(now corrupted into Gortho), originally Ephyrn, one of the most celebrated and important cities of ancient Greece, was the capital of the small district of Corinthia, which, along with Megaris, formed the isthmus that connected the Peloponnese with Greece Proper. A considerable portion of Corinthia was covered with the ridges and spurs of the Geranian and Oneian mountains, and was thus rendered useless for purposes of agriculture. The only arable land in the province was the region lying between the city of Corinth and the little river Nemea, which separated Corinthia from Achaea; but the fertility of this district, and its proximity to a great city and to the sea, made it a place of proverbial wealth. The Geranian mountains, which occupy the northern part of the province, belong rather to Megaris than Corinthia; but the Oneian mountains in the south are interesting, inasmuch as one of their spurs, an isolated hill overhanging Corinth—and from this circumstance called Acrocorinthus—formed the citadel of the town. From this hill also issued the well-known spring Pirene, so often mentioned in the ancient classics as the spot where Bellerophon caught the winged horse Pegasus. On its western side Corinth was connected with its harbour Lechrum by two long walls (about a mile and a half in length), like those which connected Athens with the Piraeus. On the side of the east it was protected by its fortified harbour Cenchreæ, about 8 miles distant. The position of Corinth was such as completely to command all the great roads leading from Greece Proper through the defiles of the Geranian and Oneian mountains into the Peloponnesus, and to fit it peculiarly for becoming a great maritime power. On the one side through the Saronic gulf it attracted all the commerce of the Ægean Sea and the East, and on the other through the Sinus Corinthiacus it commanded the trade of the Ionian and Sicilian Seas. The Greeks have never at any period of their history been remarkable as seamen: at a very early period they discovered the advantages of the overland route across the Corinthian isthmus, which saved them a dangerous voyage round the Peloponnesus. The favourable position of Corinth for commercial enterprise was a frequent subject of remark among the ancient writers both of Greece and Rome.

From traces of orientalism in the early worship of the Corinthians, as well as from some Phoenician words in use among them, it is argued that Corinth was founded by a Phoenician colony. Before the age of authentic history it appears to have been inhabited by a mixed population of Æolians and Ionians, though the former are always represented as the dominant race. The founder of this dynasty, according to the traditions, was Sisyphus, the father of Glaucus, and grandfather of Bellerophon; and by him were laid the foundations of that great commercial prosperity which Corinth afterwards attained. Upon this legend of Sisyphus the Corinthian Æolids grafted another, in order to trace their descent from Medea. Æetes the father of the renowned sorceress was said to have reigned originally over Corinth, and to have exchanged that kingdom for Colchis. On the death of Corinthus (his last male representative), the Corinthians are said to have sent for Medea to be their queen. After a short reign she returned home, and resigned the throne in favour of Sisyphus, of whom according to the myth she had been enamoured.

The first historical king of Corinth was Aletes, the leader of the Dorian adventurers who subdued the Æolic inhabitants of the city, and incorporated them in their own number with all the privileges of citizenship. The dynasty of Aletes lasted for twelve generations, interrupted only by the changes introduced by Bacchis, who converted the regal into an oligarchical government. The oligarchy was in turn overthrown by the Commons with the aid of Cypselus, who established a tyranny which endured for thirty years. The reign of Aletes began B.C. 1074, and his descendants (including the Bacchid oligarchy) held the chief power till the year 657 B.C. It was under Bacchis and his successors that Corinth first emerged into importance as a maritime power. Its fleets were soon powerful enough to rival those of the Æginetans, whose supremacy was undisputed in the Ægean sea. For the protection of its commerce Corinth now (B.C. 754) fitted out a fleet of war-galleys and began to colonize. Its first and greatest colonies were Corcyra (which afterwards became its rival) and Syracuse; but speedily all the western seas of Greece acknowledged the Corinth. supremacy of the Corinthian flag, and the flourishing colonies of Leucas, Anactorium, Ambracia, &c., betokened the naval power of the mother-country. See Corcyra.

