The extraordinarily wide currency of the ware denotes not merely its superiority, but also that of the trade-centre which exported it. This need not necessarily have been identical with the place of manufacture. Many signs, especially the occurrence of the vases in quantity in the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, point to the fact that the great trading city of Corinth took over the sale of the ware and gradually replaced it by its own products. The vases localized with certainty in Corinth by their alphabet give an immediate continuation of the Protocorinthian, and one [Illustration: PLATE XX. Fig. 41. ANIMAL FRIEZE FROM AN EARLY CORINTHIAN JUG. Fig. 42. ANIMAL FRIEZE FROM A CORINTHIAN JUG.] can only ask whether this manufacture simply transferred its chief workshops to Corinth or whether Corinth in the closest imitation of late Protocorinthian ware developed a new style, which thanks to the commercial capacity of the Corinthians could drive the older competitor out of the field: its sphere of influence, as we saw, replaces the Protocorinthian, nay, encroaches still further on the Ionian region (Samos, Naukratis, Pontus). The Corinthian style did not long retain the metallic clearness and precision of its predecessor, neither in its shapes, which for the most part it takes over (Figs. 35, 38, 39, 43), nor in its decoration, which exhibits the final triumph of the ornamental style. The dark ground technique becomes rarer; the scaly fields continue for a time, white rosettes painted on the black neck and edge are in favour to the end; the indispensable tongue ornament on the shoulder gradually comes to be rendered by the brush. The animal-frieze vases, which are quite in the forefront of the interest, link on to the later Protocorinthian in decoration and in the style of the figures, but soon alter the types in the sense of a broader rendering of form, and the rosettes in the field also show this change. On the common ware, which was turned out along with the good, one gets as a result coarse animals and filling patterns like mere blots; but even technically perfect vases show a strong inclination to overfill the field, which one might bring into causal connexion with the Corinthian textile art famed in antiquity, if the vase picture repudiated the brush technique more than it does.