Corinth and its Revolution

This recent piece at the Greek Reporter — War and a Greek City: Corinth and its Revolution — discusses Greece’s Independence Day on March 25 from the perspective of the battle between Ottomans and Greeks over and around Corinth in 1822, when “Corinth” was Ancient Corinth, not the modern city to its northeast. News pieces on the 19th century Corinthia are exceptional (in English, anyway), so this one is worth a read. What especially caught my eye was the description of the destruction of Corinth’s countryside in the 1820s:

The failure by the Greeks to hold the city — which would have required only a small force of men in the early stages of the war — had angered independence fighters.

Greek commanders, among them the legendary Theodoros Kolokotronis (called ‘Colocotroni’ by Green) approached from Patras in the west and saw small Ottoman detachments raiding now-abandoned villages on the plain of Corinth.

On July 22, a column of 7,000 Ottoman cavalry and 4,000 infantry rode out to find a scorched-earth landscape, where all edible produce had been destroyed by the Greeks, leaving their forces running out of food.

Between August 4-7, having waited for reinforcements, the Greek forces attacked as the Ottoman commander gave the order for his army to return to Corinth “in great disorder”.

In the narrow mountain passes between Mycene and Corinth the retreating Ottomans’ rear guard was attacked, suffering 5,000 casualties in a few hours.

Twelve-hundred were also killed at the head of the advancing army. Green reports how European volunteers fighting with the Greeks there “expressed astonishment at the tranquil manner in which the Turks, both the infantry and cavalry suffered themselves to be cut down without making the smallest resistance as if they had looked upon themselves as consigned to death by some supernatural power”.

You can read the rest here.

I’ve been working over the last year or so with colleague Kostis Kourelis to document the colony of Greek refugees established by American philanthropist Samuel Gridley Howe at a site known as “Washingtonia,” which was located in the modern village of Examilia on the Isthmus. Howe describes the insecurity and desolation of the countryside after the Greek war of independence and references the battle described above. At some point in the spring or summer, as I have time, I may write more about our work to investigate and locate Washingtonia. You can read more at the idea for the project at Kostis’ blog:

 

2015 Publications in Corinthian Studies: Medieval-Modern Periods

This fourth installment in a series of bibliographic reports for 2015 focuses on post-antique bibliography. Download the report as PDF here:

The first three 2015 Bibliographic Reports:

Photo by David Pettegrew, June 3, 2014
Photo by David Pettegrew, June 3, 2014

Hadji Mustafa

HadjiMustafa2
The guardian of the Ottoman fountain of Joseph the Tailor, aka, “Hadji Mustafa,” a source of fresh water for the village of Ancient Corinth. Photo by David Pettegrew, May 31, 2014.
HadjiMustafa
Hadji Mustafa, the fountain on the lower slopes of Acrocorinth. The monument dates to 1515. For more information on the monument, see this page at the ASCSA website and the Hesperia journal article for free download by Pierre McKay. Photo by David Pettegrew, May 31, 2014.

Mapping the Ottomans: Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Brummett)

This new book on the Ottomans published by Cambridge University Press should inform our readings of the sizable corpus of 16th to early 19th century traveler accounts to the Corinthia. The work considers how European maps, travel itineraries, and accounts of the eastern Mediterranean served to appropriate territory and construct an image of the Ottoman against classical and biblical imagery:

Brummett, Palmira. Mapping the Ottomans: Sovereignty, Territory, and Identity in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

The publisher page describes the book in the following way:

Mapping the Ottomans“Simple paradigms of Muslim-Christian confrontation and the rise of Europe in the seventeenth century do not suffice to explain the ways in which European mapping envisioned the “Turks” in image and narrative. Rather, maps, travel accounts, compendia of knowledge, and other texts created a picture of the Ottoman Empire through a complex layering of history, ethnography, and eyewitness testimony, which juxtaposed current events to classical and biblical history; counted space in terms of peoples, routes, and fortresses; and used the land and seascapes of the map to assert ownership, declare victory, and embody imperial power’s reach. Enriched throughout by examples of Ottoman self-mapping, this book examines how Ottomans and their empire were mapped in the narrative and visual imagination of early modern Europe’s Christian kingdoms. The maps serve as centerpieces for discussions of early modern space, time, borders, stages of travel, information flows, invocations of authority, and cross-cultural relations.”

