A Greek city on the narrow isthmus joining the Peloponnese to the mainland, holding two harbours — one facing Italy, one facing Asia — and charging for the privilege; small ships were dragged bodily across the four-mile diolkos rather than risk the cape. Rome destroyed the old city in 146 BC and Julius Caesar refounded it in 44 BC as a colony settled largely with freedmen, so the Corinth Paul knew was barely a century old, Roman in law and Greek in speech, rich, new-moneyed and short of pedigree — which is exactly the sensitivity 1 Corinthians 1:26 presses on. It hosted the Isthmian games (the athletic imagery of 9:24-27) and the temple of Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth above; the slur 'to Corinthianise' meant to live loosely, though it was coined about the OLD city by Athenian rivals and should not be treated as a description of Paul's. He stayed about eighteen months (Acts 18) and was hauled before the proconsul GALLIO, whose term is fixed by an inscription at Delphi to AD 51-52 — the single firmest date in New Testament chronology.