Corinthian Matters

A Resource for the Study of the Corinthia, Greece

  • 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…

  • Corinthiaka

    The latest Corinthiaka appearing in my google alerts and blog subscriptions The American School of Classical Studies has posted a save-the-date for a C.K. Williams lecture on Corinth next may. From Athens News: Wildfires in Achaia, Corinth A new Corinth entry published in About.com that could be expanded to incorporate more archaeological evidence. The best…

  • Preaching Corinthians from Historical and Archaeological Background: Some Resources

    How important is understanding cultural and social background for preaching and teaching on 1 and 2 Corinthians?  In late July, I stumbled upon Michael Bird’s post at Evangelion on the importance of understanding background for effective preaching.  He comments on video discussion (reposted below) between D.A. Carson and John Piper about whether a pastor whose…

  • 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 …

  • Ano Vayia and Lychnari Tower

    The Saronic coast of the southern Corinthia provides some of the most beautiful views of Corinthian territory.  It also provided for the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey some of its most spectacular finds.  One week spent in the area of Kalamianos near the harbor village of Korphos, for example, led to the discover of a major…

  • Views from Mt. Oneion

    I was twice dragged up to the top of Mt. Oneion, the range that marks the visual southern boundary of the Isthmus.  While Dimitri Nakassis and I were walking survey teams around the plain of the Isthmus in 2000 and 2001, Bill Caraher was driving all over the eastern Corinthia doing “extensive survey” in remote…

  • Corinthiaka

    I take a break from uploading images of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey to drop some Corinthiaka that have come through my feed in the last month.  Matt Malcolm at cryptotheology has recent posts on John Chrysostom and 1 Corinthians, part 1 of a review of Barnett’s The Corinthian Question (with comments), and the interpretation…

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