"Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth" (i. 2). In former times Corinth had been the most important city in Greece after Athens itself. It was one of the earliest homes of Greek art, and its position made it so favourable for commerce that it attracted a colony of Phoenician traders at a very remote period. When its art declined, it remained celebrated for its wealth and its {134} extreme licentiousness. The patron deity of the Corinthians was Aphrodite, who was no other than the foul Phoenician Astarte. Her temple on the rock of the Acrocorinthus dominated the city below, and from it there came a stream of impure, influences "to turn men into swine." In B.C. 146 the 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.