Corinth

Author(s):  
Clyde E. Fant ◽  
Mitchell G. Reddish

No city in the ancient world both benefited and suffered from its location more than Corinth. Situated on the main north-south route between northern and southern Greece, and with two good ports that linked it to Italy on the west and Asia Minor on the east, Corinth quickly became a center for commerce. But the location of Corinth also had its downside. The city often found itself caught in the middle between hostile neighbors, Athens to the north and Sparta to the south. Armies crisscrossed its streets as often as merchants, and more than once the city had to arise from ashes and rubble. Today only Athens attracts more interest in Greece for its historic antiquities than Corinth. It ranks as a must-see location for every traveler to Greece. Ancient Corinth is located less than two hours south of Athens. Tours run often from local hotels. Likewise, a rental automobile gives easy access and makes it possible to see nearby sites of interest not on the usual tours. The great city of Corinth prospered for many reasons. In addition to its prominence as a center for trade and commerce, agriculture also flourished in the area. The soil around the city was thin and rocky, but just to the west, along the Nemean River, a rich plain produced heavy harvests of grain and other crops. Raisins were first developed there, and the word currant is a medieval corruption of Corinth. Tourism was another important source of income. The famous Isthmian Games, second only to the Olympic Games and more prestigious than those held in Delphi and Nemea, brought thousands of tourists to Corinth every two years and further added to its fame and fortune. During its early period Corinth also attracted many travelers to its famous (or notorious) Temple of Aphrodite atop the Acrocorinth (“high Corinth,” or upper Corinth, the portion of the city atop the 1,900-foot mountain to the southeast of the city). Additionally, according to Plutarch, these multiple sources of wealth caused Corinth to become one of the three great banking centers of Greece, along with Athens and Patrae.

Author(s):  
David Abulafia

While the Ragusans benefited from their special relationship with the Turks, the Genoese and Venetians were more cautious in building ties to the Ottoman court. The sultan was anxious not to turn them away, but they viewed the eastern Mediterranean as increasingly dangerous. Difficulties were compounded by occasional arguments between the Venetians and the Mamluk sultans of Egypt, who required ever larger amounts in taxes in order to prop up their regime. The Mamluks were also a regional threat. In 1424–6 they invaded Cyprus and carried away its king, Janus, along with 6,000 captives; a ransom of 200,000 ducats had to be paid before Janus was restored to the throne, and it is said that he never laughed again. In 1444 they besieged Rhodes. In 1460 they supported a claimant to the throne of Cyprus, sending eighty ships against the island, to the horror of Christendom, for no one could understand why James of Lusignan, a bastard, would wish to enlist Egyptian aid in a bid for a throne to which he was not entitled. As Ottoman and Mamluk pressure on these areas became intolerable, the Genoese and their rivals increasingly turned their attention towards the West, buying sugar in Sicily and Spain and grain in Sicily and Morocco. The mid-fifteenth century saw a veritable economic renaissance in Genoa, at first sight against all the odds: the city was still consumed by internal strife, but large segments of the population were able to benefit from trade and investment, and the city boomed. Especially attractive were shares in the new public bank, the Banco di San Giorgio, which eventually acquired dominion over Corsica. The loss of easy access by the Genoese to the alum mines of Phokaia in Asia Minor was compensated by the discovery in 1464 of alum mines on the doorstep of Rome itself, at Tolfa; Pope Pius II described the discovery as ‘our greatest victory against the Turk’. It reduced dependence on ‘the Turk’, and yet it did not reduce dependence on the Genoese, who switched their attention to central Italy, and built a new alum monopoly there.


2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. V. Harris

Between the Battle of Mylae in 260 bc (when Rome defeated Carthage off the north coast of Sicily) and the Battle of Myonnesus in 190 (when Rome defeated the Seleucid navy off the west coast of Asia Minor), the Romans established naval domination over the whole Mediterranean. Scholars generally believe, for quite good reasons, that this process of naval aggrandisement began abruptly, the Romans having previously taken no interest in the sea. That, after all, is what Polybius quite clearly says.


1923 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Mitchell Ramsay

In a footnote in J.H.S. 1918, p. 144, I stated the view that the battle (319 B.C.) in which Antigonus defeated Alketas and the associated generals took place in the αὐλὼν which leads from the N.E. corner of the Limnai towards Pisidian Antioch, carrying the southern or Pisidian road across Asia Minor eastward. This important route, regarded as a highway from the west coast to the Cilician Gates, is a recent discovery, though parts of it have been often described and traversed. In J.H.S. 1920, p. 89 f., I have argued that it was the road by which Xerxes' great army marched from Kritalla to Kelainai.There are two authorities on whom we depend for details of the battle of 319 B.C., Polyaenus Strat. 4, 6, 7 and Diodorus 18, 44; but both of these gather all their information from that excellent military writer Hieronymus of Cardia, the friend and historian of Eumenes. Polyaenus tells the story with soldierly brevity, relating only the chief military features: Diodorus diffusely and at great length; but so that we can recognise Hieronymus behind and beneath, and restore the full account as given by that writer.


