The Roman province covering southern Greece — the Peloponnese and the mainland as far north as Delphi — with CORINTH as its capital and seat of the proconsul (it was before the proconsul of Achaia, Gallio, that Paul was hauled at Corinth, Acts 18:12). The name is old: 'Achaeans' is Homer's standard word for the Greeks at Troy, and Rome revived it for the province after subduing Greece in 146 BC. 2 Corinthians is addressed not only to Corinth but 'to all the holy ones in the whole of Achaia' — a deliberate widening, handing a raw letter about one congregation's quarrel to its neighbours as well.