Thinking about Corinth (and starting to write)

As I am getting older and more “senior” in my field, I am trying to say “no” to fewer things and do a bit more to give back to the field, my institution, and my colleagues. Sometimes this works our really well and sometimes… well, not so much. In general, people don’t ask me to do too many things so the sample size remains too small to assess whether this is a good or bad practice.

Sometime during the long, dark, winter I agreed to write a short contribution on “Corinth: Periphery, urban environment, chora.” The topic remains a bit obscure to me, to be honest. I decided to write about the countryside of Corinth. The volume focuses on the 1st-4th century AD which the editors argue is the period before the construction of large scale churches in Corinth. My original thought was that writing this short contribution will help refresh my memory on things Corinthian and give me an excuse to re-read some recent (and classic) works on the region. This, in turn, should help me get my feet under me for some of my ongoing research at Isthmia.

My current plan is an essay that looks at sites (with a focus on Kenchreai, Lechaion, and Isthmia), routes (with attention smaller sites in the region), and landscapes (which will consider the results from survey archaeology). This offers some structure even if it doesn’t really offer an argument. My sense is for a piece like this any argument should be subordinate to a survey of scholarship on the region. That said, I think it is worth noting that recent research has shown the 3rd and 4th centuries as periods of greater stability than previously thought. In light of this, the growth of Christianity in the 5th and 6th centuries emerges not from an “age of anxiety” or in a landscape shaped by political, economic, and military disruption or decline, but general stability and gradual change.

So far, I have only a couple paragraphs written, but in the spirit of transparency, I’ll share them here:

The Corinthian periphery during the Roman period represents one of the most thoroughly investigated landscapes of the ancient Mediterranean world. For over a century archaeologists based at the sites of Ancient Corinth and later Isthmia conducted systematic investigations designed to explore the connections between both the city and its chora and also the Corinthia to the broader Mediterranean. As early as the first volume in the venerable Corinth excavation series, archaeologists explored the larger Corinthia retracing the footsteps of ancient travelers from Pausanias to Apuleius’s fictional Lucius and St. Paul. Excavations at the ancient harbors of Lechaion and Kenchreai (and the neighborhood of Koutsongilla) and at the Panhellenic sanctuary of Isthmia continue to add major nodes to the landscape. Extensive and intensive surveys, notably the work of James Wiseman, Timothy Gregory, and the scholars associated with the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey, have further contributed to our understanding of the Corinthian landscape during the Roman period. This work has populated the spaces between the sites with villas, farmsteads, roads, cemeteries, quarries, and religious sites. 

The following chapter will offer a survey of work on the Corinthian countryside. It will follow the definition provided by David Pettegrew in his recent monograph on the Corinthia. Pettegrew, recognizing that the territory under the political the city of Corinth varied over time, but also that the area most proximate to the city had the greatest immediate connection to the city itself, limited his treatment to the Isthmus of Corinth which he defined as bounded by the Geraneia mountains to the North and the line formed by Mt. Oneion and Acrocorinth to the south of the site. The harbor towns of Lechaion and Kenchreai form the western and eastern extent of city’s immediate chora respectively. This definition also largely coincided with the chora of the city during the Archaic and Classical period, which, of course, would have no longer been particularly relevant during the Roman period, but nevertheless offers a useful way to understand the countryside more regularly connected socially and economically to the urban core during the first four centuries of our era.