1989 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Samuel

Excavation and observations from 1984–6 on the Leadenhall Court site in the City of London revealed elements of the fifteenth-century market building known as ‘The Leadenhall’. The truncated foundations were located in various areas of the site; 177 medieval moulded stones were found reused in later cellar walls; and a fragment of the west wall survived to its full height of 11.17m encased between Victorian buildings. The recording and subsequent study of these features, together with a reassessment of such plans and drawings of the building as have survived, established the ground plan of the quadrangle and chapel, and made possible a complete reconstruction of the north range of this important civic building. The methodology used in the reconstructions is described with particular emphasis upon the analysis of the moulded stones. In conclusion, both the design of the structure and the documentary sources are studied to show how it may have been intended to function.The arcaded ground floor functioned as part of a common market, while the upper floors were intended to be a granary. For convenience, however, this dual-purpose building is referred to as the ‘garner’ throughout the text.


1759 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 38-40

About four o’clock on Thursday afternoon, July 13th 1758. a short but severe thunder-storm, with lightning, fell upon the top of an house standing alone, and belonging to a common garden, on the causeway near Sandling's ferry, in the city of Norwich; struck off the tiles of the roof at the east end, to the space of a yard or two 5 burnt a very small hole in the middle of a lath, in piercing into the chamber, and then darted to the north-east; ript off the top of an old chair, without throwing it down; snapt the two heads of the bed-posts, rent the curtains, drove against the wall (the front of the house stands due north-east), forced out an upright of a window frame a yard long, three inches broad, and two thick; smote it in a right line into an opposite ditch, ten or twelve yards distant; then struck down on the wall of the chamber, paring off half a foot s breadth of its plaistered covering quite down to the floor, listed up a board of the floor, and leaving an hole of half an inch diameter, pierced thro’ by the side of the main beam into the kitchen, towards the west end of a pewter- shelf; traversed the whole shelf to the east, and melted superficially to the breadth of a shilling six pewter dishes, two plates, and a pewter bason, all standing touching one another: two of the dishes were thrown down, the rest not displaced.


1951 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Dipeso

The Amerind Foundation, Inc. spent the first three weeks of December, 1948, excavating a ball court at the archaeological site of Arizona:BB:15:3, which is located in Cochise County, Sec. 20, T15S, R20E. The actual village area is located on the west bank of the San Pedro River twenty-two miles north of the city of Benson at an approximate elevation of 3300 feet.The ball court was located in the north half of the village on a terrace some forty feet above the river channel. It appeared as a shallow but conspicuous oval depression which was overgrown with mesquite trees and other desert flora of the Sonoran plateau type. Fortunately the court had not been disturbed by any previous excavations nor by erosion (Fig. 86, a).


Author(s):  
Gregory Vogel

Cavanaugh Mound (3SB3, also known as Etter's Mound, Jones Mound, Site Zeta, and occasionally misspelled Cavenaugh) is a largely intact Late Prehistoric platform mound on the Arkansas River just east of the Oklahoma border, about 14 km from the Spiro Mounds complex. The site is situated on a high terrace above the Arkansas River as it runs between the Ouachita Mountains to the south and the Ozarks to the north. The Poteau River enters the Arkansas River floodplain just west of Cavanaugh, creating one of the widest stretches of bottomland in the region. The area immediately around Cavanaugh Mound is now a residential neighborhood in the city of Fort Smith, and the mound itself is in a tiny lot with a church to the south, a trailer park to the east (named Indian Mounds Trailer Park), and a row of houses to the west. At about 60 m across and 9 m high, Cavanaugh Mound is one of the largest, if not the largest, prehistoric mound in the region. Very little has been published concerning this site, however, and very little formal archeological work has been done there. This article is partly intended to call attention to Cavanaugh Mound, and to compile all reports and descriptions of the mound in one publication. The first part of the article is therefore mostly descriptive. I also offer some tentative interpretations of the site and its possible relationship to the nearby Spiro and Skidgel sites. The size , shape, and stratigraphy of the mound all indicate that it was constructed and used in a manner similar to other Caddoan era platform mounds in the Arkansas River valley. The mound appears to be alone on the landscape, not connected to a group of surrounding mounds and not located within or near a contemporaneous settlement. It overlooks the Poteau/ Arkansas River bottoms to the west and was probably visible from both the Spiro and Skidgel sites in prehistoric times.


