Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Peirene.
The gallery
The Death of Cenchirias, Son of Neptune and the Nymph Peirene
Sophie Rude, 1821–1823
Sophie Rude paints Peirene mourning Cenchrias — the son by Poseidon whose death (by Artemis' arrow in some tellings) drives the nymph's grief into the Corinthian spring that still bears her name. Neoclassical pathos makes the naiad mother the face of the fountain's aetiology.
Fountain of Peirene, Ancient Corinth
Unknown (photograph of archaeological remains), Roman phase visible
The excavated Fountain of Peirene at Corinth — the sacred spring Pausanias and the poets tie to the nymph Peirene, mother of Leches and Cenchrias. Stone and water keep her name at the city's heart long after the myth of her tears.
In play
Fountain of Peirene
Corinth's famous spring — watered by the naiad's tears in myth, a civic landmark from archaic to Roman times.
Pirene (nymph)
Naiad of Corinth, consort of Poseidon, mother of the harbour-eponyms Leches and Cenchrias — the spring that Pegasus also struck in some accounts.
Corinth
Peirene's city — the isthmus power whose harbours and spring still remember her children and her grief.