COKINTH 



(OKIOI.ANCS 



479 



joined the Aeliiruii league (243), of which it formed 

 part down to 14<5 n.c., when it wiw utterly destroyed 

 uy tint Roman* iiinl.-r MmiimiuH. Exactly a cen- 

 tury afterwards Corinth was rebuilt by Julius 

 ir, Dew-named Colonia ,lul<n I'm-inthiu, and 

 (..., pled with veterans and the descendants of 

 ireedmen ; an<l under Augustus and his successors 

 it quickly became once more 'the citadel and star 

 of Ureece." It reached almost its old importance 

 as a trading and manufacturing town, and centred 

 in itself the traffic that had formerly belonged to 

 Athens and Delos. About sixty or seventy years 

 lii'iure its completion by Hadrian, it was visited 

 li\ St Paul, who, during a sojourn of a year and a 

 half, planted a Christian church in Corinth, to 

 which lie addressed two of his epistles. The city 

 was (from 27 A.D.) the seat of the pro-consul of the 

 Roman province of Achaia, and the restoration of 

 the Isthmian Games brought to it multitudes of 

 Greeks from all parts of the Roman empire. 



The Corinthians were devoted to the worship of 

 the deities of love and of the sea. Aphrodite's 

 temple was the oldest and the holiest in Greece. 

 In her rites at Corinth, Phoenician influence is 

 distinctly traceable. According to Strabo, in the 

 most flourishing period of the city more than 

 1000 hierodouloi were kept there ' a source of 

 much danger to strangers as of lustre and credit 

 to the service of the goddess.' It was at 

 Corinth, where unbridled licentiousness received 

 such religious consecration, that the Apostle 

 Paul wrote his description of heathen corruption 

 in the Epistle to the Romans. Nowhere in the 

 Hellenic world was licentiousness so prevalent. 

 ' The vices of the Greeks were notorious in the 

 Roman empire, the Corinthian vices even in Greece. ' 

 With all the artistic skill and culture of the 

 Corinthians, and the lavish expense at which they 

 adorned their wealthy city, they showed but little 

 creative power in art, and ' among the illustrious 

 writers or Greece, not a single Corinthian appears. ' 

 Yet Corinth produced the painters Ardices, Cleo- 

 phantus, and Cleanthes ; the statesmen Periander, 

 Phidon, Philolaus, and Timoleon ; Arion, the in- 

 ventor of the dithyramb ; and was the abode in his 

 later life of the cynic philosopher, Diogenes. 



Corinth was spoiled by Gothic hordes at the end 

 of the 3d century, by Alaric in 396, and by the 

 Slavs in the 8th century. In 1205 it was taken by 

 the Franks, and from them it fell back into the 

 hands of the eastern emperors, from whom in 

 1459 it was wrested by the Turks. It was held by 

 the Venetians from 1699 to 1715, when it was 

 retaken by the Turks, under whom it sank to a 

 miserable village. After being delivered from 

 Turkish domination in 1822, Corinth slowly in- 

 creased from 1830 till the 21st February 1858, when 

 it was utterly destroyed by an earthquake. The 

 town has since been rebuilt in a more convenient 

 position, 3 miles to the north-east. Its population 

 is now 3000. A mile and a half east-north-east 

 of New Corinth, on the Gulf of Lepanto (anciently 

 Gulf of Corinth ), is the western mouth of the canal 

 through the Isthmus. Two new towns have been 

 i.-iin out at its east and west mouths, the eastern 

 named Isthmia, the western Posidonia. See CANAL, 

 Vol. II. p. 699. 



Corinth, capital of Alcorn county, Mississippi, 

 on two railways, 93 miles E. by S. of Memphis. 

 Here General Rosecrans gained a decisive victory 

 over the Confederates, October 3-4, 1862. Pop. 

 (1880) 2275; (1890)2111. 



Corinthians, FIRST AND SECOND EPISTLES 

 TO THE, two writings forming part of the New 

 Testament Canon, addressed by the Apostle Paul 

 to the Christian church which he had founded at 

 Corinth (q.v.) during his sojourn there, in part of 



52, the whole of 53, and part of 54 A.D. Paul had 

 been succeeded at Corinth by Apollo*, and Aimllott 

 by certain Judaixing teachers, and the church had 

 become divided into four parties (1 Cor. L 12). 

