Greece: Painted by John Fulleylove; described by J.A. McClymontM'Clymont, J. A. (James Alexander)
History
Greece: Painted by John Fulleylove; described by J.A. McClymont
M'Clymont, J. A. (James Alexander)
Athens (Greece); Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel
rise till after sunset. In this way the island afforded convenient
shelter for those who were sailing from the Peloponnesus to Italy, and
facilitated Greek traffic with Epirus. It became the seat of a
Corinthian colony in 734 B.C., when Syracuse was also founded, but it
never showed much sympathy or affection for the mother-city. Indeed, the
first sea-battle we read of in authentic history took place between the
ships of Corinth and Corcyra (_c._ 665 B.C.), when the latter came off
victorious. Before the Peloponnesian war broke out there were great
complaints on the part of Corinth on account of due respect not being
shown to her representatives at the public festivals in the
daughter-city; and the subsequent action of the latter in putting
herself under the protection of Athens, when she became involved in
difficulties with Corinth and Epidamnus, was largely the cause of the
great war which proved so injurious to the prosperity and power of
Athens. In the course of its early history Corcyra was the scene of some
terrible conflicts and cruel slaughters, almost without a parallel in
any other part of Greece. Since that time it has passed through many
vicissitudes under Roman, Byzantine, Crusading, Venetian, French, and
British rule.
But the greatest interest of the place arises from the tradition which
identifies it with the Phæacian island _Scheria_, on which Odysseus was
cast after his stormy voyage from the island of Calypso. No remains have
been found of the palace of Alcinous, where Odysseus met with such
generous hospitality, but about two miles from the esplanade at
_Canone_ (One-Gun Battery), near the end of a promontory, we get a view
of the secluded bay or gulf (Lake of Kalikiopoulo) on which the weary
voyager is said to have been cast ashore, at the mouth of a brook
(Cressida), which falls into the lake, and where Nausicaa and her
maidens were amusing themselves after their great washing was over. At a
little distance from the shore lies the rocky islet of Ponticonisi
(“Mouse-Island”), which tradition identifies with the Phæacian ship that
was turned into stone by the wrath of Poseidon, as it was beginning its
homeward voyage to Ithaca with Odysseus on board.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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