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: mapping empire and ‘Turks’ on the map
2. Reading and placing the ‘Turk’
3. Borders: the edge of Europe, the ends of empire, and the redemption of Christendom
4. Sovereign space: the fortress as marker of possession
5. Heads and skins: mapping the fallen Turk
6. From Venice and Vienna to Istanbul: the travel space between Christendom and Islam
7. Authority, travel, and the map
8. Afterword: mapping the fault lines of empire and nation.

While there are only a half dozen references to the Corinthia in the book, this kind of book reinforces previous scholarship on European traveler accounts in the Corinthia. An important dissertation by Leslie Kaplan, especially, has surveyed the “visions” and “tourist gazes” of early European visitors to Corinth and its environs. As the abstract (or at least part of it) puts it, her study

“examines the way in which the ideas and perceptions of foreign visitors shape the identity of a place. It takes as its subject travel accounts written by European visitors to the Corinthia in Greece in the period between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. These travelers looked at places they visited with certain expectations and ways of valuing them based on the worldview of their home culture. Their expectations were closely tied to popular theories of cultural identity, including romantic nationalism, evolutionary understandings of culture and an incipient colonialism. This study explores the evidence for different perspectives, or “gazes”, used to interpret these experiences. Special attention is paid to the impact those gazes have had on the development of a particular village, Ancient Corinth. The evidence for the gazes is found through an exploration of over one hundred fifty travel accounts published by European travelers who visited Greece after the Ottoman conquest (1453), though most of the extant accounts date from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries”

The thrust of Kaplan’s dissertation was recently published as a separate article titled ‘“Writing Down the Country”: Travelers and the Emergence of the Archaeological Gaze.,” in Stroulia and Sutton’s Archaeology in Situ: Sites, Archaeology and Communities in Greece (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2010). That article, in my view, is a must read for students who converge every summer on ancient Corinth or archaeological work.

Coming Soon: Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium (Gerstel)

Landscape approaches to the Byzantine world are still uncommon these days despite the increasing integration of regional approaches into ancient and medieval studies generally. It is gratifying, then, to see that another work dedicated to the subject of Byzantine landscapes will be out in print this month. Sharon Gerstel’s book looks delightful  in its combination of different sources of evidence and its abundant illustrations: churches of Attica, the Peloponnese, Crete, and Aegean islands; archaeological survey data from the Pylos region; and the local memory through ethnographic work in Greek villages. Here are some of the details:

Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late ByzantiumGerstel, Sharon E. J. Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium: Art, Archaeology, and Ethnography. Cambridge University Press, 2015. 

 

 

 

Table of Contents:

1. The landscape of the village
2. Communication and the village church
3. The village woman
4. Village men, village labor
5. In the service of the church
6. The body and the soul.

Description:

“This is the first book to examine the late Byzantine peasantry through written, archaeological, ethnographic, and painted sources. Investigations of the infrastructure and setting of the medieval village guide the reader into the consideration of specific populations. The village becomes a micro-society, with its own social and economic hierarchies. In addition to studying agricultural workers, mothers, and priests, lesser-known individuals, such as the miller and witch, are revealed through written and painted sources. Placed at the center of a new scholarly landscape, the study of the medieval villager engages a broad spectrum of theorists, including economic historians creating predictive models for agrarian economies, ethnoarchaeologists addressing historical continuities and disjunctions, and scholars examining power and female agency.”

Limited excerpts of texts and images are available via Google Books.

2013-2014 Publications in Corinthian Studies: Byzantine-Modern Periods

This is the third in a series of bibliographic posts related to Corinthian scholarship published or digitized in 2013-2014:

  • See Monday’s post for further information about the sources of this bibliography
  • See  Tuesday’s post for Prehistoric-Hellenistic period
  • See Wednesday’s post for the Roman era

Screenshot (30)

This list contains new scholarship broadly related to the Corinthia in the following periods:

  • Late Antiquity
  • Byzantine
  • Frankish
  • Venetian
  • Ottoman
  • Modern

Download the PDF by right clicking on this link:

If you see references missing from the list, please send to corinthianmatters@gmail.com

We will complete the series next week with New Testament and Religion.

