The Isthmus and the Consequences of Geography: New Directions in the Study of Commercial Corinth

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The Isthmus and the Consequences of Geography:

New Directions in the Study of Commercial Corinth

David K. Pettegrew

Messiah College

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Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature

Chicago, IL

Session 17-123: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity

Theme: Roman Corinth

November 17, 2012

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Introduction

Since the early 19th

century, the Isthmus has been a regular starting point for

discussions of the early Christian communities of Roman Corinth. Conybeare and

Howsons biography of Paul, written in the early 1850s, for example, placed the apostle

against the backdrop of a connecting land bridge,1

We are thus brought to that which is really the characteristic both

of Corinthian geography and Corinthian history, its close relation to the

commerce of the Mediterranean A narrow and level isthmus,

across which smaller vessels could be dragged from gulph to gulph, was of

inestimable value to the early traders of the Levant. And the two

harbours form an essential part of our idea ofCorinth.

1W.J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson. The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. London 1852: Longman, Brown, Green, and

Longmans.


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In this highly connective land bridge with good harbors, a portage road, and

cosmopolitan population, scholars found the reason for Pauls visits to Corinth as well as

the economic, social, and moral character of the Christian community.

The diolkos has frequently stood as a physical symbol of the heightened

connectivity of the Isthmus. In traditional formulation, the diolkos was Corinths portage

road for trans-shipping goods between the eastern and western Mediterranean. Traders

arriving from Roman Italy disembarked at the western end, unloaded their cargoes, and

transported the ships and freights via wheeled carts over 6 km to the opposite gulf,

where they continued to the coastal cities of Asia Minor. Merchants benefited by this

short cut in long-distance trade while Corinth received revenues on the tolls, transport

fees, and services to passengers in transit. As a mechanism for the movement of ships,

cargoes, and people between Corinths gulfs, the diolkos made the Isthmus a great zone

of trans-shipment and turned Corinth into a populous city of visitors and transients.

In the time I have with you today, I want to summarize three recent studies that

have reinterpreted the archaeological and textual evidence, and reached conclusions

markedly different than the traditional view.2

While the authors of this new critical

scholarship disagree on the roads date and function, we share the view that the diolkos

was not used for portaging commercial ships and had limited functions in the

transshipment of cargoes. In summarizing this scholarship, I have a broader point to

make about how we should employ the Isthmus, its harbors and sanctuary, and portage

road as the commercial backdrop for Corinth of Pauls day. The Isthmus was never a

2Hans Lohmann, Der Diolkos Von Korinth Eine Antike Schiffsschleppe? In The Corinthia and the Northeast

Peloponnesus: Topography and History from Prehistory Until the End of Antiquity, edited by W.-D. Niemeier and N

Kissas. Deutsches Archologisches Institut, In Press; Despoina Koutsoumba and Y. Nakas. .

(The Diolkos: a Significant Technical Achievement of Antiquity). In

The Corinthia and the Northeast Peloponnesus: Topography and History from Prehistory Until the End of Antiquity,

edited by W.-D. Niemeier and N Kissas. Deutsches Archologisches Institut, In Press; David K. Pettegrew, The

Diolkos of Corinth.American Journal of Archaeology 115. 4 (2011), 549574.


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static territory that determined Corinths history, but a dynamic landscape that was

developed in accordance with the regions changing place in its broader environment.

The Diolkos of Corinth: The Toponym and Road

The diolkos is one of the great misnomers of modern scholarship. In antiquity, the

term was applied only once to Corinthian territory by the geographer Strabo, who

adopted it strictly as a toponymreferring to the narrowest part of the Isthmus, a

district where the temple of Poseidon was located and where shipswere once dragged

from sea to sea. Ancient and medieval writers referred to the portaging of ships over

the land bridge, but no ancient writer ever imagineda monumental portage road that

made the Isthmus a major trade route.

The view of the diolkos as a commercial highway was invented by scholars in the

1820s-1840s. Putting together disparate texts spanning from the Classical age to the

Byzantine era, they described the diolkos as a physical feature in the landscape.

Translated first as land carriage (Cramer 1828), then railway (Mott 1842) and railroad

(Finley 1841), then slipway (Koeppen 1856), the word soon became synonymous with a

celebrated road used for the overland conveyance of maritime vessels. When sections

of an ancient limestone road were noted in the territory in the late 19th

century, and

then excavated in the 1950s, scholars claimed to have found the monumental road that

made the Isthmus a central trade route in the ancient Mediterranean. But as the diolkos

became linked in scholarly literature to a physical road, it lost its specific ancient

connotation as a geographic district of the Isthmus, visible from Acrocorinth.

