In Corinth Periander was the typical despot, powerful and violent, killing his wife and earning the hatred of his sons, overriding the sensibilities of his people, crushing the stronger and richer citizens. And yet by masterly statesmanship, a cultivated taste, and careful paternalism, he brought about the peaceful prosperity which more than one nation in history has preferred to liberty, and created a civilization in which brilliant achievement and temperate life were not incompatible. At no other time was Corinth so great a city. In addition to the older colonies of Syracuse and Corcyra, trading posts were obtained along the northwestern coast of Greece, controlling the commerce of the Adriatic. Rivalry with the cities of Eubœa and with Ægina was succeeded by unquestioned superiority. Alliances were contracted in Asia Minor and in Egypt. At home the enervation of luxury was guarded against by sumptuary laws. That some of these outlived the period may be gathered from a fragment of the comic poet Diphilus, a contemporary of Menander, in which, apparently, a Corinthian reproaches a foreign spendthrift who has come to town and cornered the vegetable market so that the natives have to struggle for the parsley as at the Isthmian games:— “’Tis here the law, good sir, with us Corinthians, If we see anybody in the market-place Forever making showy purchases, to ask On what he lives? By doing what? And then if he Has capital of which the income balances The outlay, to permit him to enjoy his mode Of life. But if it turns out that beyond his means He’s spending money, they shut down on this forthwith, And if he disobeys, impose a fine. And if A man, possessing nothing, lives expensively They hand him over to the executioner!” Periander also, desirous, as Aristotle suggests, of keeping his people too busy to think, stimulated the artistic skill which they had always possessed. A persistent tradition has asserted that Corinthian architects at an early date invented the roof-tiles by means of which temple roofs could be made to slope, thus forming the pediment or “eagle.” The Temple of Apollo was probably built at Periander’s instigation. Corinthian workmanship in terra-cotta, wood, and metal was famous from prehistoric to Roman times. Periander dedicated at Olympia the chest (_cypsele_) in which his father Cypselus had been concealed in infancy, made of cedar wood, gold, and ivory, ornately and exquisitely carved, in Pausanias’s time still one of the finest sights of the place. No bronze was better than that dipped in Peirene, and long before the vases of Corinthian artists were imported or stolen by Roman capitalists they were a part of the conventional display of the _bon vivant_ in Athens.