Ancient Corinth

The Temple of Apollo with Acrocorinth in the background    

Having spent the morning of Thursday 21^st August exploring the ruins of the mediaeval city of Acrocorinth, we walked back down the hill (565m high) to spend the afternoon walking the remains of Ancient Corinth. The ruins of the city are spread over a vast area, all the way from Acrocorinth (south) to the coast (north) and a good distance east and west too. However, only the central area around the Temple of Apollo and the Roman forum is preserved in an excavated state.

Ancient Corinth was a key centre of both the Greek and Roman worlds, providing a trading link from east to west between the Ionian and the Aegean in Greek times and between Rome and Syria/Egypt in the Roman era. The Greek city was virtually razed to the ground by the Romans in 146BC, after their defeat of the Greek city-states of the Archean League. After lying in ruins for a century, Julius Ceasar had Corinth rebuilt in majestic style and it later became the provincial capital. The city of hard-living and hard-playing citizens endured until 2 earthquakes (375 AD and 521 AD) brought down the Roman buildings and the site was depopulated again, bar a brief Byzantine revival in the 11^th century.

The Temple of Apollo

The Temple of Athene

Though the main excavated site primarily comprises the remains of the Roman city, the focal point is the ruin of the Temple of Apollo, which has survived from the 5^th century BC (Classical Greek-era). The seven Doric columns stand above most of the rest of the site and dominate the area, though the remains of the Temple of Athene are on a fractionally higher piece of ground. Even though so much is now missing, the Temple of Apollo is still impressive.

The Glauke Fountain

To the west of the temple is the Glauke Fountain, which is cut into a large, free-standing rock. Futher west still, and just outside the main archaeological site, is an odeon and a theatre, the first phase of which also dates back to the 5^th century BC.

Almost the only other remains of the Classical Greek city is a small and inconspicuous sacred spring at the base of a narrow flight of steps. It’s so inconspicuous that we aren’t even sure that we found it – so there’s no picture!

Lower Fountain of Peirene

However, we did find the elaborate Roman-era Lower Fountain of Peirene (the Upper Fountain of Peirene, which we had seen in the morning, is in Acrocorinth). The fountain is located just off the marble-paved Lechaion Way, a roadway that had been the main approach to the city. The spring’s waters were channelled into a fountain house and pool, the construction of which was a gift to the city from Herodes Atticus. The waters still flow through the underground cisterns and on to the modern village.

The Lechaion Way leads into the Roman agora (marketplace). Surrounding the agora are the remains of shops and administrative buildings. As if to highlight the city’s wealth and importance, on the far side of the agora are the remains of the stoa (a large multi-storied building) which, in Roman times, had 33 shops on the ground floor.

The bema from which St Paul addressed the Corinthians    

In the centre of the agora is the bema, a marble platform which was used for public announcements. St Paul spent 18 months in Ancient Corinth (51-52 AD) initially trying to convert the city’s Jewish population to Christianity but after coming under strong opposition from them working to convert the gentiles. He was brought to trial, allegedly on the bema, in front of Proconsul Gallio, accused of conducting illegal teachings. However, Gallio refused to pronounce judgement on what he considered a religious dispute among Jews. Probably as a result of the connection to St Paul, a Christian church was built on the bema in the Byzantine era.

In and around the area of the stoa we came across a couple of large sheds and a number of sets of ruins which had been partially covered with corrugated iron roofs. In the sheds, archaeologists were working to preserve Classical Greek and Roman mosaics which had been uncovered.

We saw more fantastic mosaics in the site’s museum too, as well as a large selection of (mostly headless) statues, carved heads (to go with the headless statues?), decorated pots and model theatrical characters similar to those we had seen in several other museums.

Though it wasn’t made very clear from what we had seen at Ancient Corinth, the city commanded the passage of trade both down into the Peloponnisos and across the isthmus between the Ionian and Aegean. Our next major event would be crossing that isthmus but, rather than dragging BV across on a paved road (the dhiolkos), we planned to use the more recent (though still pretty old) French-built canal.

Korínthos