Twenty-five papers presented at the December 1996 symposium held in Athens to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American School of Classical Studies excavations at ancient Corinth. The papers are intended to illustrate the range in subject matter of research currently being undertaken by scholars of ancient Corinth, and their inclusion in one volume will serve as a useful reference work for nonspecialists. Each of the topics (which vary widely from Corinthian geology to religious practices to Byzantine pottery) is presented by the acknowledged expert in that area. The book includes a full general bibliography of articles and volumes concerning material excavated at Corinth. As a summary of one hundred years' research it will be useful to generations of scholars to come.

Conversations about materiality have helped forge a common meeting ground for scholars seeking to integrate images, sites, texts and implements in their approach to religion in the ancient Mediterranean. The thirteen chapters in this volume explore the productivity of these approaches, with case studies from Israel, Athens, Rome, Sicily and North Africa. The results foreground the capacity of material approaches to cast light on the cultural creation of the sacred through the integration of rhetorical, material, and iconographic means. They open more nuanced pathways to the uses of text in the study of material evidence. They highlight the potential for material objects to bring political and ethnic boundaries into the sacred realm. And they emphasize the role of ongoing interpretation, debate, and multiple readings in the creation of the sacred, in both ancient contexts and scholarly discussion.

This book examines the educated elite in 1 Corinthians through the development, and application, of an ancient education model. The research reads Paul's text within the social world of early Christianity and uses social-scientific criticism in reconstructing a model that is appropriate for first-century Corinth. Pauline scholars have used models to reconstruct elite education but this study highlights their oversight in recognising the relevancy of the Greek Gymnasium for education. Topics are examined in 1 Corinthians to demonstrate where the model advances an understanding of Paul's interaction with the elite Corinthian Christians in the context of community conflict. This study demonstrates the important contribution that this ancient education model makes in interpreting 1 Corinthians in a Graeco-Roman context. This is Volume 271 of JSNTS.

The essays in Archaeology and History in Roman, Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece honor the contributions of Timothy E. Gregory to our understanding of Greece from the Roman period to modern times. Evoking Gregory's diverse interests, the volume brings together anthropologists, art historians, archaeologists, historians, and philologists to address such contested topics as the end of Antiquity, the so-called Byzantine Dark Ages, the contours of the emerging Byzantine civilization, and identity in post-Medieval Greece. These papers demonstrate the continued vitality of both traditional and innovative approaches to the study of material culture and emphasise that historical interpretation should be the product of methodological self-awareness. In particular, this volume shows how the study of the material culture of post-Classical Greece over the last 30 years has made significant contributions to both the larger archaeological and historical discourse. The essays in this volume are organized under three headings - Archaeology and Method, the Archaeology of Identity, and the Changing Landscape - which highlight three main focuses of Gregory's research. Each essay interlaces new analyses with the contributions Gregory has made to our understanding of Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. Read together these essays not only make a significant contribution to how we understand the post-Classical Greek world, but also to how we study the material culture of the Mediterranean world more broadly.

The narrow neck of land that joins the Peloponnese with the Greek mainland was central to the fortunes of the city of Corinth and the history of Greece from the classical Greek period to the end of the ancient world. Corinth was perfectly situated for monitoring land traffic between Athens and Sparta and overland movements between eastern and western seas. David Pettegrew’s book offers a new history of the Isthmus of Corinth from the Romans’ initial presence in Greece during the Hellenistic era to the epic transformations of the Empire in late antiquity. A new interpretation of the extensive literary evidence outlines how the Isthmus became the most famous land bridge of the ancient world, central to maritime interests of Corinth, and a medium for Rome’s conquest, annexation, and administration in the Greek east. A fresh synthesis of archaeological evidence and the results of a recent intensive survey on the Isthmus describe the physical development of fortifications, settlements, harbors, roads, and sanctuaries in the region. The author includes chapters on the classical background of the concept isthmos, the sacking of Corinth and the defeat of the Achaean League, colonization in the Late Roman Republic, the Emperor Nero’s canal project and its failure, the growth of Roman settlement in the territory, and the end of athletic contests at Isthmia. The Isthmus of Corinth offers a powerful case study in the ways that shifting Mediterranean worlds transformed a culturally significant landscape over the course of a millennium.