became an object of great
consequence to the Lacedaemonians, who fortified, at great expence, and
with much labour and skill, its two harbours, Cythera and Scandea. The
convenience of these harbours to the Lacedaemonians compensated for the
sterility of the island, which was so great that when the Athenians
conquered it, they could raise from it only four Attic talents annually.
The chief employment and source of wealth to the inhabitants consisted in
collecting a species of shell-fish, from which an inferior kind of Tyrian
dye was extracted. There were several fisheries on the mainland of Laconia
for the same purpose.

Some of the other Greek islands require a short and general notice, on
account of the attention they paid to maritime affairs. Corcyra was
inhabited by skilful mariners, who, in the time of Herodotus, possessed a
greater number of ships than any other people in Greece, with the exception
of the Athenians; and, according to Thucydides, at one period they were
masters of the Mediterranean Sea. On the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, they
fitted out a fleet of sixty ships, with which they promised to assist their
countrymen; but, instead of this, their ships anchored in a place where
they could see the result of the battle of Salamis, and when they
ascertained that the Greeks were victorious, they pretended that they had
been prevented from affording the promised succours by contrary winds, so
that they could not double Cape Malea. Of the commerce of this island we
have no particulars detailed by ancient writers.

Egina, in the Saronic Gulf, acquired great wealth from the cultivation of
commerce: in the time of the Persian war, they equipped a very powerful and
well-manned fleet for the defence of Greece; and at the battle of Salamis
they were adjudged to have deserved the prize of valour. According to
Elian, they were the first people who coined money.

The island of Euboea possessed excellent harbours, from which, as it was
very fertile, the Athenians exported large quantities of corn. This island
is divided from the mainland of Greece by the Euripus, which the ancients
represented to be so extremely narrow, that a galley could scarcely pass
through it: its frequent and irregular tides were, also the subject of
their wonder, and the cause of them, of their fruitless researches and
conjectures. It hits several promontories, the doubling of one of which,
Cape Catharius, was reckoned by the ancients very dang