CORFE CASTLE. 



CORINTH. 



570 



part of the coast. The commerce of the country is limited to China 

 and Japan. Commercial intercourse between China and Corea is 

 carried on not by sea but by means of the narrow road which leads 

 along the coast to the town of Fang-hoan, in Leao-tong. As the 

 district from being uninhabited has become the haunt of numberless 

 ferocious animals, the passage is much dreaded by travellers. Com- 

 merce therefore is principally carried on in winter, when the shallow 

 Hoang-hai is covered with ice along its shores, which are more 

 favourable to the transport of goods than the bad mountain roads. 

 Besides the above-mentioned manufactured goods, gold, silver, iron, 

 rice, fruits, oil, and some other articles are brought by this road to 

 Peking. The commerce between Corea and Japan is limited to that 

 between the island of Tau-sima and the Bay of Chosan, and is carried 

 on by Japanese merchants, who have their warehouses at each place. 

 They import sapan-wood, pepper, alum, and the skins of deer, 

 buffaloes, and goats, with the" manufactured articles of Japan and 

 those brought by the Dutch from Europe ; they take in return the 

 manufactures of Corea and a few other articles, especially ginseng. 



(Broughton ; Maxwell, in Ellis's Journal of Lord Amherit t Embassy ; 

 Basil Hall; Ritter, Asian.) 



CORFE CASTLE, Dorsetshire, a small town, formerly a borough 

 and market-town, in the parish and hundred of Corfe Castle, is 

 situated about the centre of the isle or peninsula of Purbeck, in 

 50 J8' N. lat, 2 3' W. long. ; distant 24 miles E.S.E. from Dor- 

 cheater, and 116 miles S.W. from London by road. Wareham station 

 of the South-Western railway, which is 5 miles from Corfe Castle, is 

 distant 126 miles from London. The population of the parish of Corfe 

 Castle in 1851 was 1966. The living is a rectory, with the curacy of 

 Kingston annexed, in the archdeaconry of Dorset and diocese of 

 Salisbury. 



The town of Corfe Castle consists of two streets ; the houses are 

 built of stone and roofed with tiles. The castle which gives name to 

 the.town was probably built in the 10th century by King Edgar. It is 

 situated on a high hill. Portions of the structure are in the Norman 

 style. Its stateliness and the strength of its position made it in former 

 times a fortress of great importance. It was sometimes the residence 

 of the West Saxon princes. Here King Edward the Martyr was assas- 

 sinated by his step-mother, Elfrida (A.D. 978 or 981). King John in 

 his war with the barons deposited his regalia in this castle for security; 

 and Edward II. when he fell into the hands of his enemies, was for a 

 time imprisoned within its walls. In the great civil war Corfe Castle 

 was stoutly defended for the king by Lady Bankes, wife of Lord Chief 

 Justice Sir John Bankes, the owner of it, with the assistance of her 

 friends and retainers, and of a governor sent from the king's army. 

 It however fell into the hands of the parliamentary forces by 

 treachery in February 1645-6, and was by order of the Parliament 

 dismantled. The ruins are extensive, and from their elevated 

 situation form a very striking object. The castle is separated from 

 the town by a ditch, now dry, which is crossed by a bridge of four 

 Tery narrow high arches. 



The parish church is a large and very ancient fabric, with many 

 portions of Norman and early English architecture : it has an embat- 

 tled and pinnacled tower of the 14th century, a large porch, and two 

 buildings, one on each side of the church, which were formerly 

 chapels, but are now applied to other purposes. The church was 

 much damaged in the great civil war when the castle was attacked, 

 A.D. 1646. Modern repairs and alterations have to a considerable 

 extent destroyed the uniformity of the building. Kingston chapel, in 

 the parish of Corfe Castle, was handsomely rebuilt by the late Earl 

 of Eldon. The Independents have a large and well-built chapel in 

 the town. There are here National and British schools. 



Corfe Castle was a borough by prescription previous to the reign of 

 Elizabeth, who bestowed on it a charter. The borough first sent repre- 

 sentatives to the House of Commons hi the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 

 It was disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. Some of the 

 inhabitants are engaged in the marble and stone quarries in the 

 neighbourhood. The principal occupation is that of raising clay for 

 the potteries. 



(Communication from Corfe Cattle.) 



CORFINIUM. [ABBUZZO.] 



CORFU. [IOJJIAN ISLANDS.] 



<:<i|UGLIANO. [CALABRIA.] 



CORINTH (K.6piv6os), a city of ancient Greece, the capital of a small 

 but wealthy and powerful district, was situated upon the isthmus which 

 connects the northern part of Greece with the Peloponnesus. The 

 Corinthian territory (Corinthia) was bounded N. by the Crisaean Bay, 

 N.E. by Megaris, E. by the Saronic Bay, S. by Argolis, and W. by the 

 territories of Sicyon. The Phoenicians appear to have early formed a 

 settlement on the Acrocorinthus. Tho city was built upon a level 

 rock to the north of a steep and high mountain called the Acrocorin- 

 thus, which served as a citadel, and was included within the wall. 

 (Strnbo, Casaub., p. inth had two ports; the nearer, 



Lechseum, on the Criswan Bay, was connected with the city by two 

 parallel walls of 12 stadia in length each, which were partially destroyed 

 by the Lacedaemonians B.C. 393. (Xenophon, ' Hellen.,' iv. 4, 13.) 

 Thii Imi'liour, which Colonel Leake conceives to have been for the 

 most part artificial, is now nearly filled up ; nil that remains of it is a 

 lagooa near the supposed site. (Leake' s ' Morea,' iii., p. 234.) The 



other port, Cenchrese, on the Saronic Bay, does not appear to have 

 been connected with the city ; it was however a more considerable 

 place than Lechseum, and contained several temples. (Pausan., ii. 2.) 

