Korkyra is an ancient Greek city on the island of Corfu in the Ionian sea, adjacent to Epirus.
It is a colony of Corinth, founded in the archaic period.
According to Thucydides, the earliest recorded naval battle took place between Korkyra and Corinth, roughly 260 years before he was writing—and thus in the middle of the seventh century BCE.
He also writes that Korkyra was one of the three great naval powers in fifth century BC Greece, along with Athens and Corinth.
The antagonism between Korkyra and its mother city Corinth appears to have been an old one.
Quite apart from the naval battle Thucydides talks of, Herodotus records a myth involving the tyrant of Corinth, Periander.
Periander was estranged from his younger son, Lycophron, who believed that his father had killed his mother Milissa.
After failing to reconcile with Lycophron, he sent him to Korkyra, then within Corinth's goverance.
In his old age, Periander sent for his son to come and rule over Corinth, suggesting that they would trade places and he would rule Korkyra while his son came to rule Corinth.
To prevent this, the Korkyraeans killed Lycophron.
In punishment, Periander captured three hundred young men of Korkyra with the intention of castrating them.
This is more likely to be a myth explaining the animosity between Corinth and Korkyra (and justifying the use of the word tyrant for Periander's rule) than an actual historical event.
