Antioch on the Orontes ( ; ;
also Great Antioch or Syrian
Antioch; Arabic:انطاکیه) was an ancient city on the
eastern side of the Orontes
River
. It is near the modern city of Antakya
, Turkey
.
Founded
near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch
eventually rivaled Alexandria
as the chief city of the Near East and was a cradle
of gentile Christianity. It was one of
the four cities of the
Syrian
tetrapolis. Its residents were known as
Antiochenes.
Geography
Location of Antioch, in present
Turkey.
Two routes
from the Mediterranean
, lying through the Orontes gorge and the Beilan
Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake
(Balük Geut or El Bahr) and are
met there by
- the road from the Amanic Gates (Baghche Pass) and western
Commagene, which descends the valley of
the Kara Su,
- the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings
at Samosata (Samsat) and Apamea Zeugma
(Birejik), which descend the valleys of the Afrin and the Kuwaik,
and
- the road from the Euphratean ford at Thapsacus, which skirts the fringe of the Syrian
steppe. A single route proceeds south in the Orontes valley.
History
Prehistory
The settlement of
Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A
shrine of
Anat, called by the Greeks the
"Persian Artemis," was located here. This site was included in the
eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of
Mount Silpius named or
Iopolis. This name was
always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes (
e.g. Libanius) anxious to affiliate themselves to the
Attic
Ionians--an eagerness which is
illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city's coins. Io may
have been a small early colony of trading Greeks (
Javan).
John Malalas mentions also an archaic
village,
Bottia, in the plain by the river.
According to most of the writers, this is the city that is
mentioned in the Quran 36:13.
Foundation by Seleucus I
Alexander the Great is said to
have camped on the site of Antioch, and dedicated an altar to
Zeus Bottiaeus, which lay in the
northwest of the future city. This account is found only in the
writings of Libanius, a 4th century AD orator from Antioch, and may
be legend intended to enhance Antioch's status. But the story is
not unlikely in itself.
After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his
generals divided up the territory he had conquered.
Seleucus I Nicator won the
territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four "sister cities"
in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch. Like the other
three, Antioch was named by Seleucus for a member of his family. He
is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs.
Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An
eagle, the bird of
Zeus,
had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded
on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. He did this in
the twelfth year of his reign. Antioch soon rose above
Seleucia Pieria to become the Syrian
capital.
Hellenistic age
The
original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the grid plan of Alexandria
by the architect Xenarius. Libanius
describes the first building and arrangement of this city (i.
p. 300. 17). The citadel was on Mt. Silpius and the city lay
mainly on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two
great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. Shortly
afterwards a second quarter was laid out, probably on the east and
by
Antiochus I, which, from an
expression of
Strabo, appears to have been
the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town. It was enclosed by
a wall of its own. In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large
island, and on this
Seleucus II
Callinicus began a third walled "city," which was finished by
Antiochus III. A fourth and last
quarter was added by
Antiochus IV
Epiphanes (175-164 BC); and thenceforth Antioch was known as
Tetrapolis. From west to east the whole was about
6 km in diameter and little less from north to south, this
area including many large gardens.
The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that
Athenians brought from the nearby city of Antigonia, Macedonians,
and Jews (who were given full status from the beginning). The total
free population of Antioch at its foundation has been estimated at
between 17,000 and 25,000, not including slaves and native
settlers. During the late Hellenistic period and Early Roman
period, Antioch population reached its peak of over 500,000
inhabitants (estimates vary from 400,000 to 600,000) and was the
third largest city in the world after Rome and Alexandria. By the
4th century, Antioch's declining population was about 200,000
according to
Chrysostom, a figure which
again does not include slaves.
About 6 km west and beyond the suburb Heraclea lay the
paradise of Daphne, a park of woods and waters, in the midst of
which rose a great temple to the Pythian Apollo, also founded by
Seleucus I and enriched with a cult-statue of the god, as
Musagetes, by
Bryaxis. A companion sanctuary
of Hecate was constructed underground by
Diocletian. The beauty and the lax morals of
Daphne were celebrated all over the western world; and indeed
Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame. Its
amenities awoke both the enthusiasm and the scorn of many writers
of antiquity.
Antioch
became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid empire
under Antiochus I, its counterpart in
the east being Seleucia on the Tigris
; but its paramount importance dates from the battle
of Ancyra (240 BC), which shifted the Seleucid centre of gravity
from Asia Minor, and led indirectly to the rise of Pergamum.
The Seleucids reigned from Antioch.
We know little of it in the Hellenistic period, apart from Syria
, all our
information coming from authors of the late Roman time.
