The nature and development of Roman Corinth to the end of the Antonine period

The purpose of this thesis is two-fold: first, to examine and re-assess the material remains of Roman Corinth in the light 'of modern scholarship; secondly, to use this evidence, in combination with the literary sources, and thus to define, more clearly than has been done hitherto, both the nature of the original foundation and the way in which it developed. The work depends primarily on material remains, since the literary sources are limited and often overworked. A vast amount of material has been made available from the excavations of the American School over the last sixty years; there are scattered reports of earlier work going back to the 1890s; and there is a substantial body of unpublished material. Aerial photographs, taken in the 1940s and 1960s, which have not been studied before, have made it possible to form a much better idea of the city as a whole and to reconstruct the basic road system. The end of the Antonine period provides a convenient, if somewhat arbitrary, date at which to conclude the study in general, since most of the excavated areas and literary references date from before this time. My conclusion is that the evidence now available shows that Roman Corinth, far from being simply a continuation of Greek Corinth, as most scholars have assumed, was founded as a Roman colony, in accordance with normal Roman practice, and that it retained its Roman identity throughout the period under discussion.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

The Open University

Year dc:date.issued

1987

Author dc:creator

• Walbank, Mary Elizabeth Hoskins

Language dc:language

en