The claim that the ancient Greek city of Corinth was known in antiquity as a place of unparalleled depravity, vice, and licentiousness has regularly occurred in English-language Bible dictionaries, commentaries, and sermons for a century and a half at least. New works have repeated the claim again and again. Recently, it has even begun to make inroads into popular secular media through, for instance, the new Netflix series The Sandman.
Now, I love a good story about an ancient city of vice and perversion as much as the next person, but, unfortunately, there are at least three major problems with this narrative. The first problem is that Corinth didn’t have a reputation for “sin” or “vice” in general, but rather a very specific reputation for its female hired companions who primarily served an upper-class male clientele.
The second problem is that, while Corinth seems to have had this reputation before the Romans destroyed it in 146 BCE, the evidence for it having had this reputation after the Romans refounded the city in 44 BCE as a colonia under their rule is limited at best. The third and final problem is that Corinth was not unique at all in having a stereotypical association with a certain kind of low or disreputable activity; on the contrary, nearly every city in the ancient Greek world had some kind of disreputable stereotype attached to it.
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