CORFU AND ITS NAMES.
1875.
The great argument to establish the fact of a long-abiding Slavonic occupation in Greece has always been the changes in local nomenclature, the actual Slavonic names and the Greek names which have displaced older Greek names. The former class speak for themselves; the latter class are held to have been given during the process of Greek reconquest. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that there is a large amount of truth in this doctrine, if only it is kept in moderation, and is not pressed to the extreme conclusions of Fallmerayer. But it is important to note that the change from one Greek name to another has taken place also in cases when there has been no foreign settlement, no reconquest, no violent change of any kind. One of the greatest of Greek islands has lost one Greek name and has taken another, without the operation of any of the causes which are said to have brought about the change of nomenclature in Peloponnêsos. Crete and Euboia, we may say in passing, seem to have changed their names, when in truth they have not; but Korkyra really has changed its name. It had, for all purposes, become Corfu—in some spelling or other—till the modern revival—unwisely, we must venture to think—brought back, not the true local Korkyra (Κόρκυρα), but the Attic and Byzantine Kerkyra (Κέρκυρα). City and island alike are now again Κέρκυρα; or rather we cannot say that the city is again Κέρκυρα, as the modern city never was Κέρκυρα at all, nor even Κόρκυρα. The modern town of Corfu—in its best Greek form Κορυφώ—stands on a different site from the ancient town of Korkyra, and there can be little doubt that the change of name is connected with the change of site.
The legendary history of the island goes up, we need not say, to the Homeric tales. That Korkyra was the Homeric Scheriê was an accepted article of faith as early as the days of Thucydides. His casual phrase goes for more than any direct statement. He connects the naval greatness of the Korkyraians of his day with the seafaring fame of the mythical Phaiakians (ναυτικῷ πολὺ προέχειν ἔστιν ὅτε ἐπαιρόμενοι καὶ κατὰ τὴν τῶν Φαιάκων προενοίκησιν τῆς Κερκύρας κλέος ἐχόντων τὰ περὶ τὰς ναῦς). Nearly a thousand years later Prokopios is equally believing, though he goes into some doubts and speculations as to the position of the isle of Kalypsô. His way of describing the island should be noticed. With him the island is the Phaiakian land, which is now called Korkyra (ἡ Φαιάκων χώρα, ἣ νῦν Κέρκυρα ἐπικαλεῖται). Against this description we may fairly balance that of Nikêtas (ἡ Κερκυραίων ἄκρα, ἣ νῦν ἐπικέκληται Κορυφώ), with whom the promontory of the Kerkyraians is now called Koryphô. The two answer to each other. To talk of Κερκυραίων ἄκρα was as much an archaism in the eleventh century as to talk of Φαιάκων χώρα was in the sixth. The everyday name of the island in the days of Prokopios was still Κόρκυρα or Κέρκυρα. In the days of Nikêtas it was already Κορυφώ.
We put the two phrases of Prokopios and Nikêtas together, because they are turned out as it were from the same mould. But there is no doubt that the change of name had happened a good while before Nikêtas, and there is some reason to believe that it was the result of causes which are set forth in the narrative of Prokopios. The earliest mention of Corfu by its present name seems to be that in Liudprand, who calls it "Coriphus" in the plural, the Greek Κορυφούς. The change therefore happened between the sixth century and the tenth, the change doubtless of site no less than the change of name. And no time seems more likely for either than the time which followed the wasting expedition of Totilas which Prokopios records. Then doubtless it was that the old city, if it did not at once perish, at least began to decay; a new site began to be occupied; a new town arose, and that new town took a new name from its most remarkable physical feature, the κορυφώ, the two peaks crowned by the citadel, which form the most striking feature in the entrance to the harbour of modern Corfu.
One argument alone need be mentioned the other way, and that is one which perhaps is not likely to present itself to any one out of Corfu itself. The local writer Quirini quotes a single line as from Dionysios Periêgêtês, which runs thus:—
κείνην νῦν Κορφὺν ναῦται διεφημίξαντο.
Dionysios is a writer of uncertain date; but he may safely be set down as older than Prokopios. If then he used the later name, and used it in a form more modern than the Κορυφώ of Nikêtas, the whole argument would be set aside, and the name of Corfu would be carried back to a much earlier time. But where Quirini got his verse is by no means clear. We have looked in more than one edition of Dionysios, and no such verse can we find. The only mention of Korkyra is in a verse which runs thus:—
καὶ λιπαρὴ Κέρκυρα, φίλον πέδον Ἀλκινόοιο.
Nor does the commentator Eustathios say one word as to the change of name. We can only conceive that the line must have been added as a gloss in some copy, printed or manuscript, which was consulted by Quirini.
