If there was freedom of thought at Athens, there was freedom of a different sort in Corinth. Paul’s later letters testify to the moral and legal problems which existed even in the Christian community. Among the pagans, life must have been truly licentious.

Corinth was large, powerful, and wealthy. It had a history of military achievement and because of its strategic location and good harbor it was a center of naval and maritime strength. It had joined with Athens in wars against Sparta and later had been a stronghold in the battles of the Greeks against the advancing Romans. In 146 B.C., Corinth was destroyed by the Romans, but just 100 years later Julius Caesar rebuilt the city. Caesar also renewed the ancient Corinthian tradition of the Isthmian Games, a smaller version of Greece’s famo…