Diolkos

The Diolkos was a paved trackway near Corinth built to haul boats overland across the Isthmus, sparing ancient mariners the long and dangerous voyage around the Peloponnese. Its name and purpose were so familiar that the comic playwright Aristophanes coined the phrase "as fast as a Corinthian," a tribute to the trackway's celebrated speed. Goods were its main cargo, though in wartime the route took on a military role. The site's use spanned the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, and rescue excavations between 1997 and 2001 uncovered roads and a late fifth- or early fourth-century BC building complex.