III.

HOW CORINTH GAVE ROME A NEW DYNASTY.



The city of Corinth, in Greece, was one of the most wealthy and
enterprising on the Mediterranean in its day, and at about the time
that Rome is said to have been founded, it entered upon a new period of
commercial activity and foreign colonization. So many Greeks went to
live on the islands around Italy, and on the shores of Italy itself,
indeed, that that region was known as _Magna Græcia_, or Great
Greece, just as in our day we speak of Great Britain, when we wish to
include not England only, but also the whole circle of lands under
British rule. At this time of commercial activity there came into power
in Corinth a family noted for its wealth and force no less than for the
luxury in which it lived, and the oppression, too, with which it ruled
the people. One of the daughters of the sovereign married out of the
family, because she was so ill-favored that no one in her circle was
willing to have her as wife.

In due time the princess became the mother of a boy, of whom the oracle
at Delphi prophesied that he should be a formidable opponent of the
ruling dynasty. Whenever the oracle made such a prophecy about a child,
it was customary for the ruler to try to make away with it, and that
the ruler of Corinth did in this case. All efforts were unsuccessful,
however, because his homely mother hid him in a chest when the spies
came to the house. Now the Greek word for chest is _kupsele_, and
therefore this boy was called Cypselus. He grew up to be a fine young