From this paved road, archaeologists found support for the view that the land

bridge was a trans-shipment zone. Excavated by Nikolaos Verdelis, the section of road

uncovered ran eastward for a kilometer from the Corinthian Gulf. Although the

pavements could not be traced beyond a certain point, Verdelis surmised that they

continued to the opposite sea. The excavator dated the road to the Archaic age,


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specifically the reign of the Corinthian tyrant Periander in the late 7th

century, based on

associated pottery and cut stone blocks with inscribed early Corinthian alphabetic

characters. Verdelis held that the diolkos remained in use through the end of antiquity

as a great portage for moving military ships and commercial vessels and cargoes.

The recent critical scholarship of the diolkos has called into question all the major

points of Verdelis interpretation. Reanalysis has highlighted the road as an

amalgamation of different phases of construction that could begin as early as the 7th

century BCE, but which are not necessarily earlier than the 5th

. Different styles of

construction and the reuse of architecture like column capitals indicate at least one

phase later than the early 4th

century BCE. There is some disagreement about the dating

of the road. Hans Lohmann believes that the spolia of Archaic and Classical architecture

reused in the road, point to a post-Archaic date, possibly after the destruction of Corinth

in 146 BCE when numerous temples in the district lay derilect, destroyed and accessible

for mining, and when Corinths harbors were out of use. Koutsoumba and Nakas, in

contrast, have accepted Verdelis Archaic date, but noted that Neros canal trenches

decisively severed the road in 67 CE. The cutting of the road via the canal, and the

failure to repair it in subsequent years, suggests that it was not an important resource at

all for the early Roman colony. My view is similar to theirs: the road was paved in the

Archaic or Classical period but was not very important for portaging in the Roman

period, although it continued to be used through the end of antiquity for a variety of

purposes, as the direct road for pedestrians and carriages moving across the Isthmus,

and as a principal road to the sanctuary of Poseidon from the Corinthian gulf.

As for the form and extent of the diolkos, Koutsoumba and Nakas have argued

convincingly that limestone blocks were only placed in the loosest sandy sediments near

the coast, and that these pavements stop at higher elevations where rockier ground


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provides a sufficient foundation for the movement of heavy cargoes.3

If this is right,

some 75% of the road ran over packed earth or shallow bedrock, which is why the

excavator Verdelis did not find it continuing over the ridge despite his excavation

trenches. This at least suggests that while the road was indeed important in its day, it

was not necessarily the greatest railway of ancient times, as one scholar has put it

(Werner 1997), and involving, as another scholar once estimated (Cooke 1986, 65-66),

40,000 sq meters of stone pavement and 60,000 man days to lay it.

The new critical scholarship, then, has asked that we rethink the meaning of

diolkos, the character of the roads architecture, and the chronology of construction

and use, all of which problematize older interpretations of the roadas a portage

superhighway open for business from the 7th

century BCE to the 5th

century CE.

The Texts for Portaging

Now, the foundation for the commercial highway thesis developed principally

from a dozen ancient and medieval texts describing the movement of ships across the

Isthmus. Most of these texts comprise descriptions of military portages by admirals

dragging their military fleets across the Isthmus during times of war. But particularly

important are passing general references by Aristophanes, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder

suggesting that commercial ships were portaged overland with some regularity. Taken

together, the descriptions of military portages have usually been read as explicit

examples of a regular current of ship carting vaguely noted in the general passages.

Two recent developments in the interpretation of these texts have suggested

new scenarios of ship portaging. The first is the recognition that the general passages

do not actually provide good evidence for frequent portaging of ships. When the

playwright Aristophanes has a character voice a sexual innuendo about the Corinthian

3They also note that part of the road, the so-called quay or platform of Sector A, must be associated with Neros

ancient canal, and has nothing to do with the diolkos.


