Corinthian Matters

Category: Isthmus

  • Antiquities in the Trash

    Earlier this week, Facebook friends were circulating and commenting on an article in the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini about the ruin of Greek monuments and sites.  In the critical essay, “Greece’s Debt Mirrors Crisis in Cultural Assets,” A. Craig Copetas argues that Greece’s inability to protect and preserve its most important antiquities not only reflects current…

  • Niketas Ooryphas Strikes Again

    This last weekend, I had a chance to go to Chicago, see some old friends, and participate in the Byzantine Studies Conference.  I heard some excellent papers at the BSC including one on the monastic clothing in Byzantium, the historical and linguistic bases for Catholic and Orthodox conflict (with the hope for better modern dialogue),…

  • Bibliography of the Kenchreai Cemetery Project

    Since Monday’s post about the work of the Kenchreai Cemetery and Excavation Project, I heard from Dr. Joseph Rife, who kindly sent me a bibliography of the project’s publications.  Photo of Kenchreai harbor, the Koutsongila ridge, and Saronic coastline from Stanatopi The work of the project has appeared in three dozen presentations at various universities,…

  • Corinthian Scholarship (September)

    Archaic-Hellenistic Corinthiaka in discussions of Pindar: L. Athanassaki and E. Bowie (eds.), Archaic and Classical Choral Song: Performance, Politics and Dissemination (de Gruyter 2011) More Corinthiaka in E. Carney and D. Ogden, Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son, Lives and Afterlives (Oxford 2010) Byzantine Chryssi Bourbou, Benjamin T. Fuller Sandra J. Garvie-Lok, Michael…

  • A Cruise Ship in the Corinth Canal

    In early June I had the chance to visit the Corinth Canal with Sophia Loverdou, the woman who has launched a campaign to save the ancient diolkos (more on that campaign later in the week).  As I wrote in this post in late June, she and I toured the part of the diolkos inside Military…

  • The Corinthia from the Air

    If you hadn’t noticed, views of the Corinthia from the air are increasingly available on the web.  When I first started teaching years ago and wanted to project an image of the Isthmus for a class, I relied on my grainy slide photos taken on flights out of Athens.  But over the last decade, camera…

  • More Extreme Sports at the Isthmus

    There is something fitting about staging extreme sports at the Isthmus today.  Perhaps it has something to do with ancient attempts to canalize the Isthmus, or drag ships over it, or build big fortification walls across it—all heroic and incredible feats.  Or perhaps it has something to do with the associations with the Pan-Hellenic festival…

  • Historical Fictions

    Since antiquity, the Corinthia has formed a rather fitting stage for imaginative narratives and outright fictions.  In the long Roman era, we have frequent examples of writers (e.g., Apuleius, Lucian, Libanius, and Themistius) placing their fictional characters and events in Corinth and the Isthmus. And in the modern era, scholars have often turned to the…

  • A Book about the Diolkos

    I first discovered Apostolos Papafotiou’s Ο δίολκος στον ισθμό της Κορίνθου (=”The Diolkos on the Isthmus of Corinth”), Corinth 2007 (ISBN 960-87108-9-8), while browsing Corinthian history books at bookstore in New Corinth.  Because I don’t like to pay over $100 for a book, I delayed until the following summer to convince myself that it was…

  • Corinthian Scholarship (August 2011)

    Archaic-Hellenistic: Corinth gets some attention in the newest Mediterranean history book: David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean, Oxford 2011: Oxford University Press. Also in this book: Victor Davis Hanson (ed.), Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, Princeton 2010: Princeton University Press. Late Antiquity …