The accession of Cypselus to the supreme power (B.C. 657), gave a great impulse to the prosperity of Corinth; which was still further promoted under the able administration of his son Periander, who reigned forty-four years (B.C. 627-583). Soon after the death of Periander, Corinth allied itself with Sparta, restored the oligarchical form of government, and threw its weight into the scale of the Peloponnesian confederation. It had at first befriended the Athenians and assisted them with a fleet against Regina; but becoming jealous of the growing naval power of that state, had declared war against it and been defeated in a great battle in Megaris. A peace was now concluded between the rival powers. This lasted till the revolt of the Corcyreans, whom the Athenians aided in their rebellion against the parent state, and thus brought about the Peloponnesian war. The events of that war are so well known that they need not be recapitulated here. The power of Athens was annihilated at the sea-fight of Egopotami; and when the city surrendered after this disaster, the Corinthians recommended that it should be razed to the ground. But the jealousy with which the Corinthians had watched the rise and prosperity of Athens now animated them against their own allies and kinsmen the Lacedemonians. Gained over by Persian diplomacy and Persian gold, the Corinthians leagued themselves with the Argives, Boeotians, and Athenians, against Sparta; and at the beginning of the fourth century B.C. began what was called the Corinthian war. Twice the allies were defeated in bloody battles, once near Corinth, B.C. 394, and again at Coroneia in the same year. After this the war was conducted with various success, till it was brought to a close by the peace of Antalcidas B.C. 387. In the wars which again disturbed the peace of Greece when the star of Thebes rose under Epaminondas, Corinth took part at first with her ancient allies the Spartans; but exhausted by her late struggles, she soon concluded a separate peace with Thebes, and remained neutral till the end of the war. From this date till the battle of Charonoma, Corinth took little part in the affairs of Greece; and her history is only saved from being uninteresting by the romantic exploits of her last hero, Timoleon, in Sicily. Her government was oligarchical as in her best days; and no attempt was made to change or remodel it except by Timophanes, the brother of Timoleon. This attempt, as is well known, proved a failure, and Timophanes fell by the hand of his patriot brother. After Charonoma, Corinth shared the fate of the other states of Greece, and passed into the hands of the Macedonian conquerors. Its citadel was by them regarded as the key of the Peloponnesus, and they always took care to maintain a strong garrison in it. In 243 B.C. Corinth was stormed by Aratus, the general of the Achaean league, and incorporated by him with the other states which formed that confederation. It was shortly afterwards made over once more to the Macedonians; in whose hands it continued till the defeat of the last Macedonian king by the Romans at the battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C. By the Romans it was re-annexed to the Achaean league and declared a free city; but its citadel was occupied by a Roman garrison. The same year which witnessed the destruction of Carthage witnessed also that of Corinth. The Achaeans rebelled against their Roman conquerors. Their troops were routed with great slaughter; and Mummius the Roman general entered Corinth in triumph. The city was sacked; its magnificent temples and buildings were levelled with the ground; its paintings, marbles, bronzes, and priceless works of art, were carried off to Rome; and the male inhabitants slaughtered to a man, while the women and children were sold into captivity. No attempt was made to raise the city from its ruins till the days of Julius Caesar, who established there a colony of his veterans two years before his death. The city soon rose from its ashes, and began again to prosper. In the days of the apostle Paul, who visited it about the middle of the first century of the Christian era, it was a considerable place. Two of the most important letters of that apostle were addressed by him to the members of the church which he had founded there. The subsequent history of Corinth is an unbroken record of disasters. In the later days of Rome it shared the fate of the mistress of the world, and was sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric, about the beginning of the fifth century. On the downfall of the Roman empire in the east, it passed into the hands of the Venetians, who retained it till the overthrow of the western empire. In 1458 it was taken by the Turks, who held it till the year 1687, when it once more fell under the Venetian yoke. In 1715 it was again occupied by the Turks, who retained it till the re-establishment of Greece as an independent kingdom.

The modern Gortio, which occupies the site of the ancient Corinth, is a wretched place, on the shores of the gulf of Lepanto, with a population of about 2000. It carries on a small export trade in dried fruit, corn, and honey. The only traces of its ancient greatness are the ruins of a Doric temple, believed to be one of the oldest extant specimens of that order of architecture.