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Isthmus, he is referencing not a constantcommercial operation but the recenttransfer

of military vessels in the year before the production of the play, when the

Peloponnesians drew a fleet of 21 ships overland in a surprise maneuver that caught the

Athenians offguard. When Pliny the Elder suggests in the late 70s CE that smaller ships

were drawn over the isthmus on trolleys instead of sailing around Cape Malea, he is not

making a contemporary observation but is summing up his knowledge of historical ship-

crossing episodes that included Philip Vs decision, three centuries earlier, to portage

small undecked ships and send the larger decked ships around Malea. When Strabo

describes the diolkosas the place where ships are transferred overland, he is not

commenting on a contemporary portage operation of the 1st

century but is noting the

district where famous portages had occurred in ancient times.4

Strabo and Pliny are

secondary accounts of ship transfers, and their mention of portaging reflects their

interest and background in the historical geography of the Mediterranean.

The second key shift in interpretation of these texts is a new recognition that the

episodes of generals and admirals carting ships overland never constituted ordinary

military portage activity. In the old view of the diolkos, the accounts of ship transfers in

the context of war were read as the casual and passing mentions of common military

activities, but recent scholarship has drawn attention to the rhetoric of these accounts.5

I have argued that the narratives all assume a common form in describing covert and

decisive military stratagems signifying remarkable achievement that required some

explanation. The historians explain whythe generals decide toportageas a stealth

naval offense, as a sign of ambition, as a hasty retreat during an emergency6as well as

how the portage occursas a costly and involved activity requiring significant

expenditures of resources and manpower. The explanations indicate that the historians

4Lohmann has even questioned the interpretation of the word porthmeiaas ships,

5Koutsoumbas and Nakas have noted, for instance, that the military portages are always described in the language

of secretive and rapid attack.6

Stealth Offense: Thucydides in 428 BC and 412 BC; Polybius for Demetrius of Pharos 220 BC. Ambition:

Polybius on Philip V in 217. Hasty retreat: Livy on King Eumenes haste in 172 BC; Cassius Dio and Octavian.


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had to convince their readers of there being a need for portage that outweighed the

difficulty involved.

In reinterpreting these texts, scholars have offered a new solution to three

bodies of evidence that once seemed to conflict with one another: known historical

instances of portaging ships, generic references to portaging, and the logistical

challenges involved in the endeavor. The specific instances of ship carting described by

the historians and the three general references are all referring to the unusual

stratagems of ancient history that were worthy of mention precisely because they were

logistically extraordinary. They were extraordinary because small warships were 35-40

meters long, 5-6 meters wide, and nearly 4 m high, weighing, when dry and without its

movable equipment or crews, over 20 tons, or 40,000 pounds. Thisis about the same

height and weight of a tractor-trailer truck, but double the length and width. Such ships

were built to stay in water, not move over dry land. This takes us to our third body of

evidence, the technology of conveying ships overland.

The Logistics of Portaging

Recent scholarship has decisively reject the view that commercial vessels were

carried over the Isthmusa view that was always based on an improbable reading of

Aristophanes, Strabo, and Pliny. When we recognize that these authors are referring to

unusual military portages, there is no reason to invent a scenario that is improbable and

extremely risky.

Decades ago, scholars accepted that the transfer of even the smallest commercial

vessels 6-8 km by wheeled cart, over a ridge 85 meters above sea levelcould only have

been uncommon given its inherent difficulty, traction requirements, costs, and great risk

to a shipowners prize investment. Moving military fleets also must have been difficult,

but conveying them was possible given sizable crews of 150-200 men and the proper

apparatus or mechanism for the transfer.


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Interestingly, recent scholarship has downplayed the role of the diolkos in even

these transfers. While it was once thought that wheeled cartswere the mechanism for

the transfer, the recent articles by Hans Lohmann, and Koutsoumba and Nakas, have

suggested, rather, that fleets were transferredover felled trees, or greased wooden

beams. Such techniques are known from other accounts of portaging in antiquity and

correspond well to Thucydides comment that the Peloponnesians prepared holkous

for the transfer of their fleets. Koutsoumba and Nakas prefer the sledge explanation

because they believe that it would have been easier and quicker to acquire wooden

beams than construct numerous wheeled carts for the overland movement of a fleet.

Lohmann prefers this explanation because the curvature of the road would not been

conducive to portaging 30 m long ships. In both of these reconstructions, we would

place the movement of ships on a dirt road next to the diolkos.

But if the road was never central to a grand operation of conveying commercial

vessels and military fleets, then why was it built and how was it used?

