Corinth, with her mighty natural fortress, more than a mile in circuit and 1800 feet high, her two seas and her command over a narrow isthmus, was admirably situated for commerce. She was one of the earliest states to develop a tyranny, to found an empire, and to revive the arts. Her colonies were mostly towards the west, and in Corcyra she had a valuable stepping-stone for Sicily and Italy. It is at Corinth that a new type of vase-painting appears early in the sixth century. It is very obvious that the motive was still derived from textile art, probably from Assyrian embroidery. The result, with its rich purples, is very pleasing from a decorative point of view, though the actual scenes and ornaments are unmeaning, and therefore un-Greek.[32] The coin types of Corinth in the sixth century are already beautiful designs. It was Cypselus, tyrant of Corinth, who dedicated at Olympia that famous chest of which we have spoken, with its parallel bands of mythological scenes. Periander, his son, was originally one of the Seven Sages, though Plato wanted to cast him out for a tyrant. The name of the third, Psammetichus, proves the close intercourse of Corinth with Egypt. It was Corinth under her tyrants that evolved a new poetical form, the dithyramb, and that first erected a Doric temple in Greece proper. This grave and splendid style of architecture was very probably based upon Egyptian models, but with characteristically Greek modifications. The earliest Greek temples seem to have been of wood and sun-baked brick. Such originally was the temple of Hera at Olympia, but as the wooden columns fell down one by one they were replaced with stone. In many features of Doric architecture it is possible to trace development from wooden technique. The whole roofing system is one of joists and beams, even when the roof is of stone. The triglyphs are the ends of the beams, translated into stone. The metopes were originally left open, then filled with terra-cotta reliefs, and finally with slabs of stone carved in high relief. In the earliest Doric temples the columns are very thick and heavy and the intercolumnar spaces very narrow. These things indicate that the architect had not yet fully realised the superior strength of stone. An ignorant or hasty glance might suggest that there was no progress in Greek architecture, but the close observer sees how the succeeding generations of architects continued to make subtle improvements, rendering the shafts more graceful, the mouldings more refined in their curves, correcting most cunningly the optical illusions of a straight row of tall columns, improving the lighting arrangements, improving the masonry, substituting stone for wood and precious marble for stone, adding ornament where it was appropriate, as on the frieze inside the peristyle, rejecting it where it was unsuitable, as on the architrave, which, being a main beam, _ought_ to look heavy and strong, reaching forward, in fact, to the