The other islands of the Ægean Sea had nearly all lost their political importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its port the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favourable position an extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she became corrupted like Byzantium and Zacynthus (_Zante_), which Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of luxury.[467]
XXI. The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of independence.[468] From 541[469] to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken, or sold.[470] The number of these last was so considerable, that the expression _Sardinians to sell_ (_Sardi venales_) became proverbial.[471] Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000 inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of corn, and numerous herds of cattle, made of this island the second granary of Carthage.[472] The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552, the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the freight.[473] The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a superior quality[474] occupied thousands of hands.
XXII. Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly more than 30,000 inhabitants,[475] and Strabo represents them as savages, and living in the mountains.[476] According to Pliny, however, it had thirty towns.[477] Resin, wax, honey,[478] exported from factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocæans on the coasts, were almost the only products of the island.
XXIII. Sicily, called by the ancients the favourite abode of Ceres, owed its name to the Sicani or Siculi, a race which had once peopled a part of Italy; Phœnician colonies, and afterwards Greek colonies, had established themselves in it. In 371, the Greeks occupied the eastern part, about two-thirds of the island; the Carthaginians, the western part. Sicily, on account of its prodigious fertility, was, as may be supposed, coveted by both peoples; it was soon the same in regard to the Romans, and, after the conquest, it became the granary of Italy.[479] The orations of Cicero against Verres show the prodigious quantities of wheat which it sent, and to what a great sum the tenths or taxes amounted, which procured immense profits to the farmers of the revenues.[480]