Among its great Greek buildings we hear only of the theatre, of
which substructures still remain on the flank of Silpius, and of
the royal palace, probably situated on the island. It enjoyed a
reputation for letters and the arts (
Cicero
pro Archia, 3); but the only names of distinction in these
pursuits during the Seleucid period, that have come down to us, are
Apollophanes, the Stoic, and one Phoebus, a writer on dreams. The
mass of the population seems to have been only superficially
Hellenic, and to have spoken
Aramaic in non-official life.
The nicknames which
they gave to their later kings were Aramaic; and, except Apollo and Daphne, the great
divinities of north Syria seem to have remained essentially native,
such as the "Persian Artemis" of Meroe and Atargatis of Hierapolis Bambyce
.
The epithet, "Golden," suggests that the external appearance of
Antioch was impressive, but the city needed constant restoration
owing to the
seismic disturbances to
which the district has always been subjected. The first great
earthquake in recorded history was related by the native chronicler
John Malalas. It occurred in 148 BC and
did immense damage.
Local politics were turbulent. In the many dissensions of the
Seleucid house the population took sides, and frequently rose in
rebellion, for example against Alexander Balas in 147 BC, and
Demetrius II in 129 BC. The latter, enlisting a body of Jews,
punished his capital with fire and sword. In the last struggles of
the Seleucid house, Antioch turned against its feeble rulers,
invited
Tigranes of Armenia to
occupy the city in 83 BC, tried to unseat Antiochus XIII in 65 BC,
and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following year.
Its wish prevailed, and it passed with Syria to the
Roman Republic in 64 BC, but remained a
civitas libera.
Roman period
The Roman emperors favoured the city from the first, seeing it as a
more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than
Alexandria could be, because of the isolated position of Egypt. To
a certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome.
Julius Caesar visited it in 47 BC, and
confirmed its freedom. A great temple to Jupiter Capitolinus rose
on Silpius, probably at the insistence of
Octavian, whose cause the city had espoused. A
forum of Roman type was laid out.
Tiberius built two long colonnades on the
south towards Silpius.
Agrippa and Tiberius
enlarged the theatre, and
Trajan finished
their work.
Antoninus Pius paved the
great east to west artery with granite. A circus, other colonnades
and great numbers of baths were built, and new
aqueducts to supply them bore the names of
Caesars, the finest being the work of
Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod, erected a
long
stoa on the east, and
Agrippa encouraged the growth of a new suburb south
of this.
At Antioch
Germanicus died in 19 AD, and
his body was burnt in the forum.
An earthquake that shook Antioch in AD 37 caused the emperor
Caligula to send two senators to report on
the condition of the city. Another quake followed in the next
reign.
Titus set up the
Cherubim, captured from the
Jewish temple, over one of the gates.
In 115, during
Trajan's sojourn in the place
with his army of Parthia, the whole site was convulsed by an
earthquake, the landscape altered, and the emperor himself forced
to take shelter in the circus for several days. He and his
successor restored the city.
Commodus had
Olympic games celebrated at Antioch.
Edward Gibbon wrote:
Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit,
and the splendour of dress and furniture was the only distinction
of the citizens of Antioch. The arts of luxury were honoured, the
serious and manly virtues were the subject of ridicule, and the
contempt for female modesty and reverent age announced the
universal corruption of the capital of the East.
In 256 the town was suddenly raided by the Persians, who slew many
in the theatre.
In 526, after minor shocks, the calamity returned in a terrible
form; the octagonal cathedral which had been erected by the emperor
Constantius II suffered and thousands
of lives were lost, largely those of Christians gathered to a great
church assembly. Especially terrific earthquakes on November 29,
528 and October 31, 588 are also recorded.
Late Antiquity
Christianity
Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity. The city had a
large population of Jewish origin in a quarter called the
Kerateion, and so attracted the earliest
missionaries. Evangelized, among others, by
Peter himself, according to the tradition upon
which the
Antiochene
patriarchate still rests its claim for primacy, and certainly
later by
Barnabas and
Paul during Paul's first missionary journey.
Its converts were the first to be called
Christians.
This is
not to be confused with Antioch
in Pisidia, to which the early missionaries later
travelled.
The population was estimated by
Chrysostom at about 100,000 people at the time of
Theodosius I.
Between 252 and 300,
ten assemblies of the church were held at Antioch and it became the
seat of one of the four original patriarchates, along with Jerusalem
, Alexandria, and Rome
(see
Pentarchy). Today Antioch remains
the seat of a
patriarchate of
the
Oriental Orthodox
churches.
One of the canonical Eastern Orthodox churches is still
called the Antiochian
Orthodox Church, although it moved its headquarters from
Antioch to Damascus
, Syria, several centuries ago (see list of Patriarchs of
Antioch), and its prime bishop retains the title "Patriarch of
Antioch," somewhat analogous to the manner in which several Popes,
heads of the Roman Catholic
Church remained "Bishop of Rome" even while residing in
Avignon, France in the 14th century.
