402 HISTORY Of GREECE. and steady supremacy of the governing few, with contented obedience on the part of the many, as the characteristic of Dorian states, and mutability not less than disturbance as the prevalent tendency in Ionia, yet there is no Grecian community to whom the former attributes are more pointedly ascribed than the Ionic Messalia. The commerce of the Massaliots appears to have been extensive, and their armed maritime force sufficiently pow- erful to defend it against the aggressions of Carthage, their principal enemy in the western Mediterranean. CHAPTER XXIII. GRECIAN COLONIES IN AND NEAR EPIRUS. ON the eastern side of the Ionian sea were situated the Gre cian colonies of Korkyra, Leukas, Anaktorium, Ambrakia, Apol Ionia, and Epidamnus. Among these, by far the most distinguished, for situation, foi wealth, and for power, was Korkyra, now known as Corfu, the same name belonging, as in antiquity, both to the town and the island, which is separated from the coast of Epirus by a strait varying from two to seven miles in breadth. Korkyra was found- ed by the Corinthians, at the same time, we are told, as Syracuse. Chersikrates, a Bacchiad, is said to have accompanied Archias on his voyage from Corinth to Syracuse, and to have been left with a company of emigrants on the island of Korkyra, where he founded a settlement. 1 What inhabitants he found there, or how rather appears from Aristotle (Polit. v, 5, 2; vi, 4-5). that the senate was originally a body completely close, which gave rise to discontent on the part of wealthy men not included in it: a mitigation took place by admitting into it, occasionally, men selected from the latter. Some authors seem to have accused the Massaliots of luxurious and effeminate habits (see Athcnrcus, xii, p. 523). 1 Strabo, vi, p. 269 : compare Timoeus, Fragm. 49, cd. Gullcr ; Fr. 53, ed Didot.
