Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/428

Rh 398 C O 11 1 K T Ii The wealth and prosperity of the city caused its rulers to plan early a scheme of colonization. Professor Ernst Curtius has given reasons for supposing that at the time of the Lclantian war, of which Thucydides speaks, between Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea, Corinth was, together with Samos, a firm ally of the former city, and that it was in company with the Chalcidians that the Corinthians made their first attempts at colonization. That these attempts were, through a series of years, made almost constantly in a western rather than an eastern direction was due to the position of ^Egina, which island lay right in the track of travellers from Corinth to Asia Minor or the Euxinc, the ^Eginetans having maintained a constant hostility to the Corinthians from the earliest times, until their island was finally conquered by the Athenians, who had received for the war a detachment of ships sent from Corinth. It was in the 8th century that the two greatest colonies, Corcyra and Syracuse, were founded. Syracuse remained, even in the time of her greatest prosperity, a grateful and dutiful daughter, but Oorcyra very soon after its foundation was engaged in hostilities with the mother-city, and, though reduced to obedience in the time of Periander, finally ousted Corinthian commerce from the northern part of the Adriatic, and maintained undivided supremacy over the cities of Dyrrhachium and Apollonia. But south of the straits of Sybota, which divided the southern point of Corcyra from the mainland, Corinth was supreme. To her the towns of Achaia, Phocis, and Locri, on both sides of the Corinthian Gulf, looked as their head ; she ruled all the rich country watered by the Achelous, which region, indeed, became in time almost more Corinthian than the isthmus itself, while all the Dorian cities of Sicily and Southern Italy looked to the navy of Corinth to keep up their connection with the mother country. It is said that Corinth adhered in a special manner to the customs of Phoenicia as regards colonies, at any rate the city was in this respect successful beyond the rest of Greece. Expeditions were directed to some promising point on the Illyrian or Acarnanian coast, the approval of the Delphic oracle was secured, and volunteers were invited from all parts of Greece. At the head of the colony was placed some cadet of the Bacchiadae, or another great family, and some of the mercantile nobility accompanied it, retaining in the new home much of the oligarchical predominance which they had enjoyed at home. It was probably the preservation of this aristocratic tinge which made the union closer between colony and mother-city, .so that the Corinthian envoys could boast (Thucydides, i. 38) that Corinth was of all cities the most popular with her colonies ; and, with the exception of Corcyra, few of the new settlements gave the mother-city any trouble. Alone among cities Corinth imposed on all her colonies a uniform coinage, the different issues of which are so similar in appearance that it has been doubted if Corinth did. not keep in her own hands all minting of silver. After Psammetichus had been put down, a timocracy was instituted, with hierarchy of grades. Corinth set an early example in that system of political classification according to revenue which was afterwards adopted in Rome and other cities. At the same time, it is clear that in so com mercial a city an organization of this kind would not produce an exclusive land-owning aristocracy. It was about the middle of the 5th century B.C. that Corinth started upon a more restless and aggressive career. At that time her very existence was threatened by the growing greatness of Athens, which city had gained the mastery of Megara and predominant power among the cities of Achaia. Soon after the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, an Athenian fleet under Tolmides appeared in the Corinthian Gulf, and seizing upon Naupactus, and expelling thence the Locrian colonists whom Corinth had stationed there to defend her interests, established in that city a colony of Messanian fugitives, in order to cut the com munications of Corinth close to their base. Hence the bitter and vindictive animosity felt by the Corinthians towards Athens, which caused them, after that city had surrendered to Lysander, to urge upon the Spartans its total destruction. No sooner, however, was the Spartan supremacy undisputed, than a party among the Corinthians, whether seduced by Persian gold, or following notions of supposed expediency, began to cabal with Athens and Argos against the Lacedaemonians, with whom the aristo cracy of the city still sided. Hence bitter dissensions and many calamities to the Corinthians, whose city was more than once the battle-field of parties, as well as of the Argive and Lacedaemonian troops. The events of the war hence arising, and called Corinthian, belong to the history of Greece. The city, weakened by sedition, fell easily into the hands of Philip II. of Macedon, whose successor, the fifth Philip, called it, in virtue of its splendid position, one of the three fetters of Greece. As the chief city of the AchaBan League during the latter part of its existence, Corinth claimed a share in the 2d century in the latest glories of Greece. There Flamininus proclaimed the liber ties of Greece; and as the ally of Piome, Corinth reached a high point of wealth and splendour. But that alliance was broken off, and the result was the total destruction of the city by Mummius in 146 B.C., and the sale of its inhabitants into slavery. The richness of the city at this period in all the accumulated results of Greek science and art was im mense, as we know from the statements of Polybius, an eye-witness. The Romans secured a vast spoil of statues, pictures, and furniture, of which a part was purchased by Attains of Pergamus, a part sent in many ships to Rome, and much also destroyed in mere wantonness. Notwith standing, the place remained a quarry whence in after ages were dug innumerable treasures of art. The Corinthian territory was given to Sicyon, and the site lay waste until the time of Julius Ceesar. The great dictator settled there a colony of needy Greeks and Roman frecdmen, which he called after himself Laus Julia, and made the seat of government of Achaia. Between the new Corinth and the old the. site was the only bond of connection, yet the historic splendours of the place seem to have mastered the minds of the new inhabitants, who before long began to resume all the local cults, and to claim the past glory of the city as their own. Latin, however, as we know from coins, remained the official language, and the duumviri were usually the freedmen of the emperors or of Roman nobles. The new city, from its position, soon acquired a great trade with Ephesus, Thessalonica, and other cities. For this reason it attracted St Paul, who visited it more than once, and spent many months there in converse with Aquila and Priscilla, and in preaching in the synagogue. Hence were written the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, and here was founded a church which claimed for a long period the deepest anxieties of the apostle and after his death of Clement, the temptations to sensual indulgence and antinomian heresies being here stronger than in most of the Greek cities. Unfortunately, it is only of this second Corinth that we possess detailed descriptions. It was visited both by Strabo and Pausanias. From the former we learn that the sum mit of the Acrocorinthus bore a little temple of Aphrodite, and that just below the summit gushed out the fountain Peirene, which once more rose to the surface down in the lower city. Just below this fountain were the remains of a marble building, supposed to have been the remains of the palace of the monarch Sisyphus. From the account of Pausanias (ii. ch. 1-4) we may gain a clear notion of the