The Travel Bug: Corinth and Athens - two ancient Greek powerhouses

Day 2 (10 Nov 2025)

Today, we made our way to Corinth. Today, I guess people outside of Greece would not have heard of Corinth but the tour guide explained that in ancient times, Corinth was one of the three greatest powers in the Peloponnese civilisation (region south of Greece) apart from Athens and Sparta. Corinth was a powerful naval state, owning two ports. This meant it was a multi-cultural city that thrived on trade.

In the Bible, Corinth was where the apostle Paul met and stayed with Aquila and Priscilla.

"There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them." - Acts 18:2,3

Previously, I read tentmaker and it meant nothing to me. It was simply an occupation, I guess. But our tour guide explained that Corinth, being a bustling city, used to organise sports and games, and people would come from all over to compete. Since they were just visiting temporarily, they needed tents to stay in. So tentmaking was an important and lucrative business. Who knew!

We visited the archaelogical site in Corinth. By this time, the Roman empire had conquered the land so what is uncovered is essentially a Roman city. Typically, it contains an agora (marketplace) with inns, shops, restaurants. However the agora was not just to buy and sell, but also talk about important ideas like politics and so on. It was like the town square, if you like. It felt a little unreal walking amidst the agora where Paul would have preached to the Jews and then the Greeks.

The Greeks built temples to their gods everywhere. This one in Corinth is for Apollo and is the oldest temple standing today, 27 centuries old.

I went back to the hotel and did a quick sketch of it.

Paul stayed for one and a half years because God told him to stay and teach the word, and he built a church here (of people, not a building).

"One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” - Acts 18:9,10

The Greeks would regularly gather at the agora to debate their ideas, they valued intellect and education. Greece is considered the cradle of democracy, politics and thought, it was home to philosophers like Plato and Socrates. Since Corinth was one of the centres of Greek civilisation, it made sense that Paul would have chastised the Corinthian church for their intellectual pride in his first letter to the Corinthians.

We also visited the Corinth canal, an important conduit for trade.

Stopped for lunch at a restaurant by the sea. It's only the second day but I'm already starting to find Greek food very salty. And way too much greens.

The view by the sea was nice though.

After lunch, we drove back to Athens. Athens is a truly ancient city. Similar to Rome, excavation in Athens always uncovers stuff. When digging to build the subway, the authorities kept finding antiquities which they stored and eventually displayed in subway stations. When people build houses in Athens, they sometimes find antiquities on their land. They're supposed to declare to this to the authorities and archaeologists will come examine it. The trouble is that if the artefacts are found to be of value, they might decide to buy over the house to perform an archaeological dig. So some people just don't declare and say they found nothing. 🤷‍♀️

We climbed up the Acropolis (which refers to the highest part of the city. Acro = high which is where we get the word "acrophobia" - fear of heights).

An ancient music hall that seats 5,000. Concerts are still held there, artists like Elton John and Maria Callas have performed there. Imagine seeing Andrea Bocelli in concert there!

Right on top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to Athena. I have to say, it looks pretty spectacular, especially during dusk with the light streaming in between the columns. It feels crazy standing among ruins that are more than 2,000 years old, similar to how I felt looking at the Pantheon in Rome.

The Parthenon was built with columns sloping upwards, to create the optical illusion of height when looking from ground level. To achieve this, it was built using 70,000 unique pieces of marble. Over the centuries, it has been ruined by earthquakes and wars but the biggest destruction to it was only 400 years ago when it was under the Turks under the Ottoman Empire decided to store gunpowder there in the battle against the Venetians 🙄. The Venetians bombed the area, the Parthenon exploded and marble was scattered all over like debris. The Parthenon took only 9 years to build (in ancient times with no modern machinery) but restoration has been going on since 1992 as they're trying to figure out which bit of marble belongs where like some massive jigsaw puzzle.

Everywhere the Greeks went, they built temples to the gods and it wasn't just to Greek gods. It was also Roman gods and Egyptian gods because Greece was a melting pot. We saw this most clearly in Athens. It explains why Paul was so troubled by the idolatry he saw there:

“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.“ - Acts 17:22.23

This trip is more than just a visit to a new country, it puts a context and pictures to the places Paul went, bringing the Bible to life. What struck me though was when the tour guide said that Paul thought he had failed in Athens. He never returned to Athens and he never wrote a letter to the Athenians. How could he ever have imagined that one day, Athens would be 80% Christian thanks to the seed he planted?

Also, today when we talk about Jesus or Christianity to others, they at least have heard of it. In Paul's time, Jesus was a completely alien concept that was so radically left field it must have taken Paul so much courage to face the learned Greeks and share it. No wonder he was mocked.