Corinth​—City of the Two Seas

“THE ancient people believed the gods were real. Sometimes I think so myself.” Our guide so remarked as she led us among the ruins of temples once dedicated to Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hercules, and Poseidon. The smell of rain was in the air, and we heard the low rumble of a storm brewing. “Zeus,” she said with a smile.

Thunderheads had arisen over Mount Parnassus in the morning. They were spreading rapidly across the Gulf of Corinth to stretch ominously above us. But our guide remained unfailingly cheerful and continued to spin stories of olden times, the glories of Greece, and the coming of Christianity. She charmingly mixed fact, fancy, history, and mythology to erect buildings in our mind’s eye and to people them with the flesh and blood of another era.

We were not worried about rain. It seldom rains on the Peloponnisos. Why, this southern peninsula is one of the driest areas in Greece! Only Athens is drier. On the other hand, whenever the rains do come, they are not gentle showers. They are wild gully washers that erode the higher elevations and make the land below the Corinthian plateau rich with alluvial soil.

Surprise! Of all the things Corinth is famous for, we hardly expected one of them to be a farm product. Yes, whether grown in the Levant, in California, or in any other place, wherever the tiny raisins we call currants are happily munched, they carry the name of Corinth as corrupted to “currant.”

Its Resources

The soil may be one reason for Homer’s epithet “wealthy Corinth.” However, Corinth gained most of its affluence as a port city serving both the Ionian and Aegean seas. Horace called it “bimarisve Corinthi,” or “two-sea’d Corinth.” How could one city be a port for two seas? Easily, since it was situated at the southern end of the narrow neck of land (Greek, isth·mosʹ) connecting the Peloponnisos with mainland Greece.

Corinth benefited from east-west harbor traffic and the tolls exacted for transporting freight and small ships across the isthmus along the shipway the Greeks called the diʹol·kos. It also levied taxes on overland freight moving north and south. No wonder Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great, considered Corinth vital to his developing monarchy.

Reverses and Recovery

But that was centuries ago. Nowadays, a canal connects the Corinthian and Saronic gulfs, and on superhighways lorries hurtle past the sleepy village of Corinth. Sailors, truckers, and villagers do not care that Corinth used to be the magnet of the Mediterranean. Only archaeologists and tourists come with trowel, film, and curiosity.

In 146 B.C.E. the Roman consul Mummius destroyed and virtually depopulated Corinth. However, after a dormant century, it was revived by Julius Caesar as a cosmopolitan Roman colony partial to Greek ways and thinking.

When the Christian apostle Paul arrived about a hundred years later, Corinth was again a vibrant, flourishing city. Its people were successfully building, crafting, and trading by day. And at night? They were feasting and carousing at idol temples and taverns and roving dark streets in search of sensual pleasures. Interestingly, although Corinth was notorious in a licentious age and everyone knew what a “Corinthian girl” was, religious prostitution was not a Greek practice. The oft told story that Corinth housed a thousand girls dedicated to Aphrodite relies on the questionable opinion of the geographer Strabo of the first century B.C.E. Even at that, he assigned them to a remote pre-Roman period.

Our Reflections

As we walked along the Lechaeum Way, the ancient thoroughfare that connected the western harbor with the center of the city, our guide pointed to the remnants of state buildings, temples, shops, a meat market, and a public latrine, all disconcertingly jumbled together.a Nevertheless, because of, rather than in spite of, this seeming lack of town planning, we began to sense the lively street scene Paul must have encountered​—the busy throngs and idle talkers, the shopkeepers, slaves, and deal makers.

As we neared the end of the road, we heard the gurgle of the Fountain of Pirene, an underground spring that supplied cool water to shops selling perishables, wash-water to craftsmen, and finally flush-water to the latrine. Whether the Christian married couple Aquila and Priscilla had their tentmaking shop in this area, no one knows today. (Acts 18:1-3) But just a few feet away, on the steps leading to the Forum, archaeologists found a lintel from a synagogue. So this may have been a Jewish quarter, and we were happy to imagine that the home of Titius Justus could have been right here!​—Acts 18:7.

The Forum​—what a fascinating place! It consists of two rectangular terraces on an east-west axis. In the center of the upper terrace, flanked on either side by shops, there is an elevated platform called a bema, used by speakers on formal occasions. Our guide reminded us that when the physician Luke wrote of Paul’s day in court before Proconsul Gallio, the Greek word used for “judgment seat” was bema. (Acts 18:12) So the events of Acts 18:12-17 may have happened on this very spot! We were standing where Paul would have stood, ready to make his defense while surrounded by his Jewish accusers. But no! Gallio would not hear the case. He set Paul free and let the violent mob thrash Sosthenes instead.

Behind this open-air courtroom, on the north edge of the lower terrace, lies the ‘sacred spring’ and its oracular shrine. There is some difference of opinion about how the oracle was given. Apparently, however, if the supplicant paid enough money, the priests produced a “miracle” and turned the springwater into wine. Presumably that assured the petitioner that he was about to be supernaturally enlightened. Archaeologists say that this shrine was in use for a very long time, both in ancient pre-Christian Corinth and in the rebuilt city of Paul’s day. Peering into a secret passageway, we saw the mechanism for performing the wine trick and came away convinced that religious quacks are not new.

Although Poseidon is supposed to have been the patron god of Corinth, the most impressive edifice is the Doric-style temple of Apollo. Of its 38 columns, 7 remain standing. About 24 feet [7.2 m] high and 6 feet [1.7 m] in diameter at the base, each is made of a single piece of fluted limestone that was originally coated with hard, white stucco. Hovering over the city on its central elevation​—a dark and brooding ruin among ruins—​this archaic temple nonetheless continues to evoke profound emotions. It may call to a beholder’s mind what Goethe wrote​—that architecture is “frozen music.”

The Rains Came!

“Come. There’s a lot more to see!” Splash. “We haven’t yet looked at temples with kitchens and plush dining rooms.” Splat. “We have to see the stone pavement laid by Erastus.” Splatter. “And you don’t want to miss the tavern of Aphrodite or the Aesculapeum.” Yes, the splash and splatter of big drops of water were harbingers of a rainstorm.

Instantly, the people and structures of our imagination vanished. We hurried back the way we had come, our guide still reciting a string of things we had not yet seen. Raindrops now falling in profusion turned the pavement brilliant, wet colors and washed dust off the marble of once proud buildings. When the skies suddenly released a fierce downpour, we ran. We could still hear our guide somewhere up ahead calling out: “Come on, everybody!” In the blinding cloudburst, even the fragmentary buildings along Corinth’s Lechaeum Way disappeared. Nothing remained, neither landscape nor dreamscape. Drenched, we raced toward our bus and hoped the driver was not on a coffee break.​—Contributed.

[Footnotes]

[Map on page 16]

(For fully formatted text, see publication)

Corinth

GREECE

IONIAN SEA

AEGEAN SEA

[Pictures on page 17]

Top: A reconstructed shop in the Forum

Center: The “bema”

Bottom: The archaic temple of Apollo