To the left the Albanian Mountains.
rise till after sunset. In this way the island afforded convenient shelter for those who were sailing from the Peloponnesus to Italy, and facilitated Greek traffic with Epirus. It became the seat of a Corinthian colony in 734 B.C., when Syracuse was also founded, but it never showed much sympathy or affection for the mother-city. Indeed, the first sea-battle we read of in authentic history took place between the ships of Corinth and Corcyra (c. 665 B.C.), when the latter came off victorious. Before the Peloponnesian war broke out there were great complaints on the part of Corinth on account of due respect not being shown to her representatives at the public festivals in the daughter-city; and the subsequent action of the latter in putting herself under the protection of Athens, when she became involved in difficulties with Corinth and Epidamnus, was largely the cause of the great war which proved so injurious to the prosperity and power of Athens. In the course of its early history Corcyra was the scene of some terrible conflicts and cruel slaughters, almost without a parallel in any other part of Greece. Since that time it has passed through many vicissitudes under Roman, Byzantine, Crusading, Venetian, French, and British rule.
But the greatest interest of the place arises from the tradition which identifies it with the Phæacian island Scheria, on which Odysseus was cast after his stormy voyage from the island of Calypso. No remains have been found of the palace of Alcinous, where Odysseus met with such generous hospitality, but about two miles from the esplanade at Canone (One-Gun Battery), near the end of a promontory, we get a view of the secluded bay or gulf (Lake of Kalikiopoulo) on which the weary voyager is said to have been cast ashore, at the mouth of a brook (Cressida), which falls into the lake, and where Nausicaa and her maidens were amusing themselves after their great washing was over. At a little distance from the shore lies the rocky islet of Ponticonisi (“Mouse-Island”), which tradition identifies with the Phæacian ship that was turned into stone by the wrath of Poseidon, as it was beginning its homeward voyage to Ithaca with Odysseus on board.
All this local tradition, however, is rejected by a recent explorer, M. Victor Bérard, who has taken enormous pains to investigate the matter. He is convinced that the palace of Alcinous and the whole scene described by Homer in connection with the visit of Odysseus lay on the western side of the island, near the Convent of Palæocastrizza, and he concludes from indications in the poem that the Phæacians had come from the ancient city of Cumæ (Hypereia), driven out by the Œnotrians (Cyclopes). But whatever view we may take on these points there can be little doubt that Corfu, which lay as it were on the outskirts of the ancient Greek world, and not far from Ithaca (to which Odysseus sailed from it in a night), is the island which Homer had in view when he described the home of the Phæacians.
Still more interesting, from a Homeric point of
