LEUCAS, according to the opinion of the Alexandrian grammarians, who are great authorities in these matters, is mentioned in the Odyssey and the Homeric Catalogue under the name of NERITON, and was at that time still inhabited by Cephallenians. At a later period it was a Doric settlement of Corinth, when this latter city founded colonies on the Ambracian gulf, in Corcyra, and other islands, with a care which shows that it intended to establish its maritime supremacy in those parts. Those settlements belong partly to the period of the Bacchiadae, and partly to that of Cypselus and Periander. Leucas was formerly connected with the mainland by an isthmus, which was cut through by the Corinthians when they established themselves there. Afterwards the isthmus was sometimes restored and sometimes broken through; and these changes frequently occur, even in the middle ages, for the rivers which flow into the Ambracian gulf, carry with them as much mud as the Achelous, and as Leucas was situated close to the shore, and was separated from the mainland only by a very narrow channel, the mud there accumulated by the current which is very strong in that part. This isthmus was very inconvenient to the navigation of the Leucadians to the Ambracian gulf, as they had to sail round the whole promontory; nothing therefore is more natural than that the canal should have been re-opened from time to time. The opinion of those who imagine that the isthmus was an artificially constructed causeway is absurd, though it is quite conceivable that at the time when the isthmus was uninterrupted, a road may have been made upon it; but this has quite a different meaning. The name Leucas has a double nominative, Leucas and Leucata, of which so many instances occur in Latin in the case of Greek proper names,[64] as Croton and Crotona, Ancon and Ancona, the latter of which is the genuine Latin form. It is said that ὁ Λευκάτας was the rock of Leucas; but there is no foundation for this, it is a mere expedient to get over a difficulty. On Cape Leucas stood the temple of Apollo, and from its precipitous cliff Sappho and others are said to have leapt into the sea because their passionate love was not returned. ANACTORION was a very small and insignificant place, as we see from the notices about it during the Peloponnesian war, for it furnished only one trireme. ACTION can scarcely be called a town, and is remarkable only for the battle fought there, and the temple of Apollo. ALYZIA was likewise unimportant, and deserves to be noticed only as a Corinthian colony, and as an example of the manner in which the Corinthians detached the coast from Acarnania.