Corinthian Scholarship Monthly (December-February). Part 2

Here is the second part to last week’s post about new scholarship in the last three months.

You can find the full collection of articles and books related to Corinthian studies at the Corinthian Studies Zotero Page. If you don’t see URLs for articles and books below (they sometimes don’t transfer in the copy), visit the Zotero group page. The new entries are tagged according to master categories .ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY or .NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY CHRISTIAN.

As I noted previously, Version 2 of the library in RIS format is scheduled to be released by summer. I am always looking for reviewers of articles or books listed in the CSM posts. If you can write and are qualified, drop me a line.

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Adams, Edward. The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? A&C Black, 2014. http://books.google.com/books?id=FNBBAgAAQBAJ.

Angeli Bernardini, Paola, ed. Corinto: luogo di azione e luogo di racconto : atti del convengo internazionale, Urbino, 23-25 settembre 2009. Pisa [etc.]: F. Serra, 2013. http://www.libraweb.net/result1.php?dettagliononpdf=1&chiave=2848&valore=sku&name=Luogo.jpg&h=870&w=600.

Balzat, Jean-Sébastien, and Benjamin W. Millis. “M. Antonius Aristocrates: Provincial Involvement with Roman Power in the Late 1st Century B.C.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 4 (December 2013): 651–72. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.4.0651.

Batchvarov, Kroum N. “Clay Pipes and Smoking Paraphernalia from the Kitten Shipwreck, an Early Nineteenth-Century Black Sea Merchantman.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 1 (March 1, 2014): 1–19. doi:10.1007/s10761-013-0244-z.

Bradshaw, Paul F. Rites of Ordination: Their History and Theology. Liturgical Press, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=shQpnQEACAAJ.

Çakırlar, C., S. Ikram, and M-H. Gates. “New Evidence for Fish Processing in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Formalised Epinephelus Butchery in Fifth Century Bc Kinet Höyük, Turkey.” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, January 1, 2014, n/a–n/a. doi:10.1002/oa.2388.

Docter, Roald, and Babette Bechtold. “Two Forgotten Amphorae from the Hamburg Excavations at Carthage (Cyprus, and the Iberian Peninsula) and Their Contexts.” Carthage Studies 5 (2011) (2013): 91–128.

Forbes, Hamish A. “Off-Site Scatters and the Manuring Hypothesis in Greek Survey Archaeology: An Ethnographic Approach.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 4 (December 2013): 551–94. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.4.0551.

Hall, Jonathan M. Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Heil, Andreas, and Gregor Damschen, eds. Brill’s Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist. Leiden: Brill, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=9jqOAgAAQBAJ.

Jones, Catherine M. “Theatre of Shame: The Impact of Paul’s Manual Labour on His Apostleship in Corinth.” PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2013. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/43420.

Laios, K., G. Tsoucalas, M. Karamanou, and G. Androutsos. “The Medical–Religious Practice of Votive Offerings and the Representation of a Unique Pathognomonic One Inside the Asclepieion of Corinth.” Journal of Religion and Health, 2013, 1–6. doi:10.1007/s10943-013-9811-1.

Lambert, Craig. “Norman Naval Operations in the Mediterranean.” Journal for Maritime Research 15, no. 2 (2013): 241–43. doi:10.1080/21533369.2013.852314.

Last, Richard. “Money, Meals and Honour: The Economic and Honorific Organization of the Corinthian Ekklesia.” PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 2013.

Nichols, Aidan. Figuring out the Church: Her Marks, and Her Masters. Ignatius Press, 2013.

Polinskaya, Irene. A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People and the Land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE. Leiden: Brill, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=8FqNAgAAQBAJ.

Punt, Jeremy. “Framing Human Dignity through Domination and Submission? Negotiating Borders and Loyalties (of Power) in the New Testament.” Scriptura 112 (2013): 1–17. doi:10.7833/112-0-82.

