Periander’s successor was assassinated after a brief reign, and the tyranny was succeeded by an aristocracy of merchants. Corinth joined the Spartan confederacy, and her life continued to be one of commerce and peace. Her part in the Persian wars was modest, but a recently discovered commemorative inscription for her sons who died at Salamis is of peculiar interest as an example of the “many epitaphs composed by nameless authors in those days of joy and sorrow in various parts of Greece, all marked by the simplicity of a great age, whose reserve, as has been said truly, is the pride of strong men under the semblance of modesty.” The inscription runs: “Salamis the isle of Ajax holds us now, who once dwelled in the city of Corinth between her waters.”[24] Footnote 24: Quoted by J. B. Bury, _History of Greece_, p. 284. The brilliant and varied energies of the Cypselids had given way to the dulness of habitual prosperity. But a light from the past must have seemed to shine again upon Corinth when Pindar, “sailing a mere private in her ship of state,” drew upon the wealth of all her experiences in praising her as the native city of an Olympian victor:— “Therein dwelleth Order and—a sure foundation for the state—her sister Justice, aye and Peace kin-bred, wealth’s stewards for mankind.” “Flow’ring richly, oft on you the hours have bestowed the splendour crowning victory of men preëminent in valour at the sacred games, and often in their manly hearts inspired subtleties of old. Whoever hath devised, to him belongs the deed. Whence came to light the gracious gifts of Dionysus with the dithyramb that wins the ox? Nay, who set measured check upon the harnessed steeds or on the gables of the gods the twofold eagle spread?” Thirty-three years after Pindar’s ode Euripides produced his “Medea.” This is the only Attic drama which has Corinth as its scene, and in it the local allusions are but vague. Until the writing of St. Paul’s epistles no other great literature concerned itself with Corinth. The city’s policies and life from the Persian wars until the battle of Chæronea, though dictated by its trading interests, centred about the fortunes of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. After Chæronea followed the common Macedonian domination. The subsequent Roman occupation of Corinth constitutes the second great period of its history. In 146 B. C. a last effort at rebellion against Rome resulted in savage vengeance executed by Lucius Mummius. Cicero was “moved” by the “ruins” of Corinth; and Antipater of Sidon, not long after the destruction, bewailed its desolation:—