18:1 Corinth. Since 27 b.c., this city had been the capital of the Roman province of Achaia. It was fifty miles southwest of Athens, near the isthmus that joins Attica and the Peloponnesus. Corinth was large and prosperous in the eighth to sixth centuries b.c., but it declined and was captured in 338 b.c. by Philip II of Macedon. In 196 b.c., it was taken by the Romans. They sacked it in 146 b.c. in punishment for a revolt, but it was restored by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony in 44 b.c. In New Testament times Corinth had over 200,000 inhabitants, including Greeks, freedmen from Italy, Roman army veterans, businessmen, government officials, people from the Near East, a large number of Jews, and many slaves. Corinth was thoroughly pagan and immoral. The city was filled with pagan temples and on the south there was a high acropolis with a temple of Aphrodite. From the fifth century b.c., the expression “to Corinthianize” meant to be sexually immoral.