Reed, David Alan. “Paul on Marriage and Singleness:  Reading 1 Corinthians with the Augustan Marriage Laws.” PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2013. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/43426/1/Reed_David_A_201311_PhD_thesis.pdf.

Rowan, Clare. “Coinage as Commodity and Bullion in the Western Mediterranean, Ca. 550–100 BCE.” Mediterranean Historical Review 28, no. 2 (2013): 105–27. doi:10.1080/09518967.2013.837638.

Saliari, Konstantina, and Erich Draganits. “Early Bronze Age Bone Tubes from the Aegean: Archaeological Context, Use and Distribution.” Archeometriai Műhely [Archaeometry Workshop], 2013, 179–92.

Schoenborn, Christoph Cardinal. The Source of Life: Exploring the Mystery of the Eucharist. Ignatius Press, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=oydLAgAAQBAJ.

Spinks, Bryan D. Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day. SCM Press, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=-309AgAAQBAJ.

Stoneman, Richard. Pindar. I.B.Tauris, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=jwlgAgAAQBAJ.

Thiessen, Matthew. “‘The Rock Was Christ’: The Fluidity of Christ’s Body in 1 Corinthians 10.4.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36, no. 2 (December 1, 2013): 103–26. doi:10.1177/0142064X13506171.

Toffolo, Michael B., Alexander Fantalkin, Irene S. Lemos, Rainer C. S. Felsch, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, Guy D. R. Sanders, Israel Finkelstein, and Elisabetta Boaretto. “Towards an Absolute Chronology for the Aegean Iron Age: New Radiocarbon Dates from Lefkandi, Kalapodi and Corinth.” PLoS ONE 8, no. 12 (December 26, 2013): e83117. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083117.

Wallace, Christopher. “Ager Publicus in the Greek East: I. Priene 111 and Other Examples of Resistance to the Publicani.” Historia 63, no. 1 (2014): 38–73.

———. “Ager Publicus in the Greek East: I. Priene 111 and Other Examples of Resistance to the Publicani.” Historia 63, no. 1 (2014): 38–73.

Walsh, Justin St P. Consumerism in the Ancient World: Imports and Identity Construction. Routledge, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=XU83AgAAQBAJ.

Corinthian Scholarship Monthly (December-February). Part 1

With the end of last semester, holidays, and deadlines, I fell a bit behind on the Corinthian Scholarship Monthly posts. Yesterday I started to dig out, sift through emails, and find the gems in the bunch. This will be the first of two posts on new scholarship that went live in December to February. I’ll try to get the second part of CSM Dec-Feb by the middle of the month.

And kudos to the google bots for doing such a good job. While we’ve been sleeping, playing, teaching, and resting, those bots have been working non-stop to bring all sorts of little nuggets to our network. As always, I’ve included a broader range of articles and essays that mention the Corinthia without focusing on the region — on the assumption that you will be as interested as I am in a broader Mediterranean context. There are also a few entries from past years that the bots have just brought to my attention.

You can find the full collection of articles and books related to Corinthian studies at the Corinthian Studies Zotero Page. The new entries are tagged according to basic categories. Version 2 of the library in RIS format is scheduled to be released by summer.

Finally, I am always looking for reviewers of articles or books listed in the CSM posts. If you can write and are qualified, drop me a line.

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Ambraseys, N. N. “Ottoman Archives and the Assessment of the Seismicity of Greece 1456–1833.” Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering 12, no. 1 (February 1, 2014): 5–43. doi:10.1007/s10518-013-9541-5.

Angeli Bernardini, Paola, ed. Corinto: luogo di azione e luogo di racconto : atti del convengo internazionale, Urbino, 23-25 settembre 2009. Pisa [etc.]: F. Serra, 2013.

Baika, Kalliopi. “The Topography of Shipshed Complexes and Naval Dockyards.” In Shipsheds of the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by David Blackman and Boris Rankov, 185–209. Cambridge University Press, 2013. 

Balzat, Jean-Sébastien, and Benjamin W. Millis. “M. Antonius Aristocrates: Provincial Involvement with Roman Power in the Late 1st Century B.C.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 4 (December 2013): 651–672. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.4.0651.

