In the year 606 from the founding of the City — that is, in the same year in which Carthage too was destroyed — in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Mummius, the overthrow of Corinth followed upon the ruin of Carthage, and within the brief interval of a single season the wretched fires of two most powerful cities blazed together in different parts of the world.
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCVI, hoc est eodem anno, quo et Carthago deleta est, Cn. Cornelio Lentulo L. Mummio consulibus ruinam Carthaginis euersio Corinthi subsecuta est, duarumque potentissimarum urbium paruo unius temporis interuallo per diuersas mundi partes miserabile conluxit incendium.
For when the praetor Metellus had defeated the Achaeans and Boeotians, joined together, in two battles — that is, first at Thermopylae,
2 nam cum Metellus praetor Achaeos Boeotiosque coniunctos duobus bellis, hoc est primum apud Thermopylas,
and again in Phocis; in the former war twenty thousand were killed and in the second seven thousand slain, as the historian Claudius reports; Valerius and Antias affirm that the battle was fought in Achaea and that twenty thousand Achaeans fell together with their leader Diaeus; Polybius the Achaean, although he was then in Africa with Scipio, nevertheless, since he could not be ignorant of a disaster at home, asserts that there was fighting in Achaea only once, under the leadership of Critolaus, and relates that Diaeus, while bringing up soldiers from Arcadia, was crushed together with his army by that same praetor Metellus;1
3 iterum in Phocide uicisset - quorum priore bello occisa esse XX milia, secundo VII milia caesa Claudius historicus refert, Valerius et Antias in Achaia pugnatum et XX milia Achaeorum cum duce suo Diaeo cecidisse confirmant, Polybius Achiuus quamuis tunc in Africa cum Scipione fuerit, tamen, quia domesticam cladem ignorare non potuit, semel in Achaia pugnatum Critolao duce adserit Diaeum uero adducentem ex Arcadia militem ab eodem Metello praetore oppressum cum exercitu docet;
1Valerius Antias was a single annalist; Orosius (or his source) makes two historians, “Valerius and Antias,” out of him.
but we have already said a good deal about the variance of disagreeing historians, and let this exposed and ill-famed mark of their falsehoods suffice, since those who differ even about the things they themselves saw clearly show that they are little to be trusted in the rest —
4 sed de uarietate discordantium historicorum aliquanta iam diximus, quorum sufficiat detecta haec et male nota mendaciorum nota, quia parum credendum esse in ceteris euidenter ostendunt qui in his quoque, quae ipsi uidere, diuersi sunt -
so, after the defences of all Achaea had been extinguished, while the praetor Metellus was contemplating the overthrow of the forsaken cities, the consul Mummius came suddenly into the camp with a few men. He at once dismissed Metellus and without delay took Corinth by storm, a city then by far the most opulent of all in the whole world, since for many centuries past it had been, as it were, the workshop of all craftsmen and crafts and the common market of Asia and Europe.
5 igitur post extincta totius Achaiae praesidia destitutarum euersionem urbium Metello praetore meditante consul Mummius repentinus cum paucis uenit in castra. qui dimisso statim Metello Corinthum sine mora expugnauit, urbem toto tunc orbe longe omnium opulentissimam, quippe quae uelut officina omnium artificum atque artificiorum et emporium commune Asiae atque Europae per multa retro saecula fuit.
Licence was cruelly given to plunder even the captives, and everything was so filled with slaughter and fire that from the circuit of the walls, as if from a furnace, the conflagration poured upward, narrowed to a single peak. Thus, the greater part of the people having been consumed by sword and flames, the rest were sold into slavery; the city was burned and the walls razed to their foundations; the stone of the walls was reduced to dust, and enormous booty was carried off.
6 permissa crudeliter etiam captiuis praedandi licentia sic omnia caedibus ignibusque conpleta sunt, ut de murorum ambitu quasi e camino in unum apicem coartatum exundaret incendium. itaque plurima parte populi ferro flammisque consumpta reliqua sub corona uendita est; urbe incensa muri funditus diruti sunt; muralis lapis in puluerem redactus, praeda ingens erepta est.
Indeed, since, owing to the multitude and variety of statues and images, gold, silver, and bronze — all the metals together — had flowed mingled into one in that burning of the city, a new kind of metal was produced; and from this, down to the present day, whether from that metal itself or from imitation of it, there is what is called, as tradition records, Corinthian bronze, and Corinthian vessels.
7 sane cum propter multitudinem et uarietatem statuarum simulacrorumque in illo ciuitatis incendio permixta in unum auri argenti atque aeris omniaque simul metalla fluxissent, nouum genus metalli factum est, unde usque in hodiernum diem siue ex ipso siue ex imitatione eius aes Corinthium, sicut memoriae traditum est, et Corinthia uasa dicuntur.