At an early period of her history, Corinth became distinguished as a seat of the fine arts. The art of painting is said to have originated here, and to have found its most magnificent patrons among the wealthy merchants who resided in the city. At the time of its destruction by Mummius, Corinth is said to have been adorned with some of the most splendid masterpieces of ancient art. Polybius, who witnessed the sacking of the town, records that he saw some Roman soldiers playing at dice on a picture of Bacchus by the Theban Aristides (the contemporary and rival of Apelles), for which Attalus, king of Pergamus, offered L5000 of our money. So inadequate were the ideas of art prevalent among the Romans at this time, that Mummius threatened the shipmasters who conveyed the art-treasures of Corinth to Rome, that if they lost or injured any of them they should be obliged to replace them at their own cost. It is not known that any of the great architects of antiquity were natives of Corinth; yet in Corinth originated the most ornate and beautiful of all the orders of Grecian architecture. The wealth of the inhabitants enabled them to adorn their city with a greater number of splendid buildings than any other town in Greece could boast. Statuary too was extensively encouraged, and the bronzes of Corinth were the most famous of antiquity. Some have thought that the celebrated Corinthian brass was an amalgam of the various precious metals which were fused together at the conflagration of the city. But this opinion has now been proved to be incorrect, as records are still extant of artists who worked in that metal long before the period in question. The Corinthian brass is said by Pliny to have been of three kinds—the white, into whose composition silver entered largely; the yellow, in which gold predominated; and a third tint produced by an amalgam of both these metals. Others have denied that the aes Corinthiacum was any other than a highly refined species of bronze. In the humbler walks of art the Corinthians were equally eminent. The vases of terra cotta made at Corinth were the finest produced in Greece; and in the days of the Roman empire the old Greek cemeteries were ransacked in quest of them. When discovered they were sent to Rome, where they brought fabulous prices. Literature was also cultivated by the Corinthians, but not with such pre-eminent success as art. Their wealth nurtured habits of luxurious indolence, and they were better able to appreciate foreign poets and philosophers than to train them in their own state. Some of the older cyclic poets were natives of Corinth, which, however, could claim none of the great writers who moulded Greek thought in later times. The wealth of Corinth, as has been observed, was proverbial among the ancients. Like the Capuans of Italy the Corinthians were noted for the luxurious magnificence of their houses and entertainments, and the profligacy of their manners. The goddess most scrupulously worshipped in this city was Venus, for the service of whose temple a thousand sacred female slaves (hierodouloi) were kept. This fact has often been adduced as conclusive evidence of the oriental origin of the founders of the city, as it is well known that in many cities of Asia Minor a large staff of servants was maintained for the worship of the tutelary deity. The gross immorality of the Corinthians is proved by the flagrant publicity with which the Phallus-worship was carried on among them. Corinth was proverbial among the Greeks themselves for the number and extravagance of its courtezans.

The population of Corinth when at the acme of its power and prosperity has been conjecturally estimated at about 100,000 souls.

Isthmus of, in the Morea, is a neck of land which joins the Morea to Greece, and reaches from the gulf of Lepanto or Corinth to that of Ægina. Attempts were made to cut a canal through this isthmus by Periander, Alexander, Demetrius, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Herodes Atticus; but from some cause or other these all proved abortive. A wall was afterwards built across it, and was called Hexamilion, because it was six miles in length. This was demolished by Amurath II. and afterwards rebuilt by the Venetians, but was levelled a second time by Mahomet II.

Corinthian, pertaining to Corinth, as Corinthian brass, Corinthian order, &c.

Corinthian Order. See Architecture.

Corinthians, Epistles to the, two canonical epistles of the New Testament, addressed by St Paul to the church which he had planted with his own hand at Corinth, during an eighteen months' residence there in the years A.D. 50 and 51. From an incidental allusion in the former of these, it seems that this was not the first epistle that St Paul had addressed to the Corinthian converts, and two letters still exist in an Armenian version, which, by Whiston and others, have been regarded as furnishing authentically the apostle's previous correspondence. These letters are now, however, universally regarded as spurious. In the note appended to the common version, the first epistle is said to have been written from Philippi, but from internal evidence we know it to have been written from Ephesus, and this is confirmed by the note appended to the Vatican MS. and the Coptic version. The date of its composition is generally assigned to a period very shortly before Easter A.D. 58. In writing it the apostle aimed chiefly at repressing the unseemly manifestations of party-spirit which had been betrayed by some of the leading members of the church, and also at giving them decisive answers on certain points of duty, in regard to which the practice of the Corinthian converts had been somewhat influenced by the characteristic immorality of the place. Of the parties then prevailing in the church there are generally distinguished four; but it is not to be supposed that these existed in open schism, and from the allusions to them in Clement's epistle, it seems that they were all of short duration. The party claiming Apollos as their leader differed from those who still held by Paul, in their peculiar fondness for the Alexandrian forms of thought; the Petrine section differed from both in still clinging to the shadows of Judaism; while the Christine party seems to have sprung from a reaction in favour of unity, which, however, in the troubled state of the church only caused farther division. The second epistle was written shortly after the first, and despatched from Philippi in that same year. It is in the main apologetic, and as a piece of oratory has been admired by the rhetoricians of every age. The authenticity of both epistles has scarcely ever been questioned.