The Greek island now known as Corfu, separated from the coast
of Epirus by a strait only two to seven miles in breadth, bore
in ancient times the name of Korkyra, or, rather, took that
name from its ruling city. "Korkyra [the city] was founded by
the Corinthians, at the same time (we are told) as Syracuse.
… The island was generally conceived in antiquity as the
residence of the Homeric Phæakians, and it is to this fact
that Thucydides ascribes in part the eminence of the Korkyræan
marine. According to another story, some Eretrians from Eubœa
had settled there, and were compelled to retire. A third
statement represents the Liburnians as the prior
inhabitants,—and this perhaps is the most probable, since the
Liburnians were an enterprising, maritime, piratical race, who
long continued to occupy the more northerly islands in the
Adriatic along the Illyrian and Dalmatian coast. … At the
time when the Corinthians were about to colonize Sicily, it
was natural that they should also wish to plant a settlement
at Korkyra, which was a post of great importance for
facilitating the voyage from Peloponnesus to Italy, and was
further convenient for traffic with Epirus, at that period
altogether non-Hellenic. Their choice of a site was fully
justified by the prosperity and power of the colony, which,
however, though sometimes in combination with the mother-city,
was more frequently alienated from her and hostile, and
continued so from an early period throughout most part of the
three centuries from 700-400 B. C. … Notwithstanding the
long-continued dissensions between Korkyra and Corinth, it
appears that four considerable settlements on this same line
of coast were formed by the joint enterprise of both,—Leukas
and Anaktorium to the south of the mouth of the Ambrakiotic
Gulf—and Apollonia and Epidamnus [afterwards called
Dyrrhachium], both in the territory of the Illyrians at some
distance to the north of the Akrokeraunian promontory [modern
Cape Glossa, on the Albanian coast]. … Leukas, Anaktorium
and Ambrakia are all referred to the agency of Kypselus the
Corinthian. … The six colonies just named—Korkyra,
Ambrakia, Anaktorium, Leukas [near the modern St. Maura],
Apollonia, and Epidamnus—form an aggregate lying apart from
the rest of the Hellenic name, and connected with each other,
though not always maintained in harmony, by analogy of race
and position, as well as by their common origin from Corinth."
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 23._
See, also, IONIAN ISLANDS.
KORKYRA: B. C. 435-432.
Quarrel with Corinth.
Help from Athens.
Events leading to the Peloponnesian War.
See GREECE: B. C. 435-432.
KORKYRA: B. C. 432.
Great sea-fight with the Corinthians.
Athenian aid.
See GREECE: B. C. 432.
KORKYRA: Modern history.
See IONIAN ISLANDS;
and CORFU.
----------KORKYRA: End----------
KORONEA, OR CORONEA, Battle of (B. C. 394).
See GREECE: B. C. 399-387.