 The First Epistle which contains a reference to 

 another epistle which preceded it, but has not been 

 preserved (1 Cor. v. 9, 10) was written from 

 Ephesus in the spring of 57 or 58, and was occa- 

 sioned by the reports which Paul had received from 

 'those of the EewehoU of Chloe'U Cor. L 11) 

 about these divisions. It was intended also to 

 correct various abuses, and answer certain ques- 

 tions which the Corinthian Church had asked him 

 by letter (1 Cor. vii. 1 ; viii. 1 ; xii. 1 ; &c.). 



The reports brought by Titus of the condition 

 and disposition of the Corinthian Church, and of 

 the impression made on it by the previous epistle, 

 induced Paul to write the Second. In this he ap- 

 pears to many scholars to refer to a second visit he 

 had paid to Corinth (2 Cor. xii. 14; xiiL 1 )some time 

 between the first visit and our First Epistle though 

 by others this supposed second visit is much dis- 

 puted urges a collection for the mother-church at 

 Jerusalem ( 2 Cor. viii. and ix. ) ; endeavours to 

 remove certain scandals that still existed, and to 

 re-establish his apostolic authority, which had 

 been contested by the schismatic teachers ; and 

 expresses his intention to pay another visit to 

 Corinth. The epistle was written from Macedonia 

 in the autumn of the same year (57 or 58 A.D.). 

 The two epistles are unquestionably genuine, and 

 show in the clearest light the personalcharacter of 

 the writer and the inner lite of the primitive 

 Gentile Church. 'We are here,' says Stanley, 

 ' and (as far as the epistles are concerned ) here 

 only, allowed to witness the earliest conflict of 

 Christianity with the culture and vices of the 

 ancient classical world. ... It is the Apostle of 

 the Gentiles, as it were, in his own peculiar sphere 

 in the midst of questions evoked by his own 

 peculiar mission watching over churches of his 

 own creation. ' 



The best of the special commentaries on both 

 epistles are those of Meyer (6th ed. 1881 ), Holsten, 

 Das Evangelium des Paulus (vol. i. 1880 ) ; Godet 

 ( English trans, in Clark's Series, 2 vols. ) ; Stanley 

 (5th ed. 1882); and Beet (3d ed. 1885); on the 

 First Epistle, those of Heinrici (1880) and Lias 

 (1886) ; on the Second, of Klopper (1874). 



Corinto. See NICARAGUA. 



< oriola nns. CAIUS or CN.SUS MARCH'S, a 

 Roman patrician, surnamed Coriolanus from his 

 heroism at the capture of the Volscian town of 

 Corioli ( 493 B.C. ). Of a proud and haughty spirit, he 

 was strongly opposed to the plebeians, who refused 

 to elect him when a candidate for the consulship. 

 After this, during a time of famine, he argued in 

 the senate against a gratuitous distribution of the 

 corn which had arrived from Sicily, unless the 

 plebeians should give up their tribunes, but lately 

 instituted. For this he was impeached, and 

 banished. He took refuge among the Vol.-cian>. 

 whom he aided in their war with the Romans. Hi> 

 victories at the head of his Volscian troops alarmed 

 the Romans, who, on his approach to their city, 

 sent a variety of deputations to plead with him. 

 He was deaf to every entreaty. At last, the 

 noblest matrons of Rome, headed" by his old mother 

 Veturia, and his wife Volumnia, leading her two 

 children, came to his tent. (Shakespeare follows 

 Plutarch in calling the mother Yolunmia. while 

 the wife is Virgfiia.) Their tears cooled his 

 fierce desire to be revenged on those who had dis- 

 honoured him, and he led back the Volsci to their 

 own territories. Shakespeare's Coriolanus is a 

 stately and impressive drama, its hero a magnifi- 

 cent creative realisation of the haughty but noble 

 aristocrat of Plutarch's story. 



