Corinth had been a backwater in eighth-century Greece. In 747 BCE (a traditional date) an
aristocratic revolution ousted the Bacchiad kings of Corinth, when the royal clan of Bacchiadae, numbering perhaps a couple of hundred adult males and claiming descent from the Dorian
hero Heracles through the seven sons and three daughters of a
legendary king
Bacchis, took power from the last king,
Telestes. Practising strict
endogamy, which kept clan outlines within a distinct extended
oikos, they dispensed with kingship and ruled as a group, governing the city by electing annually a
prytanis who held the kingly position for his brief term, no doubt a council (though none is specifically documented in the scant literary materials) and a
polemarchos to head the army. In 657 BCE, the Bacchiadae were expelled in turn by the
tyrant Cypselus, who had been polemarch. The exiled Bacchiadae fled to
Corcyra (a colony of Corinth) and to
Magna Graecia, traditionally to found
Syracuse in Sicily, and to
Etruria, where
Demaratus installed himself at
Tarquinia, founding a dynasty of Etruscan kings. The royal line of the
Lynkestis of
Macedon was also of Bacchiad descent. The
foundation myths of Corcyra, Syracuse, and Megara Hyblaea contain considerable detail about the Bacchiadae and the expeditions of the Bacchiad
Archias of Corinth, legendary founder of Syracuse in 734–33 BCE, and
Philolaos, lover of
Diocles of Corinth, victor at Olympia in 728 BCE and a
nomothete (lawgiver) of
Thebes. Some of the Bacchiadae also fled to
Sparta, for which they possibly fought against the
Messenians during the
Second Messenian War. == List of the Bacchiad kings of Corinth ==