Sosio e-kons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Rani Noviyanti

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>The establishment of the city of Batavia on the west coast of the north coast of Java, cannot be separated from the role of a figure named Jean Pieterzoon Coen. Although previously Jayakarta (the name before Batavia), was controlled and built by Pangeran Fatahillah, the situation and conditions in the social and economic fields of Jayakarta were not like the management of J.P. Coen. After Jayakarta was controlled by the VOC, through a military expedition policy designed by JP. Coen, the condition of the city of Jayakarta slowly gradually increased in the social and economic fields. The increase in the city of Batavia in the social and economic fields was based on three JP policies. Coen was quite brave, namely increasing trade activities in the Sunda port of Kalapa, revitalizing the position of the islands in northern Batavia as a base of administration and defense and security, and opening the widest door for Chinese traders and immigrants. The three policies, in fact, were purely based on the thoughts outlined by JP. Coen, after taking over the Jayakarta area from the mastery of Prince Fatahillah.</p><p>Keywords: J.P. Coen, Kota Batavia.</p><p><strong><em>ABSTRAK</em></strong></p><p>Pendirian kota Batavia di sebelah barat pesisir pantai utara Jawa, tidak dapat dipisahkan dari peran seorang tokoh yang bernama Jean Pieterzoon Coen. Meskipun sebelumnya Jayakarta (nama sebelum Batavia), dikuasai dan dibangun oleh Pangeran Fatahillah, akan tetapi situasi dan kondisi dalam bidang sosial dan ekonomi Jayakarta tidak seperti pada masa pengelolaan J.P. Coen. Setelah Jayakarta dikuasai oleh VOC, melalui kebijakan ekspedisi militer yang dirancang oleh JP. Coen, keadaan kota Jayakarta perlahan demi perlahan semakin meningkat dalam bidang sosial dan ekonomi. Peningkatan kota Batavia dalam lapangan sosial dan ekonomi dilatari oleh tiga kebijakan JP. Coen yang cukup berani, yakni meningkatkan aktivitas perdagangan di pelabuhan Sunda Kalapa, merevitalisasi kedudukan pulau-pulau di utara Batavia sebagai basis adiministrasi dan pertahanan dan keamanan, serta membuka pintu seluas-luasnya bagi pedagang dan pendatang etnis Tionghoa. Tiga kebijakan tersebut, sejatinya meurpakan murni hasil pemikiran yang dituangkan olh JP. Coen, setelah mengambil alih wilayah Jayakarta dari penguasaan pangeran Fatahillah.</p><p>Kata Kunci : J.P. Coen, Kota Batavia.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (s1) ◽  
pp. s309-s338
Author(s):  
Laurie K. Bertram

How did marginalized and racialized ethnic immigrants transform themselves into active, armed colonial agents in nineteenth-century Western Canada? Approximately twenty Icelanders enlisted to fight Louis Riel’s forces during the North-West Resistance in 1885, just ten years following the arrival of Icelandic immigrants in present-day Manitoba. Forty more reportedly enlisted in an Icelandic-Canadian battalion to enforce the government’s victory in the fall. This public, armed stance of a group of Icelanders against Indigenous forces in 1885 is somewhat unexpected, since most Icelanders were relatively recent arrivals in the West and, in Winnipeg, members of the largely unskilled urban working class. Moreover, they were widely rumoured among Winnipeggers to be from a “blubber-eating race” and of “Eskimo” extraction; community accounts testify to the discrimination numerous early Icelanders faced in the city. These factors initially make Icelanders unexpected colonialists, particularly since nineteenth-century ethnic immigration and colonial suppression so often appear as separate processes in Canadian historiography. Indeed, this scholarship is characterized by an enduring belief that Western Canadian colonialism was a distinctly Anglo sin. Ethnic immigrants often appear in scholarly and popular histories as sharing a history of marginalization with Indigenous people that prevented migrants from taking part in colonial displacement. Proceeding from the neglected history of Icelandic enlistment in 1885 and new developments in Icelandic historiography, this article argues that rather than negating ethnic participation in Indigenous suppression, ethnic marginality and the class tensions it created could actually fuel participation in colonial campaigns, which promised immigrants upward mobility, access to state support, and land.


Author(s):  
Clyde E. Fant ◽  
Mitchell G. Reddish

Izmir, the modern name for the city that once was known as Smyrna, is the third largest city in Turkey, with a population of around 3 million. Situated on the Aegean coast, it is Turkey’s second busiest port. Not only is Izmir an interesting place itself to visit, but the city also serves as a good base from which to visit several important sites in the area, such as the ancient cities of Ephesus, Sardis, Miletus, Didyma, and Priene. The ancient city of Smyrna, which according to some reports was the birthplace of Homer, was commercially successful due to its harbor and its location (approximately 35 miles north of Ephesus) at the end of a major route through Asia Minor. The earliest settlement at this location was in the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. on a hill known as Tepekule in the Bayraklï suburb of the city. In the 10th century B.C.E., the first Greek colonists from Aeolia settled at Tepekule. They remained there until the end of the 8th century, when Ionian Greeks took over. Excavations at the site have uncovered houses from the 9th to the 7th centuries B.C.E. In the 7th century a temple to Athena was built. This temple was destroyed around 600 B.C.E. by King Alyattes of Lydia when he captured the city. The people of Smyrna rebuilt and enlarged the temple, but it was destroyed again around 545 B.C.E., this time by the Persians. An insignificant settlement in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.E., the site was finally abandoned. According to a story related by Pausanias (Description of Greece 7.5.1–3), the city was refounded by Alexander the Great, who was instructed in a dream to establish a new city on Mt. Pagus (now the site of the Kadifekale, or “Velvet Fortress”). The new city was actually not started until the beginning of the 3rd century by the Hellenistic ruler Lysimachus. During the subsequent centuries Smyrna, situated around the harbor, grew and prospered. By the 1st century B.C.E., Strabo was able to describe Smyrna as “the most beautiful of all” cities (Geography 14.646).


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