Corinth on the Isthmus: The Crossroads of the Mediterranean World is a study of the Isthmus of Corinth and its commercial connections to the dynamic networks of the Roman Mediterranean. It takes as a starting point the ancient view that a land bridge influenced, changed, and even determined Corinth’s economy and character. From the foundation of Julius Caesar’s colony to the end of antiquity, historians, poets, orators, and preachers characterized Corinth as an exceptional kind of maritime city made prosperous and powerful from its crossroads, facilities for traffic, commercial markets, pilgrim sites, naval fleet, and decadent pleasures. The ancient consensus that an Isthmus dramatically altered the history, wealth, and character of the city, was adopted almost wholesale by European travelers and the first classical and biblical scholars of the 18th-19th centuries.
Why did writers of the early and later Roman eras place stock in the notion that a land bridge had such consequence on the historical development of the city? And how did a crossroads of land and sea foster regional connectivity between the 1st century BC and 7th century AD? These are the questions that this work seeks to address.
Corinth on the Isthmus is under contract with University of Michigan Press.
Outline:
Introduction
1. The Bridge
2. Ship Carters
3. Colonial Landscapes
4. Between Italy and Asia: Cape Malea and Nero’s Canal
5. Commercial Emporia
6. Isthmian Crossroads
7. Abatement in a Landscape of Famous Places
8. A Busy Countryside
9. Shoring the Periphery: Churches and Fortifications
10. Corinth at the End of the World
Conclusion
Bill Caraher
corinthianmatters2
Matthew R. Malcolm
dpettegrew
