Corinth and Onward

To get things straight: there's the site of ancient Corinth, which includes the ancient city and the acropolis (Acrocorinth) rising beyond it; there's Corinth, the modern city that has been built up around the canal that runs through the isthmus of Corinth; and there's Ancient Corinth, the modern village which envelops the site of the ancient city like a ring.

Got that?

So from Athens I caught a bus to modern Corinth, and from there to Ancient Corinth after a lengthy wait. Modern Corinth isn't all that big, but it's got a big city feel and nothing of interest. It's sort of like Harrisburg.

Ancient Corinth on the other hand is a lovely little village with one central cobblestone square. It's got real character, even apart from the fact that it has a truly extraordinary archaeological site smack in the middle of it and the hill to the south rises up into the massive Acrocorinth (which dwarfs the Athenian Acropolis, by the way). I checked into a place I reserved from Chan HaShayarot (the Bedouin tent with internet that I stayed at during Lent) called Rooms for Rent Tasos, a little mom and pop (and daughter and grandfather) Greek place above their own Tasos taverna, where probably no Americans ever stay. It was wonderful; hot water, clean sheets, a shared balcony, shampoo and soap and towel included; really, what more could you ask for? Well, internet, but fortunately there was an internet cafe up the road that doubled as the one and only hangout for the village youth.

By the time I'd arrived it was an hour before sunset and the sites were long closed. However, I took a few minutes to walk around the town and acquaint myself with its single main street, running along the north side of ancient Corinth, and talk to some locals. It was a very relaxing evening.

I'd planned on getting up bright and early in order to hike up Acrocorinth, but I ended up sleeping in and I took a taxi up to the top instead. No worries, though; there's quite a bit of hiking to be had at the top. Acrocorinth was fortified in the archaic age of Greece long before the Dorian invasion, when those northern tribes intermingled with the native Mycenaean population and produced the ethnic Greeks of classical Athens. It proved a solid fortification for the Corinthians until the ascension of Rome, which smashed it with her legions. Byzantine, Frankish Crusader, Venetian, and Ottoman rulers have all placed their stamp on the site, and the current walls are largely Frankish and Venetian.

After hiking around the site for about an hour and a half, going from various disused fortresses and coming across an abandoned mosque (which, like all abandoned Ottoman mosques in Greece, lacks its minaret thanks to an orgy of destruction wrought by the liberated Greeks) I decided I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't trek up to the Temple of Aphrodite. There isn't really anything there except the barest witness to its foundations, and I knew that, but this was, after all, the Corinthian Temple of Aphrodite.

In his correspondence with the Corinthians St. Paul calls them out for their sexual immorality. This conforms perfectly to the picture we have of Corinth from others in the ancient world; the Temple of Aphrodite was known to various writers as a center for sacred temple prostitution (in which women would sacrificially offer their bodies to the goddess by using them as means of financing the temple).

The best preserved temple in ancient Corinth, though, is in the ancient city remains down below. Upon returning to Ancient Corinth village and taking a break for lunch, I went into the site, which contains an archaic era Temple of Apollo. We know it's archaic because archaic-era temples were very long and narrow, unlike the classical Parthenon; the temple is pretty well preserved, too. The rest of the site, however, is largely Roman-era; thanks to this, it is one of those sites where we can really envision Paul living, working, and proclaiming on its streets.

A word, then, about Paul's troubles in Corinth. Paul stayed in Corinth for some time thanks to the patronage of Priscilla and Aquila. This pair of Jews from Rome were exiled by the Emperor Claudius when he declared Jews banned from the city (possibly due to intra-Jewish conflicts over whether to accept Christ); they turn up in Corinth, Ephesus, and then Rome once Claudius is no longer emperor and Nero is on the throne (thus ending the law of exile). Just from this, there are two things we might say about them: they were patrons to Paul, also engaged in his trade of leather-working and tent-making but in some way supporting him, with him as their client; they themselves were refugees and exiles. So how were they in a position to be patrons?

The Roman socioeconomic system was suffused with the patronage system. The gods were the patrons of various vocations with their official guilds; the highest gods were the patrons of the emperor, their client; the emperor was in turn the patron of the aristocracy and the citizens of the empire (SPQR), with the senators having own clientele of equestrians, and on down the ladder. Wealthy and aristocratic citizens, clients of higher authorities, were patrons of poorer citizens, non-citizens, freedmen, and even their own slaves. Slaves, for instance, might have once been free persons who sold themselves into slavery in order to become the client of a wealthy patron in the hopes that, once freed, they would be in a far better position in this social system of patronage than they were originally; of course slaves were just as often debtors or war captives.

