Day 9– As we drove to the Peloponnese we went by the Corinth Canal, which connects the Ionian Sea with the Aegean Sea. Construction began in 67 BCE and was completed in 1893 BCE. Makes construction in Houston look not so bad. (Ignore the finger.)
We frist toured the museum of the ancient city of Corinth. The statues were exquisite and interestingly, the columns of the buildings were Ionic, not Corinthian. Corinthian columns came later and were…not really from Corinth. Headless statues were made to depict certain types of people/royalty/gods/godesses and the heads were interhangeable. It’s genius. Make one body and place the latest important person head on it. Save the marble!
The city of Corinth was quite a cosmopolitan place with a variety of gods and goddesses as well as a variety of attitudes towards morality. There were also about 30,000 Jews in the city when Paul was there, making this a tough place to preach the Gospel. It really helped me understand his letters to the Corinthian Christians who seemed to be a difficult people for Paul resulting in his firt turn towards the Gentiles.
Corinth is a city in the Peloponnese region, betwee two seas. It is a beautiful place and made Corinth a great city for trade. You can see the columns of what remains of the Temple to Apollo that Paul speaks about. (These columns are Doric.)
Seated about the ruins of ancient Corinth, on top of a 575 meter monolithic rock, the Acrocorinth was continuously occupied from the archaic period until the early 19th century. Its fortress, one of the most impressive ones in Greece, is built on foundations dating from the Hellenistic period (3rd century BC). It was continuously occupied until the early 19th century. At the highest summit was the Temple of Aphrodite.
Within the third enclosure wall on the Acrocorinth are to be found monuments of all periods: at the highest point, the sanctuary of Aphrodite with an early Christian basilica on its ruins, the fountain of Ano Peirene, Byzantine cisterns, the Frankish tower, a Venetian church, mosques, Turkish houses and fountains.
This was a hike, y’all!
Magdalena's Musings 