Transcription
Well, what was the political history of Korean Corinth? It is really two cities with a death in between. I'll explain what I mean by that.
In the year 146 BC, the Roman Empire was stretching across the Mediterranean area. It was not yet complete, but the Romans were really moving out big time. And several of the Greek city-states launched a war against Rome, and Corinth was stupid enough to join them. And so what happened is the Romans marched in under their leader, uh, General Mummius, and utterly destroyed it. He, the Greek army was totally destroyed by the Romans. They, they didn't have the discipline, they didn't have the organization, they just weren't up to it. And the Roman army was strong and big anyway, and very well disciplined. So the Romans really thrashed them.
Well, then Mummius waited with his army outside Corinth. He didn't go in immediately. Waited outside for three days. And then he, he sent his troops out, and they rounded up all the stragglers and runaways from the Corinthian army and killed them. Killed by prisoners of war. He went into the city. He took all the women and the children as slaves, and he looted the city of anything of value, sent it off in a ship to Rome, and burned the city. And the city was utterly destroyed. Nothing remained. There were no Corinthian people anymore. Oh, there were some peasants, no doubt, living in hovels and shacks round and about the area. The ground was agricultural, and they could still get crops out of it. The isthmus was, was a good area for some agriculture, a little flatter and not quite so rocky at that point. And so they would, they would have some people there, but there was no Corinth and there was no Corinthian population.
But you know what? Location, location. You've still got to have trade going on, don't you? Between Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Something's got to be done. So what are you going to do? And the Romans want to trade in their empire. So Julius Caesar, in 44 BC, just a few months before he was assassinated, by the way, because he died that year, so it was very early in the year, decided to rebuild Corinth. Gave the order. And I doubt if it was all done before he was killed, but Corinth was rebuilt, and it's a totally different city. It was given the position of colonia. The word is colony, but colonia meant it was like a bit of Italy or Rome outside Italy. Now, there were different levels of colonia, and some of them had Italian law. Corinth did not. Uh, I believe Philippi did, but Corinth did not. But it was still a colonia.
So who inhabited it? Well, they got a lot of freedmen. If you were a slave in the Roman Empire, you got pocket money. You got some, some money. And by the way, slavery in the Roman Empire had nothing to do with racism. Uh, and some people actually sold themselves into slavery to get out of economic trouble, and then saved enough money out of their pocket money and bought their freedom out again. It was a very different kind of a thing. There were many levels, uh, in slavery in the Roman Empire. But, uh, when a slave was manumitted or freed, hands were placed on him with his manumission, his freedom, he could then, uh, go and set up a business. And the Romans got a lot of freedmen and sent them to Corinth. And then other entrepreneurs and traders came from anywhere and everywhere. And some of these people were then actually given Roman citizenship. There were people who had once been slaves, became freedmen, and then became Roman citizens. And not everybody in the Roman Empire had citizenship. Only an elite had the actual citizenship of Rome. They belonged to the countries where they were born. But Paul, of course, was a Roman citizen. Jesus was not.
And so what we find in Corinth is there's a new population, and many of them are Roman citizens. And the inscriptions change. Instead of having inscriptions in Greek, the inscriptions are in Latin. Here is a city in the heart of Greece, on the isthmus, inhabited by people who regard themselves as Romans, not really Greeks. And they've come from everywhere and anywhere. Many are Roman citizens. And when they put up monuments, their temples don't look like Greek temples with steps coming up from all sides. They're Roman temples built on a platform with steps just down the front. So the architecture changes. The city is rebuilt with fantastic architecture, but it's all Italian. It's all Roman. It's not Greek anymore. The language in the inscriptions is Latin, not Greek. There's a whole different city. There are two different cities. Greek Corinth is one thing. It died 146 BC. Roman Corinth was born in 44 BC. That's like a different city, just happened to be sitting on the same bit of real estate.
Augustus made it the capital of the province of Achaia because the Romans, having taken Greece, then divided it into provinces and under their own administrative system, and Achaia was one of those provinces, and the capital of it was Corinth. Well, obviously, it's the place where the votes went in and out, the place where there's communications. That's where you want your capital to be. And so it is indeed a tale of two cities. And we've talked about who were the new Corinthians. So let's move on.
Once again, Corinth is rich. It didn't take long. And, uh, especially the the bronze work, which they love. Corinthian bronze was, I, I think it was probably more valuable than gold, weight for weight. It was an amazing metal, made which actually with gold and silver in it. Um, so Corinth was rich, but not everybody. Because there were slaves, it was a stratified society. You had people who had got incredibly wealthy very fast off the trade. They, they came in early, they got in, they established their businesses. They were there political climbers, people climbing the social ladder. So, so, uh, elitism became part of Corinth. Class distinction became part of Corinth. You get the very rich and the very poor. And Paul refers to that kind of thing, I think in First Corinthians, where he talks about people building on a foundation, some building in precious, valuable stonework, adorned with gold and silver overlaid, and others building in wood, hay, and straw, and shacks. And so it's a very stratified, uh, city. And that comes into the church.
There was also a Jewish, uh, colony there or a group. This is a stone from a lintel across the door of the synagogue, but it's not from New Testament times. It's later, from probably about the fourth century after Christ, and maybe fifth century. It's later. You can see from the, uh, the kind of writing on it. This, it says "Synagogue of the Hebrews," but you've just got the beginning of the word "Hebrews," the end of the word "synagogue." But first century, the lettering would be far nicer than that. It wouldn't be so rough. And, uh, there were another stone there that had menorahs, the seven-branched candlesticks, carved on them from the synagogue.
So having sort of said a bit about geography and archaeology all coming together, let's see what the text of scripture says. You.