The patronage system fundamentally organized life in the Roman world. So when we picture Priscilla and Aquila as Paul's patrons, there's no need to imagine them as wealthy; they might just be in the right place to offer aid, with the expected return being aid in their own project.

Where would refugee tent-makers work? Ancient neighborhoods were not divided between wealthy and poor neighborhoods; at Pompeii and Herculaneum the largest villas are surrounded on their street-side walls by storefronts on the first story and tenant housing on the second. The clients of the owners of the villa- lesser citizens, free persons, freed slaves, and their own slaves- all worked in these storefronts and lived in these rented spaces. One imagines Priscilla and Aquila latching on to these wealthy and powerful patrons as they move between Ephesus and Corinth, waiting for the day they might return to room; in order to rent a shop to ply their trade and live in the housing cluster above, they must make themselves into the clients of the villa's owners; and Paul, in order to have a place from which to base his mission, becomes their clients, working in their shop and sleeping in a corner of their home. It's beneficial to them because it relieves their workload; it's beneficial to Paul because it allows him to integrate himself into the villa's patronage network which, he hopes, will become a center of Christianity in Corinth.

And yet something goes terribly wrong.

While the problems addressed in 1 Corinthians are varied, they all trace back to a root problem: a fundamental misunderstanding of the body of Christ. This is either a misunderstanding of the relationship between male or female; or a misunderstanding of Christ's body in the Eucharist; or a misunderstanding of the relationship between members of the community on how to treat each other; or a misunderstanding of what it means to have Christ risen in his true body.

Without going into too much detail, I follow certain scholars in thinking that this misunderstanding arises because Paul's missionary strategy, which aimed at integrating himself into the patronage structure, was at first successful- the villa owners were converted and used their villa as a sacred space for the community gathering of Christians for worship- but never dissolved the patronage system. Rather, it carried over into the church.

So for instance, when discussing the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul rebukes the community for having a preference for the wealthy over the poor. In the common patronage system villa owners would have feasts with their clients, and these would be both opportunities for working one's way deeper into the patronage system and for visually and symbolically clarifying who was at the top of the food chain (literally). First, the seating arrangement would place the villa owner at the head place, with his (or her) clientele sitting close, and their clientele sitting farther away, until the feast spilled out into the the slave's quarters. So when he writes "there are divisions among you" (11:18), he's referring to a very recognizable system of dividing guests. Second, the villa owners would provide the food, but it would be a radically different quality depending on one's place in the system. Clearly, both of these villa patronage practices worked their way into the villa church's feasts (which came either before or after the ceremonial, solemn Eucharist). The situation seems to have gotten so bad that people were bringing their own food and eating it separately from everybody else (11:21).

As a result, Paul has to tell the villa owners that if they, the wealthy, must eat better food than everyone else, at least do it in their homes (11:22; 34), and to eat, worship, and partake together in a more formal and solemn spirit worthy of the church that treats the villa's patrons and everyone else in the system as radically and totally equal. The patronage system simply won't work within the church.

So as I walked around ancient Corinth and saw a building with a row of shops (above), but one door larger than the rest leading back to a villa back away from the street-front, I got excited. That was exactly the sort of place we might expect Paul to work, live, and preach, and I was downright giddy to view the archaeological remnant of that system which imported so many problems into the radically equal body of Christ.

Well, yesterday I headed to Patra and boarded a ferry to Italy. Now I'm stuck in Bari, Italy, the port town. I was given a train ticket to Cassino (where I was supposed to stay tonight) at the billet window which wasn't a ticket at all but merely a schedule (even though I checked it and asked whether or not that was the ticket). When I tried to board the train, I was told to go back and buy a ticket; by the time I was on my way back, the train was gone.

So, I booked another night in Rome tomorrow night. I'll be taking a night bus there tonight (oh joy) and hopefully get Cassino in as an excursion. Phew. If I'd known it was going to work out like this, I would have just flew from Athens to Rome. Oh well!
In any case, welcome to Italy. Country #6, ten days from home.