“I managed to get a copy of Ben Witherington‘s new book A Week in the Life of Corinth(IVP, 2012). It is a novel (about 150 small pages) centred around the life of Nicanor, a former slave of Erastos. Basically Nicanor has secured his freedom and is now an up-and-coming businessman. The novel tells of his business adventures and his encounter with the new religion, ‘Christianity’….

Beyond the story itself, Witherington has managed to sneak in a large amount of history. One is introduced to the city of Corinth, key historical figures, what life was like for both the wealthy and the poor, how people travelled, and other things. Alongside what comes out in the story itself are short sidebars, ‘A Closer Look’, that provide explanations and historical details about things mentioned in the story.”

Read the rest of the review here. 

The “official” review went live today on the BMCR list.

Here’s the opening paragraph…read the full review here.

“Land of Sikyon is a handsomely produced and impeccably edited volume that includes a massive amount of new information on Sikyon produced over the course of a diachronic, extensive archaeological survey initiated by Yannis Lolos as part of his dissertation research and expanded in subsequent field seasons. Moreover, Lolos’s book provides valuable and extensive synthesis of past work in the region and a careful study of relevant ancient texts. This work is a groundbreaking study of this city and its countryside.”

“CORINTH, Greece, April 24 (Reuters) – German tourists are in short supply in Greece these days, frightened away by reports of visceral anti-German sentiment in some places, fears of being stranded by strikes and television images of fiery anti-austerity riots.

Who in their right mind, after all, would want to go on holiday to a place where they might be called a Nazi?

The dearth of Germans is especially noticeable in tourist hotspots like Corinth, an enchanting ancient town 80 km west of Athens famous for the steep and narrow walls of its 6-km (4-mile) long canal that cuts across the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

Because tourism accounts for a disproportionately large 15 percent of Greece’s gross domestic product (GDP) and Germans are the largest group of visitors, their absence is causing pain….”

Read the rest here. 

In the meantime… As I noted last year (here and here), 1 Corinthians is central to the celebration of the central event of the Christian faith: death and resurrection.  Western churches everywhere reflected on the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians this past weekend; Orthodox celebrations will occur this coming weekend.  In the spirit of this feast, I post a few short reflections on Paul and 1 Corinthians 15. 

• When we stand at the Resurrection (Salisbury Post)
• Songs We Sing at Easter No. 4: “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” (The Gasden Times)
• Faith Perspective: Jesus delivered on his prediction (Green Bay Gazette)
• The Great Proclamation (Mike Tsichlis, for Eastern Orthodox perspective)

As per usual, I’ll let Dr. Brown’s work stand on its own merits and recommend it to anyone interested in understand the development and archaeology of Late Roman statuary. Instead, I’ll focus on two interrelated but admittedly peripheral aspects of Brown’s work.

First, Brown does a nice job of arguing that the Lechaion road was the main area for the display of chlamydatus statues. In her reconstruction of this space of display the chlamys clad statues stood along the sides of the main road into forum area of Corinth. A visitor to the forum area would have passed under the impassive gaze of these statues as they walked along the main artery of the Late Antique city. The Lechaion Road provided access to basic civic amenities like latrines and shops as well as places of display like the Peirene fountain which likely served as an important source of water for the city as well as an area for informal recreation, gathering, and meeting. Thus Corinthians and visitors to the city lived their daily life in and among reminders of the city’s imperial patrons.

The Lechaion Road also likely served as the main route of official processions into the city of Corinth.  Important visitors from the west would have enjoyed their official adventus (or ritual of arrival) into the city along the wide, colonnaded, grandiose Lechaion Road. The chlamydatus would have watched the passage of fellow elites and their retinues accompanied by city fathers, fellow imperial aristocrats, and by the 5th century perhaps local representatives of the Christian communities. The position of the statues along the road left the main route into the city open, but also provided a permanent audience for ritual processions. The most important men in the city and perhaps province would always be there, standing to honor their fellow elites.

The statue that I was most intrigued by was the so-called Kraneion chlamydatus. This statue was found cut down and reused as a threshold at the Kraneion basilica which dates to the 6th century and stood immediately outside of the eastern Kraneion Gate to the city. The location of the statue near the eastern gate of the city suggests that this might have been an area for display during the Late Antiquity with chlamys clad statues greeting visitors from the east.

Hesperia 81 (2012), p. 145

The reuse of the Kraneion chlamydatus in the Kraneion basilica interesting is that it was cut down for use as a threshold block.  It would be easy to recognize in this use of spolia practical concerns; torso of the chlamydatus provided a substantial block of marble suitable for the requirements of a threshold.

I do wonder whether there might be some symbolic considerations as well. The cutting down of the statue would have made it difficult for a visitor to the church to recognize the former function of the block. On the other hand, the process of selecting and cutting down the block must have involved a series of ideological decisions. The chlamys clad man had to be recognized as no longer relevant or important and therefore suitable for reuse. The placement of the block as a threshold offers a nice parallel to the original location of the statue near the gate to the city (or the placement of the other chlamydatus along the processional route of the monumentalized Lechaion Road).  In other words, the location of the reused chlamydatus at the threshold to the church finds a nice parallel with their original location in liminal spaces like the gate to the city or a processional way.

One could even go a step further and suggest that the relocation of the chlamydatus statue at the threshold of the church marked out the boundary between the civic world and the works of the church. The shift is more marked when you consider that within the church the congregation stood in the aisles and watched the ranked procession of the clergy. The congregation may have been accompanied by a passive processions of saints standing in the place of the onlooking chlamydatus along the Lechaion Road while the clergy’s liturgical procession echoed the ritualized adventus of Late Roman aristocrats into the city.