We will assume then that, as far as the island is concerned, Korkyra and Corfu—in its various spellings—are two successive names, one of which supplanted the other, while, as far as the city is concerned, they are strictly the names of two distinct though neighbouring cities, one of which fell as the other rose. And now the question comes, Is the island of Korkyra the Scheriê of Homer? Is his description of Scheriê and the city of Alkinoos meant for the description of Korkyra or any part of it, whether the historical city or any other? We must remember that the general witness of antiquity in favour of Korkyra being Scheriê loses a good deal of its weight when we consider that the ancient writers felt bound to place Scheriê somewhere, while no such necessity is laid upon us. Bearing this in mind, the plain case seems to be that it is far more likely that Scheriê was nowhere at all. In dealing with Scheriê and its inhabitants, we are not dealing with an entry in the Catalogue of the Iliad, the Domesday of the Mykênaian empire; we are simply dealing with a piece of the romantic geography of the Odyssey. Everything about the Phaiakians and their land reads as if the whole thing was as purely a play of the imagination as the Kyklôpes and the Laistrygones. It is indeed quite possible that, even in describing purely imaginary lands, a poet may bring in his remembrance of real places, just as the features of a real person may be reproduced in the picture of an imaginary event. The poet, in painting Scheriê, may have brought in bits of local description from Korkyra or from any other place. But that is all. As we read the story, it seems quite as reasonable to look on the map for Nephelokokkygia as to look on the map for Scheriê. The thinkers of the days of Thucydides or of some time before Thucydides, deeming themselves bound to place Scheriê somewhere, fixed it at Korkyra. The reason doubtless was that the Phaiakians are spoken of as the most distant of mankind, far away from any others, and that Korkyra really was for a long time the most distant of Greek settlements in this region. When Korkyra was once ruled to be Scheriê, the process of identification naturally went on. Spots received Homeric names. Alkinoos had his grove and his harbour in the historical Korkyra. All this is the common course of legend, and proves nothing for either geography or history. Yet the tale of Scheriê, of Alkinoos, Arêtê, and the charming Nausikaa, is not simply one of the loveliest of tales. Scheriê knew the use of wheeled carriages; therefore Scheriê had roads. Alkinoos, the head king, was chief over twelve lesser kings. Here we get real history, though history neither personal nor local. Scheriê itself may safely be looked for in the moon; but the roads of Scheriê and the Bretwalda of Scheriê have their place in the early history of institutions.
Other names of the island are spoken of, as Drepanê and Makris, descriptive names which perhaps never were in real use, and which, if they were, were supplanted by the historical name of Korkyra. We must again repeat that Korkyra, not Kerkyra, is the genuine local name. It is the spelling on the coins of the country; it is the spelling of the Latin writers, who would get the name from the island itself; it is the spelling of Strabo. But it is equally plain that in Greece generally the spelling Κέρκυρα prevailed. It is so in Herodotus and the Attic writers; it is so in Polybios; it is so in the Byzantine writers, who of course affect Attic forms. It must never be forgotten that, from the time of Polybios, perhaps from an earlier time than his, down to the present moment, written Greek has been one thing, and spoken Greek another. Polybios wrote Κέρκυρα, while its own people called it Κόρκυρα, just as he wrote Ἦλις, while its own people called it Ϝᾶλις. The difference has been thought to have its origin in some joke or sarcasm—some play on κέρκος, κέρκουρος, and the like. But the literary form may just as likely be simply a tempting softening of the local form. One point only is to be insisted on, that the syllable Κορ in Κόρκυρα, and the syllable Κορ in Κορυφώ, have nothing to do with one another. The latter name is no corruption of the elder; it is a genuine case of one Greek name supplanting another—perhaps rather a case of a Greek name, after so many ages, supplanting a name which the first Greek colonists may have borrowed from earlier barbarian inhabitants. In this case the change implies no change of inhabitants, no change of language. It is a change within the Greek language itself, which can be fully accounted for by historical causes. It therefore teaches that changes of name, such as the Slavonic theory insists on in Peloponnêsos, though they do often arise from new settlements and reconquests, do also come about in other ways.
It is for the mythologist to find out whether Homer had Korkyra in his eye when he described the mythic Scheriê. This, be it again noted, is a perfectly reasonable subject for inquiry, and in no way implies any historical belief in the legend. It is simply like asking whether the real Glastonbury at all suggested the mythic Avalon. History begins to deal with Korkyra in the eighth century B.C., when the settlement of the Corinthian Chersikratês added the island to the Greek world. From that day onward the island has a long and eventful story, reaching down to our own times. But, before that story begins, the historian may fairly ask of the ethnologist what evidence, what hints of any kind, there are as to the people whom the Corinthian colonists found settled in the island. It is not likely that they found so promising a site wholly uninhabited. Some branch of the great Illyrian race, the race which is still so near to the island, and which still supplies it, if not with inhabitants, at least with constant visitors, may well be supposed to have made their way into so tempting an island. The harbours of Corfu would surely attract the seafaring Liburnians. We are then brought to the common conditions of a Greek colony, planted, as usual, among pre-existing barbarian inhabitants, and, as Mr. Grote has so strongly enforced, sure to receive a dash of barbarian blood among some classes of its members. The dêmos of Korkyra may well have been far from being of pure Hellenic descent—a fact which, if it be so, may go far to explain the wide difference between the dêmos of Korkyra and the dêmos of Athens. Since the time of the Corinthian settlement, the island has undergone endless conquests and changes of masters, each of which has doubtless brought with it a fresh infusion into the blood of its inhabitants. But since the time of Chersikratês there has been nothing like extirpation, displacement, or resettlement. Korkyra has ever since been an Hellenic land, though a succession of foreign occupations may have marred the purity of its Hellenism. And one point at once distinguishes it from all the neighbouring lands. Among all the changes of masters which Korkyra or Corfu has undergone, they have always been European masters. It is the one land in those parts that has never seen the Turk as more than a momentary invader, to be speedily beaten back by European prowess.
So much for the origin and the name of the greatest of the group which in modern geography has come by the strange name of the Ionian Islands. The only sense in which that name has any meaning is if it be taken as meaning the Islands of the Ionian Sea. It ought to be needless to remind any one that the word in that sense has nothing whatever to do with the real Ionians, with the Ionic dialect or the Ionic order. It certainly has an odd effect when one hears the people of Doric Korkyra spoken of as "Ionians;" and we have even seen the whole group of islands spoken of as "Ionia," to the great wrong of Chios, Samos, Ephesos, and others of the famous Ionian twelve. But having said so much about names, we must in another paper say something of the long series of revolutions which mark the history of Korkyra under its two names, and of their effect on its present state.