CORINTH
508
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Corinfch restored, u rieired firam the Acrocorinthns.
s^ate, barbarously destroyed that beaatifiil town (Cicero, Verr. i, 21), eminent even in Greece for paint- ing, sculptare, and all working in metal and pottery ; and, as the territory was given over to the Sicyonians (Strabo, 1. c), we must infer that the whole population was sold into slavery.
The Corinth of which we read in the New Testa^ ment wa» quite a new city, having been rebnilt and established as a Roman colony, and peopled with/reed- men from Home (Pausanias and Strabo, u. «.) by the dictator Ciesar a little before his assassination. Al- though the soil was too rocky to be fertile, and the territory very limited, Corinth again became a great and wealthy city in a short time, especially as the Roman proconsuls made it the seat of government
Mapw
(Acts xviii) for Southern Greece, which was now aM the province of Achaia. In earlier times Coriotli hd been celebrated for the great wealth of its temple ef Venus, which had a gainful traffic of a most di^hootf- able kind with the numerous merchants resideiit tbop — supplying them with harlots under the fomu of re- ligion (hence Kopiv^ia^to^at =■ scortari^ see Scbotti Adagia Gr, p. 568). The same phenomena, do doobt reappeared in the later and Chivtian age. The little which is said in the New Test, seems to iodictte t wealthy and luxurious community, prone to imparity of morals ; nevertheless, all Greece was so cootuuU' ted that we may easily overcharge the aocnsstin against Corinth. We find Gallio, brother of the phi- losopher Seneca, exercising the functions of procoDsd here during the apostle Paul'i ^ residence at Corinth, in the reiga <d Cllftudius. This residence eontinsed for a year and six months, and tbe cir- cumstances which occurred during the course of it are related at some length (Acts xviii, 1-18). The apostle lad recently passed through Haeedonii. He came to Corinth from Athens; shortly after his arrival Silas and Th motheus came from Maoedonis ud rejoined him ; and abotit this time the two epistles to the Thessalonians vere written (probably A.D. 49 and 50). It was at Corinth that the apostle f.rst became acquainted with Aquila vA PrisciUa, and shortly after bis depar- ture Apolloe came to this city from Ephesus (Acts xviii, 27). Corinth w* a place of great mental activity, tf well as of commercial and manoftf- turing enterprise. Its wealth w« «> celebrated as to be proverbial; » were the vice and profligacy of its in- habitants. The worship of Venn* here was attended with shamefol licen- tiousness. All these points arc indi- rectly illustrated by pasMuzes in the two epistles to the Corinthiaas, which
CORINTH
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were written (probably A.D. 64), the first daring Paul's stay at Ephesos, the second from Macedonia, shortly before the second visit to Corinth, which is briefly stated (Acts xx, 8) to have lasted three months. See CoBiMTHiANS (Epistles to). Daring this vis- it (probably A.D. 55) the epistle to the Romans was written. From the three epbtles last mentioned, compared with Acts xxiv, 17, we gather that Paol was much occupied at this time with a collection for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. It has been well observed that the great number of Latin names of persons mentioned in the epistle to the Romans b in harmony with what we Imow of the colonial ori- gin of a large part of the population of Corinth. Ac- cording to Philo iPpp. ii, 587), it was extensively ool- xnized by Jews. From Acts xvili we may conclude that there were many Jewish converts in the Corin- thian church, though it would appear (1 Cor. xii, 2) that the Gentiles predominated. On the other hand, it is evident from the whole tenor of both epistles that the Judaizing element was very strong at Corinth. Par^ spirit also was extremely prevalent, the names of Paul, Peter, and Apollos being used as the watch- words of restless ikctions. Among the eminent Chris- tians who lived at Corinth were Stephanas (1 Cor. i, 16; xvi, 16, 17), Crispus (Acte xviii, 8; 1 Cor. i,14), Caius (Rom. xvi, 28; 1 Cor. i, 14), and Erastus (Rom. xvi, 23; 2 Tim. iv, 20). The epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is among the most interesting of the post-apostolic writings. The Corinthian church is re- markable in the epistles of Paul by the variety of its spiritual gifts, that seem for th% time to have eclipsed or superseded the office of the elder or bishop, which in most.churches became from the beginning so prom- inent. Very soon, howevec, this peculiarity was lost, and the bishops of Corinth take a place co-ordinate to those of other capital cities. One of them, Dionysius, appears to have exercised great influence over many and distant churches in the latter part of the second century (Eusebius, Hitt, Eccks, iv, 23). In the year 268 of the Christian era the city was burned by the Goths, and in 525 it was destroyed by an earthquake. Daring the Middle Ages Corinth shared the fate of many of the cities of Greece in being wrested from the emperors of Constantinople and possessed by a suc- cession of adventurers, and at length formed a part of the duchy of Athens, ruled first by the French, then by the Arragonese kings of Sicily, and finally by the Accaioli, a fiunUy of Florence, from whom it was taken by Mohammed II in 1460. During a war be- tween the Venetians and the Turks, it was captured by the former in 1687, but was recovered by the Turks in 1715, and held by them until the period of the Greek revolution, when it became the seat of the new gov-