Pirene (fountain)

In the 2nd century AD, the traveler Pausanias describes Pirene as follows: On leaving the market-place along the road to Lechaeum you come to a gateway, on which are two gilded chariots, one carrying Phaethon the son of Helius, the other Helius himself.

The legend about Peirene is that she was a woman who became a spring because of her tears shed in lamentation for her son Cenchrias, who was unintentionally killed by Artemis.

The spring is ornamented with white marble, and there have been made chambers like caves, out of which the water flows into an open-air well.

Moreover near Peirene are an image and a sacred enclosure of Apollo; in the latter is a painting of the exploit of Odysseus against the suitors.

The Upper Pirene spring, with its own etiological myth, is located on Acrocorinth, the acropolis of Corinth.