The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

Man’s heart is large enough to have good as well as bad qualities. Besides, to have supreme power over equals was a double spur exciting good as well as bad actions. If the intoxication of power inflamed the senses and passions of the usurper, and defiance had to be met by cruelty, it was in Periander’s interest to give his town all the advantages of good government. Also, as he was clever, he knew how to conciliate the people. Force is always admired and worshipped when it comes from the highest, and protects and spares the weak.

After Periander, who died in his bed, Corinth had an aristocratic government and knew no more the tyranny of a single ruler. The people had an assembly but the direction of the important affairs of state was in the hands of a senate. The aristocracy of Corinth which was rich and prudent in governing, watched with jealous care over maintaining its power and it is due to the energy of one of its number that Corinth escaped from a new tyranny.

Of an illustrious family, Timophanes had become the idol of the people. His audacity, his prowess in warfare, his familiarity with the humblest citizens delighted the multitude and seemed to invite him to take the reins of government into his hands. But Timophanes had near him a severe judge in his brother. This brother, though loving him very much and having for a long time screened or excused his faults, ended by killing him in order that Corinth should not be reduced to servitude. The verses Virgil dedicated to the first of the Brutuses might be applied to Timoleon.

This republican fratricide had the misfortune of being cursed by his mother. He lived twenty years, not in repentance but in solitude, and we shall find him again at Syracuse. Corinth had not only founded that celebrated city in Sicily, she had founded other colonies besides, amongst them Corcyra, with which she was a long time at war, accusing the inhabitants of not paying the respect due to a capital. “Our other colonies love and respect us whilst the Corcyreans are arrogant and unjust, to such a point that they have seized Epidamnus, which belongs to us and which they intend to keep.” These were the complaints Corinth made through her deputies, at Athens, against her colonies. However, in spite of the complaints, the Athenians received the alliance of Epidamnus, which had a powerful navy, and which, in their eyes, had the great advantage of being situated on the way to Italy and Sicily.

This determination not to help Corinth, irritated the Corinthians, whose Dorian origin already made them Athens’ natural enemy, and was one of the decisive causes of the Peloponnesian War. It was at the instigation of Corinth that the Peloponnesians held a kind of congress at Sparta, in which they denounced the ambition and audacity of the Athenians who were born, they said, never to have rest and never to allow anybody else to have any.

Before Athens shone by her eloquence, poetry, and art, Corinth was the centre of Hellenic trade and was the sojourn of pleasure. All the merchandise of Europe and of Asia was imported on payment of duty, and all foreigners flocked there more than they did to any other town of Greece. People came from everywhere, from Egypt as well as from Sicily; but Corinth was a town essentially for rich men—it was the town of Venus. The courtesans were honoured. They had the privilege of offering the public vows to Venus, when the goddess was appealed to in a case of great danger. They it was who asked her to grant the salvation of Greece when that country was invaded by Xerxes. When private people had their prayers granted by the goddess they showed their gratitude by offering her a number of courtesans for her temple. All the countries which traded with Corinth provided these charming priestesses.

At Sparta the glory of women was their patriotism, at Athens their intellect, and at Corinth their beauty. Laïs was the queen of the courtesans and received homage from the most important and serious personages of Greece, from philosophers as well as from politicians. She was in reality a Sicilian, captured when a child by the Athenians and sold to Corinth. But the Corinthians idolised her, and always swore she was born amongst them.

Riches and pleasure! It was to the interest of the Corinthians not to get rid of these women, in order to enjoy life, and this was in itself a guarantee against the rule of a demagogue in the city of Periander and of Timoleon. Pindar can say with great truth in one of his Olympics, “Harmony and good legislation are found in Corinth, also justice and peace. The daughters of the prudent Themis dispense happiness to mankind and watch over their cities.”