 A few miles to the north of Cenehrete was a small bay called Schee- 

 nus. Here was the narrowest part of the isthmus, and a kind of canal 

 called the Diholcus, of which there are still some remains, was carried 

 from the harbour of Schoanus to the eastern extremity of Port 

 Lechteum, and ships were run ashore at one of these points and 

 dragged to the other sea. This work existed in the time of Aristo- 

 phanes (' Thesmophor.,' 645) ; but in the Peloponuesiau war it appears 

 that they had a method of transferring naval operations from the 

 Crisseau to the Saronic Bay without draggiug their ships across the 

 isthmus. (Thucyd., ii. 93.) A little to the south of the Diholcus was 

 a wall, which was always guarded when any danger threatened the 

 Peloponnesus. 



The old name of Corinth was Ephyra ; and under this name it was 

 one of the seats of the ^Eolian race. Even in the time of Homer it 

 was called ' the wealthy ' (' Iliad,' ii. 570) ; an epithet which it acquired, 

 according to Thueydides (i. 13), from the commercial spirit of its 

 inhabitants, occasioned by the favourable situation of the town, which 

 threw all the inland carrying trade of Greece into its power ; while 

 the difficulty of weathering Cape Maleae (which was proverbial) made 

 it the emporium of moat of the trade between Asia and Italy. (Strabo, 

 p. 378.) 



About thirty years after the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus 

 (that is, about 1074 B.C.), Ephyra fell into the power of Aletes, the son 

 of Hippotes, a Heracleid, who had slain a soothsayer on the passage 

 from Naupactus, and had been compelled to separate himself and 

 his followers from the army of the Dorians. The city then assumed 

 the name of Corinth, or the Corinth of Jupiter (Miiller, ' Dorians,' i. 5, 

 8) ; and the ^Eolian inhabitants became a subject class, though not 

 altogether deprived of their civic rights. The descendants of Aletes 

 ruled Corinth for five generations with royal power ; but at length a 

 rigid oligarchy was substituted for the monarchical form of govern- 

 ment, and the power was vested in prytanes chosen annually from the 

 powerful Heracleid clan of the Bacchiadae. The members of this 

 clan intermarried only with one another, and consequently kept aloof 

 from all immediate intercourse with their fellow-citizens, whom 

 besides they did not treat with much forbearance. In the year B.C. 

 657, Cypselus, an opulent citizen of ^Eolian descent, putting himself 

 at the head of the lower orders, overthrew the oligarchy without much 

 difficulty, and assumed the sovereign power. Although he taxed and 

 oppressed the Dorian caste so much that many of them were obliged 

 to emigrate, he seems to have possessed the full confidence of the 

 great mass of the citizens, and always reigned without a body-guard. 

 His son Periander, who succeeded to his authority, occupies a very 

 prominent place in the ancient history of Greece. He was much more 

 despotic than his predecessor ; he had a bodyguard of 300 men, and 

 trampled at pleasure upon the rights of his countrymen. His reputa- 

 tion for wisdom (by which we must understand that practical wisdom 

 which consists in governing men) procured him a place among the 

 seven sages of Greece. Upon his death in B.C. 583, his power devolved 

 upon his nephew Psammetichus, the son of Gordias, who after three 

 years was deposed by the Lacedaemonians. The former aristocratical 

 form of constitution was then restored, but doubtless it was less exclu- 

 sive than the hereditary oligarchy of the Bacchiadae, and Corinth 

 remained an oligarchical state till the beginning of the 4th century B.C. 

 In the Peloponnesian war, which was in some measure brought about by 

 them, the Corinthians were staunch supporters of the Lacedaemonians, 

 and the bitterest enemies of Athens. About B.C. 394 a democratical fac- 

 tion endeavoured to overthrow the aristocracy, and to unite Corinth with 

 Argos, but without any permanent success. (Xenoph. ' Hellen.,' iv. 4.) 

 Timophanes re-established the monarchical form of government by 

 means of the mercenaries whom he commanded ; but he was soou 

 removed by his own brother Timoleon by assassination. (Aristot., 

 ' Polit.,' v. 6 ; Corn. Nepos., ' Timol.,' c. i. ; Plutarch, ' Timol.,' iv.) 

 Like the other states of Greece, Corinth felt the influence of the Mace- 

 donian power, and was garrisoned by Macedonians under Antigonus, 

 but liberated by Aratus. (Pausan., ii. 8, 4.) The Corinthians took 

 the lead in the Achaean confederacy, and were at first allies of the 

 Romans (Pausan., vii. 8, 3) ; but at last the temptations held out by 

 the wealth of the place, and the insults which the Corinthians had 

 offered to the Roman embassy (Strabo, p. 381), led to the plunder and 

 destruction of the town by L. Mummius, in B.C. 146, according to an 

 express decree of the Roman senate. All the males were slain ; the 

 women and children were sold as skives ; and after the Roman soldiers 

 had pillaged this the richest city in all Greece, it was at a signal given 

 set on fire and reduced to ashes. (Liv., ' Epit.,' liii.) Many works of 

 art were destroyed, but some of the finest pictures and statues were 

 removed to Rome. (Strabo, p. 381.) Corinth was restored by Julius 

 Cscsar about 100 years after its conquest by Mummius, and peopled 

 with freedmen, who enjoyed the privileges of a Colonia. It soon rose 

 again to be a populous and prosperous city, and when St. Paul visited 

 it 100 years after it had been rebuilt by Julius Caesar, it was the 

 residence of the Proconsul of Achtea, Two of the epistles of St. Paul 

 are addressed to the flourishing Christian church which he founded in 

 Corinth. When Pausanias visited Corinth in the 2nd century of our 

 era, there were still many fine buildings and other monuments of the 