Cargo Thesis

Since Cooke and MacDonald debated the subject in the 1980s, scholars have

accepted that the portage road was used primarily for the transfer of cargoes and

freights, and secondarily for ships. The thesis is compelling because of the reputation of

the isthmus for facilitating trade and because the excavated physical road bears deep

deliberately cut grooves in areas of great ascent and curvature that point to the need

for keeping carts on track. Clearly the construction of a paved road and preparation of

rails proves that heavy objects were moved overland in antiquity.

Recent scholarship is split over the sorts of cargoes portaged. Hans Lohmann

believes the road was mainly used to move divisible commodities like grain, oil, and

wine transported in baskets and amphoras during the Roman era. Koutsoumba and

Nakas, and myself, much prefer the proposal made years ago by MacDonald that


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highlighted the use of the road for the movement of heavy construction material like

timber, building stone, and marbles, destined for monumental buildings in the pan-

Hellenic sanctuaries.

There are four reasons for accepting that the road was built and used in the

Archaic-early Hellenistic periods for the movement of heavy construction materials

rather than divisible freights like amphoras.

1. First, the overland transfer of wagons with amphoras and divisiblecommodities does not have need of a massive stone road with deep ruts,

while the movement of stone and timber weighing many tons would benefit

from such a road.

2. Second, breaking down a cargo ship was time-consuming and costly, involvinghundreds of porters,hundreds ofox-drawn carts, and several days time.

Given the compounded costs of harbor taxes, cargo duties, and porting costs,

could any merchant really have turned a quick profit on the sale of oil and

wine of a slightly different variant than could be purchased in the opposite

gulf? A trader contracted to acquire expensive building material destined for a

particular sanctuary, on the other hand, could afford to take time and care in

the delivery.

3. Third, the movement of divisible cargoes would have undermined Corinthsown commercial advantage resulting from its possession of two harbors with

access to eastern and western markets. The movement of marbles or cut

stone from the Aegean, on the other hand, would not have posed this threat.

4. Fourth, the ceramic evidence from excavations and surveys in the Corinthiaand neighboring regions of the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs simply does not

bear out the view that the land bridge facilitated the westward and eastward

flows of commodities. Mark Lawall, for instance, who has synthesized the

evidence for transport amphoras from the Archaic to Early Roman eras,


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concluded that eastern Aegean transport amphoras are rarely found in the

western Adriatic and western amphoras rarely found in the Aegean. Studies of

Roman sigillata table wares by John Hayes and Archer Martin have similarly

higlighted the Isthmus as the transition point to different markets.

Commercial Corinth

This leads us, in conclusion, to the question of the implications for understanding

Roman Corinth and the early Christian communities in the city. If we accept the

interpretive shifts in recent scholarship outlined here, we must put out of our mind the

notion of a regular operation of transporting ships over the diolkos. We should reject

the view of the Isthmus as a commercial conduit, a great trans-shipment zone that

made goods flow between east and west. Whatever its potential for overland portage of

freights, the canal cut through the road in 67 CE, and the decision not to repair it,

indicates that the road was not seen as particularly important for the citys economy.

The evidence from pottery, in any case, argues against the notion of commercial

highway. If we abandon the view of the Isthmus as a great east-west trade route and

Corinth as a hub in the flow, then our picture of Corinth becomes a bit less exotic, multi-

cultural, and cosmopolitan. Was Roman Corinth really the hub of international

commerce, travel, and transportation?

Even if we give up the diolkos,we are still left with the regions harbors, which

ancient writers like Strabo placed at the center ofCorinths wealth, acting as an

emporium between east and west where merchants exchanged and reshuffled goods.

While we do not have time here to explore how the harbors functioned in the regional

economy of the Roman city, we can underscore that the harbors, like the diolkos,

require more nuanced treatments sensitive to the contingent nature of the evidence

and highlighting their development through time. Synthetic approaches that smash

together textual and archaeological sources of different forms and datesa little


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Thucydides, a bit of Strabo, a touch of Pausanias, some Aelius Aristides, and some

excavated findslead to synchronous and static views of a bridge of consequence that

determined the rise and fall of the Greek city and guaranteed the foundation and

growth of the Roman colony. I think it is preferable to see in Corinths territory, harbors,

settlements, and sanctuaries, a dynamic landscape that grew in accordance with the

urban center and broader connective networks of commerce and empire, all of which

shifted regularly between the first century of Corinths refoundation and the end of

antiquity hundreds of years later.

The Isthmus and the Consequences of Geography: New Directions in the Study of Commercial Corinth

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