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Updated: May 19, 2025
This was one reason of the care that they lavished on their fleet, which became very efficient; indeed they began the war with a force of a hundred and twenty galleys. All these grievances made Corinth eager to send the promised aid to Epidamnus. Advertisement was made for volunteer settlers, and a force of Ambraciots, Leucadians, and Corinthians was dispatched.
For all these reasons they despised the Corinthians, and made no secret of their contempt. Remembering the many occasions on which they had been publicly insulted by Corcyra, the Corinthians lent a favourable ear to the petition of Epidamnus, and determined to appropriate the colony to themselves.
As the citizens refused to obey their mandate, they prepared to lay siege to the town, which is situated on an isthmus. When the Corinthians heard of the danger of Epidamnus, they began to make preparations on a much larger scale, collecting a host of new colonists, and a fleet of seventy-five ships to convoy them on their passage to Epidamnus.
The Corcyraeans retorted that if Corinth would withdraw her troops from Epidamnus they would withdraw theirs, or they were ready to let both parties remain in statu quo, an armistice being concluded till judgment could be given.
The Illyrians of Scodra were rendered tributary to Rome; Demetrius of Pharos, who had passed over from the service of Teuta to that of the Romans, was installed, as a dependent dynast and ally of Rome, over the islands and coasts of Dalmatia; the Greek cities Corcyra, Epidamnus, Apollonia, and the communities of the Atintanes and Parthini were attached to Rome under mild forms of symmachy.
Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention along the whole east coast the rise of Ancona belongs to a far later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium it may well be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently discharged their cargoes at Tarentum.
But the Corinthians paid no attention to their overtures, and all being now ready, the great multitude, drawn from all parts of Greece, set sail for Epidamnus. When they reached Actium, at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, they were met by a herald, sent out from Corcyra in a skiff, to forbid their approach.
Accordingly they invited all who chose to go and settle at Epidamnus, and sent the new colonists under a military escort, with instructions to proceed by land to Apollonia, for fear lest they should be obstructed by the Corcyraean fleet, if they went by sea.
Had its sovereigns been disposed to engage in commerce, the Adriatic, with its extensive and safe haven of Epidamnus, in which there were several ports, would have opened the trade to Italy; the Egean Sea, still more advantageous, would have secured the trade of Greece and Asia, by means of its spacious bays, one of which, the Sinus Thermæus, was at least sixty miles long.
This was a mere manoeuvre, to throw the guilt of commencing hostilities on the Corinthians; and meanwhile the Corcyraeans manned their ships, to the number of eighty, and put out to meet the enemy's fleet. In the sea-fight which followed the Corcyraeans gained a complete victory, and on the same day Epidamnus was compelled to capitulate to the besieging force.
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