The physical subordination of the Kraneion chlamydatus at the threshold of the church echoed the gradual suppression of monumental civic space throughout the empire and their replacement with churches tied to the ecclesiastical rather than civic or imperial elite.

Crossposted to New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World.

Yannis kindly wrote up a fuller version of his abstract in English, which I include below.  Like my recent piece on the diolkos and Hans Lohmann’s forthcoming article, Nakas and Koutsoumba critically reassess the traditional interpretation of the diolkos as a major slipway for moving ships overland.  They suggest that ships, when moved during episodes of war, could more easily have been transferred over the Isthmus via wooden beams, and that no commercial ship owner in his right mind would have transferred his vessel over the ridge.  Interestingly, they also observe / suggest that the Sector A “platform” relates not to the diolkos road but to Nero’s canal—and is, consequently, Roman in date.  Finally, they conclude, as Lohmann does, that the portage road excavated by Verdelis did not run all the way across the Isthmus!  These three articles together should contribute to new views of the dating and use of the diolkos road in antiquity—and consequently, the commercial economy of ancient Corinth.

So, here’s the extended and enriched abstract of the article “The Diolkos: a significant technical achievement of antiquity” (International Archaeological Conference. Corinthia and the Northeast Peloponnesus: Topography and History from Prehistoric Times until the End of Antiquity”, Loutraki 26-29 March 2009 (under publication) by D. Koutsoumba and Y. Nakas:

For more than a century, the diolkos of Corinth has intrigued scholars and public with the quality of its construction and its function as a unique slipway for the transportation of ships. Certain attributes, however, of the diolkos have received minimum attention from scholars and can shed light on questions concerning the monument’s initial function and use. Here are some of them:

The actual diolkos seems to have covered only part of the Isthmus. No remains of any stone-paved road have been located beyond the Isthmus’ west coast, even when the area was still free of modern structures. Apparently a stone paving was applied only on the parts of the road where the soil was soft and unstable, such as the Isthmus’ west and east coast; the diolkos must have continued as a simple stepped earth road across the central limestone ridge of the Isthmus.

Secondly, the preserved parts of the diolkos belong to at least three different phases of construction. The main part of the road appears to have been built more or less in the same period, sometime before the early 5^th century BC, as a Doric capital in secondary use suggests. The west end of the road (today disappearing into the canal), constructed with impressive ashlar blocks set in regular rows is of different construction style but its dating is uncertain. The Π-shaped loading platform also belongs to another phase and could date to the early 4^thcentury BC. Finally, the west end of the diolkos structure, a simple paved platform (its inclination is probably caused by the modern canal cut at its edge), is of totally different construction style, indicating a working area, possibly the only surviving remain of Nero’s works (Nero’s canal followed exactly the same course as the modern one).

Another noticeable element is the blocking of the main part of the road by two series of rough blocks (inside the modern Engineers’ Corps School), deliberately placed on the course of the main wheel tracks. It is unknown when this task took place and by whom. The existence of multiple wheel tracks on top of the blocking indicates that the road remained in use for a long time after that. A final element is the possible existence of two stepped earth roads on each side of the diolkos, as reported by the only excavator of the diolkos, N. Verdelis.

The diolkos was beyond doubt a highly sophisticated and elaborate work of craftsmanship of ancient Greece. It was repaired and expanded, due to its continuous use and also possibly incapacitated at one time. What was, however, its original function? Although the hauling of galleys over the Isthmus was a rather common practice during wartime, nothing similar is actually attested for merchantmen, whose transportation on wheels or sledges (both techniques feasible in ancient Greece) would require a disproportionate amount of money compared to the actual cost of the ship and its cargo, not to mention the cargo losses and the ship’s necessary repairs afterward. Nevertheless, the diolkos was worn out by extensive use, as indicated by the deep and multiple wheel marks on it. The Corinthian-controlled ferrying of great and heavy cargoes between both sides of the Isthmus would not only explain the use of the road but would also justify its initial construction.

It remains a mystery why the stone-paved diolkos was completely forgotten by the time of Pausanias or why it never reached any written source of the Greco-Roman antiquity. Was it so mundane a thing not of interest to ancient authors? Was it only used for a few years after its construction and then fell into disrepair and disappeared? Furthermore, who built it and when? Can we rule out totally its use for ferrying ships, or was it actually a slip-way operating only in special occasions? These questions remain unanswered and only further research and excavation at the area might provide some answers in the future.

Here’s the description from the Wiley-Blackwell website.

The Complete Archaeology of Greece covers the incredible richness and variety of Greek culture and its central role in our understanding of European civilization, from the Palaeolithic era of 400,000 years ago to the early modern period. In a single volume, the field’s traditional focus on art and architecture has been combined with a rigorous overview of the latest archaeological evidence forming a truly comprehensive work on Greek civilization.

• A unique single-volume exploration of the extraordinary development of human society in Greece from the earliest human traces up till the early 20th century AD
• Provides 22 chapters and an introduction chronologically surveying the phases of Greek culture, with over 200 illustrations
• Features over 200 images of art, architecture, and ancient texts, and integrates new archaeological discoveries for a more detailed picture of the Greece past, its landscape, and its people
• Explains how scientific advances in archaeology have provided a broader perspective on Greek prehistory and history
• Offers extensive notes on the text, available online, including additional details and references for the serious researcher and amateur

And here is the table of contents.  Judging from the index, the Corinthia makes a very good showing.  There’s even some discussion of the Eastern Korinthia Survey.