Blackman, David, and Boris Rankov. Shipsheds of the Ancient Mediterranean. Cambridge University Press, 2013. 

Borbonus, Dorian. Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome. Cambridge University Press, 2014. 

Boyle, A. J., ed. Seneca: Medea: Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Collins, John J., ed. The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Docter, Roald, and Babette Bechtold. “Two Forgotten Amphorae from the Hamburg Excavations at Carthage (Cyprus, and the Iberian Peninsula) and Their Contexts.” Carthage Studies 5 (2011) (2013): 91–128.

Forbes, Hamish A. “Off-Site Scatters and the Manuring Hypothesis in Greek Survey Archaeology: An Ethnographic Approach.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 82, no. 4 (December 2013): 551–594. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.4.0551.

Frangoulidis, Stavros. “Reception of Strangers in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: The Examples of Hypata and Cenchreae.” In A Companion to the Ancient Novel, edited by Edmund P. Cueva and Shannon N. Byrne, 275–287. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

Hall, Jonathan M. Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 

Hawthorn, Geoffrey. Thucydides on Politics: Back to the Present. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Heil, Andreas, and Gregor Damschen, eds. Brill’s Companion to Seneca: Philosopher and Dramatist. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 

Hollander, William den. Josephus, the Emperors, and the City of Rome: From Hostage to Historian. Leiden: Brill, 2014. 

James, Paula. “Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: A Hybrid Text?” In A Companion to the Ancient Novel, edited by Edmund P. Cueva and Shannon N. Byrne, 317–329. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2014.

Jeffreys, Elizabeth. “We Need to Talk about Byzantium: Or, Byzantium, Its Reception of the Classical World as Discussed in Current Scholarship, and Should Classicists Pay Attention?Classical Receptions Journal 6, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 158–174. doi:10.1093/crj/clt032.

Kamen, Deborah. “Sale for the Purpose of Freedom: Slave-Prostitutes and Manumission in Ancient Greece.” The Classical Journal 109, no. 3 (March 2014): 281–307. doi:10.5184/classicalj.109.3.0281.

Kampbell, Sarah Marie. “The Economy of Conflict: How East Mediterranean Trade Adapted to Changing Rules, Allegiances and Demographics in the  10th – 12th Centuries AD.” PhD Thesis, Princeton University, 2014. 

Klapaki. “The Journey to Greece in the American and the Greek Modernist Literary Imagination: Henry Miller and George Seferis.” In Travel, Discovery, Transformation: Culture and Civilization, Volume 6, edited by Gabriel R. Ricci, 59–78. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2014.

Kolluoğlu, Biray, and Meltem Toksöz, eds. Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day. I.B.Tauris, 2010. 

Korner, Ralph J. “Before ‘Church’: Political, Ethno-Religious, and Theological Implications of the Collective Designation of Pauline Christ Followers as Ekklēsiai.” PhD Thesis, McMaster University, 2014. 

Kreitzer, L.J. “Hadrian as Nero Redivivus: Some Supporting Evidence from Corinth.” In Judaea and Rome in Coins 65 BCE-135 CE: Papers Presented at the International Conference Hosted by Spink, 13th-14th September 2010, edited by David M Jacobson and Nikos Kokkinos, 229–242. London: Spink, 2012. 

Legarreta-Castillo, Felipe De Jesus. The Figure of Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15: The New Creation and Its Ethical and Social Reconfigurations. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014.

Matz, Brian J. “Early Christian Philanthropy as a ‘Marketplace’ and the Moral Responsibility of Market Participants.” In Distant Markets, Distant Harms: Economic Complicity and Christian Ethics, edited by Daniel Finn, 115–145? New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Mitski, Efterpi. “Commodifying Antiquity in Mary Nisbet’s Journey to the Ottoman Empire.” In Travel, Discovery, Transformation: Culture and Civilization, Volume 6, edited by Gabriel R. Ricci, 45–58. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2014. 

