DESTINATION
DESTINATION
Corinth was located on the isthmus that connects the Peloponnese with the rest of Greece. Not only was it ideally situated to control north-south trade, but because the port of Lechaeum lay a mile and a half to the north (on the Gulf of Corinth) and Cenchrea (Rom. 16:1) was just over seven miles to the east on the Saronic Gulf, it also provided an indispensable land link between east and west.
The wealthy and ancient city of Corinth was utterly destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C., and its citizens were killed or sold into slavery. Roman might ensured that the prohibition against rebuilding it was respected. Nevertheless, a century later Julius Caesar founded the city afresh, this time as a Roman colony, and from 29 B.C. on, it served as the seat of a proconsul and the capital of the senatorial province of Achaia. The new city was populated by people from various parts of the empire, doubtless not a few of them retired soldiers. According to Strabo Geog. (8.6.23c), many were freedmen from Rome, whose status was only a cut above slaves. Jews were certainly included in the new citizenry (a broken inscription of uncertain date, with the words "Synagogue of the Hebrews,” has been discovered, confirming Acts 18:4). Some Greeks were also residents of the new Corinth, perhaps large numbers of them; but the Romans dominated the scene with their laws, culture, and religion. Much of the empire had been thoroughly Hellenized, however, so not only was the lingua franca Greek but doubtless many ties—religious, philosophical, and cultural—were quickly reestablished with the rest of the Greek peninsula. From Asia and Egypt came various mystery cults. Because there was no landed aristocracy in the new Corinth, there arose an aristocracy of wealth. Inevitably, the poor were correspondingly despised or ignored (see 1 Cor. 11:17-22).
It is important not to read the old city’s character into the new city (as Pausanius 2.3.7 already makes clear). Old Corinth had such a notorious reputation that "to Corinthianize” could mean "to fornicate,” and "Corinthian girl” was a way of referring to a whore. Clay votives of human genitals have come down to us from the old city. They were offered to Asclepius, the god of healing, in the hope that that part of the body, suffering from venereal disease, would be healed. Probably Strabo’s description of the one thousand temple prostitutes of the old city’s temple of Aphrodite was exaggerated, 1 but the reality must have been bad enough to win such an egregious reputation. Even
so, it is far from clear that such associations were carried across to the new city; but traditions like that die hard, and as a great port city it is unlikely that new Corinth established a reputation for moral probity (see 1 Cor. 6:12ff.).