Ancient Coin Stories

Nearly since its founding, Korkyra had daddy issues. Legend has that it all started with Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, and his son Lykrophon, who held a grudge because he believed Periander had killed his mother.

Family reunions were a mess until Periander had the bright idea to ship Lykrophon to Korkyra. The fresh air and separation would do him good, or so he thought. That worked out relatively well, and in his old age Periander thought it would be a bright idea for Lykrophon to rule Corinth, and Periander take Korkyra.

Well, Korkyra wasn’t fond of that plan, so they killed Lykrophon. In retaliation, Periander took three hundred Korkyran men and castrated them. This caused a strain in their relations.

Later on, Thukydides reports the first Greek naval battle occurred between Korkyra and Corinth. By that time, Korkyra had grown to one of the top naval powers in Greece. Some time after that, a different dispute between Korkyra and Corinth was a principal cause of the Peloponnesian War. The two cities continued bickering after that time.

While Alexander the Great didn’t have much to do with Korkyra, Kassander twice put it under siege. The first time they were rescued by Kleonymos of Sparta, while the second involved an intervention by Agathokles of Syracuse, who then took control over the island.

When Agathokles’ daughter Lanassa married Pyrrhos, Agathokles gave Korkyra to his new son-in-law as a wedding present, which was pretty nice. Unfortunately for Pyrrhos, she soon divorced him in favor of his arch-enemy Demetrios I Poliorketes and gave him Korkyra.

The island was taken back by Pyrrhos’ son Ptolemy, who performed a daring raid with but sixty soldiers in 274 BCE. When both Ptolemy and Pyrrhos were killed in battle at Argos two years later, Korkyra remained part of the Epeirote League.