Morhange, Christophe, Amos Salamon, Guénaelle Bony, Clément Flaux, Ehud Galili, Jean-Philippe Goiran, and Dov Zviely. “Geoarchaeology of Tsunamis and the Revival of Neo-Catastrophism in the Eastern Mediterranean.” Rome “La Sapienza” Studies on the Archaeology of Palestine & Transjordan 11 (2014): 61–81.

Ong, H. T. “Paul’s Personal Relation with Earliest Christianity: A Critical Survey.” Currents in Biblical Research 12, no. 2 (February 7, 2014): 146–172. doi:10.1177/1476993X12467114.

Pachis, Panayotis. “Data from Dead Minds?  Dream and Healing in the Isis / Sarapis Cult During the Graeco-Roman Age.” Journal of Cognitive Historiography 1, no. 1 (January 23, 2014): 52–71.

Pallis, Georgios. “Inscriptions on Middle Byzantine Marble Templon Screens.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 106, no. 2 (January 2013): 761–810. doi:10.1515/bz-2013-0026.

Polinskaya, Irene. A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People and the Land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE. Leiden: Brill, 2013. 

Priestley, Jessica. Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture: Literary Studies in the Reception of the Histories. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 

Punt, Jeremy. “Framing Human Dignity through Domination and Submission? Negotiating Borders and Loyalties (of Power) in the New Testament.” Scriptura 112 (2013): 1–17. doi:10.7833/112-0-82.

Rankov, Boris. “Slipping and Launching.” In Shipsheds of the Ancient Mediterranean, edited by David Blackman and Boris Rankov, 102–123. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Reed, David Alan. “Paul on Marriage and Singleness:  Reading 1 Corinthians with the Augustan Marriage Laws.” PhD Thesis. University of St. Michael’s College, 2013. 

Saliari, Konstantina, and Erich Draganits. “Early Bronze Age Bone Tubes from the Aegean: Archaeological Context, Use and Distribution.” Archeometriai Műhely [Archaeometry Workshop] (2013): 179–192.

Shpuza, Ermanl. “Allometry in the Syntax of Street Networks: Evolution of Adriatic and Ionian Coastal Cities 1800–2010.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design (2014). doi:doi:10.1068/b39109.

Siek, Thomas James. “A Study in Paleo-Oncology: On the Identification of Neoplastic Disease in Archaeological Bone.” Master of Arts Thesis, University of Waterloo, 2014. 

Thein, Alexander. “Reflecting on Sulla’s Clemency.” Historia 63, no. 2 (April 1, 2014): 166–186.

Toffolo, Michael B., Alexander Fantalkin, Irene S. Lemos, Rainer C. S. Felsch, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, Guy D. R. Sanders, Israel Finkelstein, and Elisabetta Boaretto. “Towards an Absolute Chronology for the Aegean Iron Age: New Radiocarbon Dates from Lefkandi, Kalapodi and Corinth.” PLoS ONE 8, no. 12 (December 26, 2013): e83117. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083117.

Waterfield, Robin. Taken at the Flood: The Roman Conquest of Greece. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Williams, Drake, and H. H. “‘Imitate Me’: Interpreting Imitation In 1 Corinthians in Relation to Ignatius of Antioch.” Perichoresis 11, no. 1 (June 1, 2013): 77–95.

Wright, Christopher. The Gattilusio Lordships and the Aegean World 1355-1462. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Corinthian Scholarship Monthly (December 2012)

Now that the dust has settled on 2012, I release this final CSM issue for the last month of the year. By the end of the January, I’ll post some year-in-review lists for different categories of scholarship. As always, the best place to start for recent Corinthian scholarship at this site is the modern library page, with instructions and links to the Zotero group library.

Archaic-Roman

Brandt, J. Rasmus, and Jon W. Iddeng, eds. Greek and Roman Festivals: Content, Meaning, and Practice. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://books.google.com/books?id=1z6HgqVSQ-wC

Davies, Sarah Helen. “Rome, international power relations, and 146 BCE.” PhD Thesis, University of Texas, 2012. http://repositories.tdl.org/tdl-ir/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2012-08-6262.

