Corinthian Matters

Category: Isthmus

  • The Corinth Canal Project of 67-68 AD

    One of the most interesting bits of research I conducted during my leave last year was Nero’s doomed Corinth Canal project of 67-68 AD. The enterprise, its failure, and subsequent condemnation form a key chapter in the book I’m finishing on the Isthmus of Corinth. Historically, scholars have argued that everyone and their brother wanted…

  • Restart

    First, my confession of a mortal sin of the blogosphere: I stopped posting. It’s the death knell of blogs, I know. But I had good reason for the break. I took a year-long research leave to complete two big research projects. Many bloggers I know would pick up pace during a sabbatical. I felt that…

  • Thirteen Isthmuses of Classical Antiquity

    I’ve been up to my neck in recent weeks researching ancient isthmi. I continue to plow forward in writing a history of the Isthmus of Corinth in the Roman era, or, rather, a history of the connectivity of this Isthmus. The Corinthian Isthmus was not only the most famous isthmus of classical antiquity but also…

  • Historic Photos of the Isthmus

    Friends at FB have posted or sent me links to several facebook pages and albums devoted to photos, postcards, and images of Greece from the late 19th / early 20th century.  Theodoros Metallinos has posted hundreds of fascinating images in these albums, and this photos page at Istoria Eiknographia (PERIODIKO) also displays hundreds of old…

  • Blegen’s Notebooks at Korakou

    Despite the growing number of ancient world blogs, it is still relatively uncommon for scholars to think of the blog as an acceptable or appropriate medium for communicating their research. I keep a small list of scholarly blogs about ancient and medieval Greece in a list on the right side of this site – scroll…

  • Maps of the Corinthia

    I have updated the Maps section of this website as well as the subdirectories for Contours and Maps of the Corinthia. The latter contains a gallery of maps generated for free distribution for educational and research purposes. The maps present the Corinthia at different scales, with 20 meter and 100 meter contours, generated from the…

  • Contours of Greece from SRTM Data

    This post for users of GIS. You should really take the time to learn how to create contour lines automatically so that you can produce topographic maps at different elevation intervals for whatever region you are researching. But, for those without access to extensions like spatial analyst that enable the conversion, or the time to…

  • The Isthmus and the Consequences of Geography

    I returned yesterday evening from the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion. I’ll write more about the  sessions on Roman Corinth tomorrow. For now, I post below (via my Scribd account) a draft of the paper I gave on the diolkos. As the paper was a summary of recent…

  • New perspectives on the diolkos

    I’m pretty jazzed about the Society of Biblical Literature Conference in Chicago. I not only get to see some old friends in and out of the conference, but I hope to meet some of the scholars whose work I regularly run across in my monthly CSM entries. I’m also looking forward to the double session…

  • “Ancient Ruins on the Shore”

    Friday’s issue of Kathimerini includes a short travel piece one of the most beautiful sites in the Corinthia, the Heraion at Perachora. Here’s a snippet: “The last thing you expect after driving through the popular coastal resort of Loutraki, just northwest of the Corinth Canal, is an area where you can achieve spiritual elation among…