A huge, steep hill south of the ancient city of Corinth. It is 1,886 feet (575 meters) above sea level. This hill had a great view of the Isthmus of Corinth and controlled both land traffic between central Greece and the Peloponnesus, as well as sea traffic from Italy, moving east through the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf.
At the top of the hill was the temple of Aphrodite, which had a bad reputation in ancient times. The geographer Strabo, writing around AD 20, claimed that 1,000 prostitutes worked at the temple during Greece’s golden age (a period of great cultural and intellectual achievement). The people of Athens might have made Corinth's reputation sound worse than it really was. The saying “Not every man’s ship is bound for Corinth” was common among the ancient Greeks, reflecting this negative view of the city.
Today, scholars are skeptical of Strabo’s claim, but it still affects how people interpret Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. It is possible that the Corinthians were just as moral as people in other Greek cities. Strabo himself could only find a small temple of Aphrodite, and there are almost no remains of it today.