Harris, W. V. “Review. Sviatoslav Dmitriev. The Greek Slogan of Freedom and Early Roman Politics in Greece.” The American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (2012): 1276–1277. http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/117/4/1276 

Stissi, Vladimir. “Giving the kerameikos a context: ancient Greek potters’ quarters as part of the polis space, economy and society.” In « Quartiers » artisanaux en Grèce ancienne, edited by Arianna Esposito and Giorgos Sanidas, 201–232. Presses Univ. Septentrion, 2012. http://books.google.com/books?id=LZ_twJ6nAxgC

New Testament

Goodrich, John K. “Review. Emerging Leadership in the Pauline Mission: A Social Identity Perspective on Local Leadership Development in Corinth and Ephesus. By Jack Barentsen. Princeton Theological Monograph Series 168. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011.” Religious Studies Review 38, no. 4 (2012): 241–241. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2012.01650_20.x/abstract 

Schellenberg, Ryan Scott. “‘Where Is The Voice Coming From?’ Querying the Evidence for Paul’s Rhetorical Education in 2 Corinthians 10–13.” PhD Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, 2012. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/34896/3/Schellenberg_Ryan_S_201211_PhD_thesis.pdf

Medieval and Post-Medieval

Harris, Jonathan, Catherine Holmes, and Eugenia Russell, eds. Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World After 1150. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://books.google.com/books?id=bO_zmrgmn3sC

Medieval and Ottoman Portages

Medieval episodes of portaging the Corinthian Isthmus are unsurprisingly scant. The only account cited with any frequency is the remarkable portage of Niketas Ooryphas’ in AD 872. The portage is disputed, but the historical records for the account are certain.

Two other supposed medieval portages turn out to be dead ends. In an article titled “Railways in the Greek and Roman World,” M.J.T. Lewis notes (p. 12) that the 12th century Moroccan geographer Al Idrisi refers to the transfer of small ships over the Corinthian Isthmus (see p. p. 123 of this volume). Indeed, he does, but the account is a derivative summary of Strabo 8.2.1, not first-hand observation. In a similar way, Apostolos Papaphotiou, who notes the Al Idrisi account in his book on the diolkos, also records a text about a man who traveled by boat from Venice to Corinth and from there to Armiro (which Papaphotiou places in Thessaly), where he takes another boat to Constantinople. Papaphotiou reads this as evidence for transfer of ships over the isthmus, but the text doesn’t actually say that, and we should not and cannot rule out a circumnavigation.

So, no unambiguous accounts for the Medieval or Ottoman era. That is, until I stumbled upon one as I was was reading some early travel accounts to the Corinthia.  On page 240-241 of his Travels in Greece (1776), Richard Chandler gives us an interesting reference to ship portaging:

“The root of mount Oneius extending along the lsthmus rendered the Corinthian territory which was not rich in soil browy and uneven with hollows. On the side of the Corinthian gulf the beach receded toward that of Schoenus which was opposite. There the neck was most narrow, the interval between the two seas being only forty stadia or five miles; and there was the Diolcos or drawing-place, at which it was usual to convey light vessels across on machines. The same practice prevailed in the wars of the Turks and Venetians.

Which of the wars were opportunities for ship portaging is unclear from the passage, but Chandler clearly believed for some reason that it occurred. I have not yet found an earlier source that refers to this, although it perhaps is still out there waiting to be discovered. That Chandler mentions it so casually in passing reminds me a bit of how scholars have frequently read Strabo’s casual reference to ship portaging—but here, Chandler clearly places portaging in some murky time frame. Nakas and Koutsoumba have noted better-documented accounts of Venetian portages in their forthcoming piece on the diolkos, so there’s no reason at least to dismiss Chandler’s account out of hand. Of course, it may be that Chandler was thinking about these other accounts as he visited the Isthmus.

When I floated the question about this portage to the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology FB group, Diana Wright remarkably dug up a letter referring to the dragging of cannon between Corinth and Kenchreai in May 1480! So far as I know, that is the only account preserving the dragging of anything between Corinth and its eastern harbor.

So, I’ll add these to the list, and update the diolkos page, and scratch my head about Chandler’s reference, until someone clarifies it all for me or I stumble by accident on another forgotten document.