e city was captured by the Roman general Mummius. It was
left desolate until B.C. 46, when Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman
colony. The Romans called the whole of Greece the province of Achaia,
and constituted Corinth the capital of it. While Athens was still the
seat of the greatest university in the world, where lived most
vigorously the glorious memories of bygone Greece, the government of
the province was directed from Corinth. When St. Paul visited it, it
was under a proconsul, Junius Gallio, the brother of the philosopher
Seneca. The possession of two good harbours, and its position on the
quickest route from Rome to the East, caused a rapid revival of
Corinthian wealth and Corinthian manners. There was also a good deal
of literary and philosophic culture. In the time of St. Paul the
descendants of the original Roman colonists probably formed a small
aristocracy among the mass of Greek dwellers at Corinth, and some
settlements of various nationalities, including one of Jews, were
living there. A few miles away, at the shrine of Poseidon, were held
the athletic Isthmian games, and still by the sea-shore there grow the
pine trees, such as furnished the quickly withering wreaths which were
given to the victors in the race.

The Church of Corinth was founded by St. Paul on his second missionary
journey, during his first visit to Europe. His stay at Corinth lasted
for eighteen months. There is an account of it in Acts xviii. He
laboured at tent-making, and found a home with a devout Jewish couple,
Aquila and Priscilla. At first he preached in the synagogue, where he
converted the ruler of the synagogue, Crispus. Being rejected by the
Jews, he turned to the Gentiles, and held his meetings {135} in the
house of Justus, a converted proselyte. The Jews prosecuted St. Paul
before Gallio, who, however, dismissed the case with contemptuous
indifference. The converts to Christianity were numerous. They were
mostly Gentiles (1 Cor. xii. 2), but there were a few influential
Jewish Christians and some Gentiles who had been proselytes of Judaism.
It is clear that the Church contained a few men of good birth and
education (1 Cor. i. 26), but the majority were from the poorer
classes. The Corinthians as Christians were by no means entirely free
from the characteristics which had marked them as citizens. They were
ready to form cliques and quarrel in the name of Christ, and they still
showed the same quarrelsom