Off the coast of Laconia, and about forty stadia from Cape Malea, lies the island of Cythera; the strait between it and the mainland was deemed by the ancients extremely dangerous in stormy weather; and indeed its narrowness, and the rocks that lay off Cape Malea must, to such inexperianced navigators, have been very alarming.  The Phoenicians are supposed to have had a settlement in this island:  afterwards it 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 dangerous, on account of the many rocks and whirlpools on the const.  Of all the cities of Euboea, Chalcis