Outline, and Some Initial Thoughts on Thucydides

http://people.duke.edu/~jds15/clst-283/thuc.outline.html

Thuc 1.25 -- Epidamnus in conflcit with Corcyra

25When the Epidamnians found that no help could be expected from Corcyra, they were in a strait what to do next. So they sent to Delphi and inquired of the God whether they should deliver their city to the Corinthians and endeavour to obtain some assistance from their founders. The answer he gave them was to deliver the city and place themselves under Corinthian protection. So the Epidamnians went to Corinth and delivered over the colony in obedience to the commands of the oracle. They showed that their founder came from Corinth, and revealed the answer of the god; and they begged them not to allow them to perish, but to assist them. This the Corinthians consented to do. Believing the colony to belong as much to themselves as to the Corcyraeans, they felt it to be a kind of duty to undertake their protection. Besides, they hated the Corcyraeans for their contempt of the mother country. Instead of meeting with the usual honours accorded to the parent city by every other colony at public assemblies, such as precedence at sacrifices, Corinth found herself treated with contempt by a power which in point of wealth could stand comparison with any even of the richest communities in Hellas, which possessed great military strength, and which sometimes could not repress a pride in the high naval position of an, island whose nautical renown dated from the days of its old inhabitants, the Phaeacians. This was one reason of the care that they lavished on their fleet, which became very efficient; indeed they began the war with a force of a hundred and twenty galleys.

1.38 Corinthians on the Corcyreans:

But such has not been their conduct either towards others or towards us. The attitude of our colony towards us has always been one of estrangement and is now one of hostility; for, say they: 'We were not sent out to be ill-treated.' We rejoin that we did not found the colony to be insulted by them, but to be their head and to be regarded with a proper respect. At any rate our other colonies honour us, and we are much beloved by our colonists; and clearly, if the majority are satisfied with us, these can have no good reason for a dissatisfaction in which they stand alone, and we are not acting improperly in making war against them, nor are we making war against them without having received signal provocation. Besides, if we were in the wrong, it would be honourable in them to give way to our wishes, and disgraceful for us to trample on their moderation; but in the pride and licence of wealth they have sinned again and again against us, and never more deeply than when Epidamnus, our dependency, which they took no steps to claim in its distress upon our coming to relieve it, was by them seized, and is now held by force of arms.

Q1: Corinth founded Corcyra (on Corfu), probably about 100-200 years after the Trojan War. Why would they do this?

Q2: Corcyra founded Epidamnus, in the territory of the Taulantians (one of the ancestral people of Albania -- the city evolved into medieval/modern Dyrrachium/Durres). Why would they do this?

Q3: When Epidamnus has a civil (i.e. class) war, and the nobility is expelled, they appeal to Corinth. Why would they do this?

Q4: When Corcyra supports the cause of the Epidamnian exiles (WWTDT?)

Q5: What justification does Corinth -the “grandmother” city - have here??   

Ancient cities founded colonies because of overpopulation and secondarily because of economic opportunities (trade):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver_sacrum

Thererfore there were several levels of ‘depletion’ between 900 BCE and 450 BCE.