Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/427

Rh is a staple industry of Coringa. The chief exports are teak, salt, and piece-goods ; the imports are silk, paper, and copper. In 1787 a gale from the north-east occa sioned an inundation which swept away the greater part of the town with its inhabitants; and in 1832 another storm desolated the place, carrying vessels into the fields and leaving them aground. Of Europeans the French, who still hold the neighbouring settlement of Yanaon, were the first to establish themselves at Coringa. In 1759 the English took possession of the town, and erected a factory five miles to the south of it.  CORINNA, a Greek poetess, born at Tanagra in Bceotia, of interest for the influence which she exerted on Pindar. The fragmentary traditions which have been preserved represent her now as the poet s friend and instructress, and again as his rival and competitor. By her he is said to have been advised to adorn his poems with the Greek myths, and then when he employed them too lavishly, to have been warned that they ought to &quot;be sown by the hand and not poured forth from the sack.&quot; She also blamed him for having used an Attic idiom in one of his lyrics. The victory which she gained in the poetic contest with her friend in the public games at Thebes is ascribed by Pausanius to her beauty and the free use she made of the local Boeotian dialect; and the story goes that Pindar gave expression to the same opinion by calling her in the heat of his chagrin a &quot; Boeotian swine,&quot; with allusion to a common Greek proverb. By the Greeks she was esteemed as the first of the nine lyrical muses. The fragments of her poetry have been collected by Ursinus, Wolf, Schneider, and Bergk.

1em  CORINTH (now- corrupted into Gortho) was originally called Ephyre, but the name Kopu/0os is as old as Homer. This most populous and thriving of Greek cities was situated at the southern end of the isthmus which connects Peloponnesus with the mainland of Hellas. The citadel. Acrocorinthus, occupied the summit of a precipitous rock, 1886 feet in height, which is in fact an offshoot from the Oneion, a mountain range skirting the northern shore of Achaia, but which appears, especially when viewed from the north, to be detached. From this height the view includes the Geraneian range at the opposite end of the isthmus, and the higher mountains of Northern Greece be hind it, while in the foreground lies to the left the Corinthian Gulf stretching westward, and the Saronic Gulf to the east, together with the strip of flat land which divides the one of these from the other. Another narrow plain stretches along the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf in the direction of Sicyon, and was proverbial in ancient times for the value of its agricultural produce. The city of Corinth lay not at the foot of the hill on which the citadel stood, but on a ledge or shelf of that hill at a height of about 200 English feet. A lofty wall according to Strabo, 85 stadia (about ten miles) in length inclosed both city and citadel, and two walls, each 12 stadia in length, inclosed the road to the harbour of Lechaeum on the Corin thian Gulf; Schoenus and Cenchre3e,the two harbours belong ing to the city on the Saronic Gulf, lay at a greater distance. From its position Corinth enjoyed in prehistoric times two advantages especially important in the infancy of navi gation. On the Jong gulf which stretched from Corinth westwards, called in early times after Crissa, the port of Delphi, and later after Corinth itself, vessels could sail for above 100 miles without losing sight of land and between fertile shores. And sscondly, the natives of Corinth were skilful in dragging vessels of all kinds across from sea to sea, thus saving them the dangers of the perilous voyage round the Peloponnesus. That the Phoenicians did not overlook these advantages we know from the many traces of Phoenician occupation remaining in later times, especially the worship of the Phoenician Athene, Aphrodite Urania (the Sidonian Astarte), and Melicertes (the Tyrian Melkarth). The important cultus, at the isthmus, of Poseidon, the great divinity of the lonians, proves the earliest Greek inhabitants of Corinth to have been Ionian, but Thucydides states that it was under ^Eolian princes. The earliest of these of whom we hear is Sisyphus, according to one legend lover of Medea, according to another grandfather of Bellerophon, the great local hero who tamed the winged horse Pegasus, and slew the monstrous Chimera. The character of mingled greed and cunning, ascribed to Sisyphus, is doubtless intended to embody the qualities which distinguished the people of the commercial city from their rural neighbours. This was in the age preceding the Trojan War. On the return of the Heraclidae the Dorian invaders, after subduing the rest of Peloponnesus, &quot;attacked Corinth, and having mastered it proceeded against Megara and Athens. Corinth fell into the hands of a descendant of Herculesj named Aletes (the wanderer), and was recon stituted on Dorian principles, but not, it would appear, with the same rigidity as Argos, Sicyon, and other cities, for we find eight tribes instead of the usual three, and it is certain that the aristocracy of the city did not disdain to lead in trade, and resembled rather the nobility of Venice than the pure-blooded warrior-caste of other Dorian cities. The most wealthy family was that of the Bacchiadae, the descendants of Aletes, who furnished first a succession of kings, and afterwards yearly prytaneis who ruled with kingly power. It was about 657 B.C. that Cypselus, a Bacchiad on his mother s side, succeeded in overthrowing this oligarchy and, by the aid of the commons, establishing his power at Corinth so firmly that he could even forego the foreign body-guard and the external supports of the Greek tyrant. His son and successor, Periander was some times reckoned among the wise men of Greece, and probably did more than any other man to shape the colonial and mercantile policy of the city. Under him Corinth reached the summit of prosperity, but Periander s family was destroyed by internal dissensions, and his nephew Psammetichus was after a brief reign put down by the Spartans about 584 B.C. It was in the period between Aletes and Psammetichus that lay the golden days of Corinth. Then were made a series of splendid discoveries and inventions, which increased the trade and multiplied the resources of the city, and enabled it to found the numerous colonies which were the basis at once of its wealth, its power, and its policy. To begin with the loftier arts. Arion graced the court of Periander, and secured for Corinth the honour of the in vention of the dithyramb ; Eumelus and Eumolpus, both Corinthians, were among the earliest and the most cele brated of the cyclic poets. Corinthian architecture was renowned until the later time when a light and ornate style of building took its origin and its name from the city. Corinthian pottery was early celebrated, and it is said that the art of ornamenting earthenware was improved at Corinth by Butades, Eucheir, and Eugratnmus. Even paint ing was either introduced into Greece, or was much improved, by the Corinthians Aridices, Ecphantus, and Cleanthes. Still it was in the useful rather than the ornamental and imaginative arts that Corinth most excelled. There the trireme was invented, and the machinery for the transport of ships carried to the highest perfection, while Corinthian bronzes, tables, coffers, and objects of luxury were renowned on all shores of the ^Egean and Adriatic. One of the most remarkable of these pieces of handiwork was the well- known chest of Cypselus, still preserved at Olympia in the time of Pausanias, made of cedar and inlaid with a multitude of figures in gold and ivory, a miracle of archaic art. 