bartrum suggests that the story may have been based on hill figures of two giants fighting carved into the grass at Plymouth Hoe.

[16] Antiquary Richard Carew believed that the fight may have begun near Totnes, but ended at Plymouth Hoe, with the figures depicting Corineus and Gogmagog; he described them in his Survey of Cornwall (1602): "upon the Hawe at Plymmouth, there is cut out in the ground, the pourtrayture of two men, the one bigger, the other lesser, with Clubbes in their hands, (whom they terme Gog-Magog) and (as I have learned) it is renewed by order of the Townesmen, when cause requireth, which should inferre the same to bee a monument of some moment.

"[21] After massacring the Aquitanians he sets sail for Britain "favoured by gods and winds, and guided by Diana to his destined corner of the world, he enters safe harbour on the Cornish coast at Totnes";[22] Cornwall is described as "flowing with milk and honey.

[24] Locrine (1595), a play attributed to Shakespeare, has Corineius [sic] as a major character, one of two brothers of Brutus, along with Assarachus, and is father to Gwendoline and Thrasimachus.

He lives more than eighty-seven years, dying from a lingering wound he had received in battle with Humber the Hun, and returns as a ghost to witness Locrine's downfall.

[25] Corineus is also a major character in Henry Chettle and John Day's lost play The Conquest of Brute with the First Finding of the Bath which was performed by the Lord Admiral's Men at the Rose in December 1598.