e to Corinth.

This ancient city, taken and destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C., had
been refounded by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony in 46 B.C., settled
with Italian colonists, and made a residence of the Roman governor. Its
situation on the isthmus of Corinth made it a stage on the greatest of
the trade routes between Rome and the East, and it was at this time the
commercial capital of Greece. The traditions of licentiousness and
sensuality associated with the worship of Aphrodite, which had given
rise to the sinister word _corinthianize_, increased the natural
tendencies of a great city to wickedness and wanton luxury. Here, as in
all great centres of trade and industry, there was a body of Jews, with
a synagogue. The conditions of life in Corinth--the heathen
surroundings, the temptations to vice, the competition and disputes of
trading life, the controversial arguments of Jews, the alertness of mind
of a lively city people, the haughty temper of the inhabitants of the
capital--all these are to be seen reflected in the earnest paragraphs of
Paul's two epistles.

The founding of the church in Corinth (cf. 1 Cor. iv. 15) and nearly
everything important that we know of Paul's first visit there will be
found, well told, in Acts xviii. 1-18, a passage for which, evidently,
the writer of the history had excellent sources of information. Of the
somewhat chastened spirit with which Paul came he himself tells in 1
Cor. ii. 1-5. His success was prompt and large, and in the year and six
months of his stay a vigorous church was gathered, including Aquila and
Priscilla, as well as Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, of whom we
hear again in 1 Cor. i. 14; whether Sosthenes, who seems to have
succeeded Crispus in his office (Acts xviii. 17), was afterwards
converted and became the Christian brother mentioned in i Cor. i. 1
cannot be known. The church evidently consisted mainly of Gentile
converts, but with some Jews (i Cor. x. 14, "flee from idolatry"; xii.
2, "when ye were Gentiles "; vii. 18, "was any man called being
circumcised?").

The apostle's next long stay was at Ephesus, whither he seems to have
gone in the course of the same year in which he left Corinth (A.D.
51-55) and where he stayed three years. Before he arrived at Ephesus
Aquila and Priscilla, who had settled there, made the acquaintance of
Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria, well-educated and zealous, who with
imperfect Christian knowledge was preaching the gosp