timelets

On the one hand, you want to live by the sea and take advantage of commerce opportunities. On the other hand, you don't want to live by the sea because of piracy:

With respect to their towns, later on, at an era of increased facilities of navigation and a greater supply of capital, we find the shores becoming the site of walled towns, and the isthmuses being occupied for the purposes of commerce and defence against a neighbour. But the old towns, on account of the great prevalence of piracy, were built away from the sea, whether on the islands or the continent, and still remain in their old sites. For the pirates used to plunder one another, and indeed all coast populations, whether seafaring or not.
...
Planted on an isthmus, Corinth had from time out of mind been a commercial emporium; as formerly almost all communication between the Hellenes within and without Peloponnese was carried on overland, and the Corinthian territory was the highway through which it travelled.

-- Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War.

need to diagram the dilemma and its solution.
also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piraeus#Ancient_and_medieval_times