During the 4th century, Antioch was one of the three most important
cities in the eastern Roman empire (along with Alexandria and
Constantinople), which led to it being recognized as the seat of
one of the five early Christian patriarchates (see
Pentarchy).
The age of Julian
When
the emperor Julian visited in
362 on a detour to Persia, he had high hopes for Antioch, regarding
it as a rival to the imperial capital of Constantinople
. Antioch had a mixed pagan and Christian
population, which
Ammianus
Marcellinus implies lived quite harmoniously together. However
Julian's visit began ominously as it coincided with a lament for
Adonis, the doomed lover of
Aphrodite. Thus, Ammianus wrote, the emperor and
his soldiers entered the city not to the sound of cheers but to
wailing and screaming.
Not long after, the Christian population railed at Julian for his
favour to Jewish and pagan rites, and, outraged by the closing of
its great church of
Constantine,
burned down the temple of
Apollo in Daphne.
Another version of the story had it that the chief priest of the
temple accidentally set the temple alight because he had fallen
asleep after lighting a candle. In any case Julian had the man
tortured for negligence (for either allowing
the Christians to burn the temple or for burning it himself),
confiscated Christian property and berated the pagan Antiochenes
for their impiety.
Julian found much else about which to criticize the Antiochenes.
Julian had wanted the empire's cities to be more self-managing, as
they had been some
200 years before.
However Antioch's
city
councilmen showed themselves unwilling to shore up Antioch's
food shortage with their own resources, so dependent were they on
the emperor. Ammianus wrote that the councilmen shirked their
duties by bribing unwitting men in the marketplace to do the job
for them.
The city's impiety to the old religion was clear to Julian when he
attended the city's annual feast of Apollo. To his surprise and
dismay the only Antiochene present was an old priest clutching a
chicken.
The Antiochenes in turn hated Julian for worsening the food
shortage with the burden of his
billeted
troops, wrote
Ammianus. The soldiers were
often to be found gorged on sacrificial meat, making a drunken
nuisance of themselves on the streets while Antioch's hungry
citizens looked on in disgust. The Christian Antiochenes and
Julian's pagan
Gallic soldiers also never
quite saw eye to eye.
Even Julian's piety was distasteful to the Antiochenes retaining
the old faith. Julian's brand of paganism was very much unique to
himself, with little support outside the most educated
Neoplatonist circles. The irony of Julian's
enthusiasm for large scale
animal
sacrifice could not have escaped the hungry Antiochenes. Julian
gained no admiration for his personal involvement in the
sacrifices, only the nickname
axeman, wrote
Ammianus.
The emperor's high-handed, severe methods and his rigid
administration prompted Antiochene
lampoons
about, among other things, Julian's unfashionably
pointed beard.
Valens and after
Julian's successor,
Valens, who endowed
Antioch with a new forum, including a statue of Valentinian on a
central column, reopened the great church of Constantine, which
stood till the Persian sack in 538 by
Chosroes.
In 387, there was a great sedition caused by a new tax levied by
order of
Theodosius I, and the city was
punished by the loss of its metropolitan status.
Justinian I, who renamed it
Theopolis ("City of God"), restored many of its
public buildings after the
great
earthquake of 526, whose destructive work was completed by the
Persian king,
Khosrau I, twelve years
later. Antioch lost as many as 300,000 people. Justinian I made an
effort to revive it, and
Procopius
describes his repairing of the walls; but its glory was past.
Antioch gave its name to a
certain
school of Christian thought, distinguished by literal
interpretation of the Scriptures and insistence on the human
limitations of
Jesus.
Diodorus of Tarsus and
Theodore of Mopsuestia were the
leaders of this school.
The principal local saint was Simeon
Stylites
, who lived
an extremely ascetic life atop a pillar for 40 years some
65 km east of Antioch. His body was brought to the city
and buried in a building erected under the emperor
Leo.
Arab period
In 637, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor
Heraclius, Antioch was conquered by the Arabs in
the caliphate of al-
Rashidun during the
Battle of Iron Bridge. The
city became known in Arabic as أنطاكيّة
(
Antākiyyah).
Since the Umayyad
dynasty was unable to penetrate the Anatolian
plateau, Antioch found itself on the frontline of
the conflicts between two hostile empires during the next 350
years, so that the city went into a precipitous
decline.
In 969, the city was recovered for the
Byzantine Emperor
Nicephorus II Phocas by Michael Burza and
Peter the Eunuch. In 1078, Armenians seized power until the
Seljuk Turks captured Antioch in 1084,
but held it only fourteen years before the Crusaders arrived.
Crusader era
The Crusaders'
Siege of Antioch
conquered the city, but caused significant damage during the
First Crusade. Although it contained a
large Christian population, it was ultimately betrayed by Islamic
allies of
Bohemund, prince of
Taranto who, following the defeat of the Turkish garrison, became
its overlord. It remained the capital of the Latin
Principality of Antioch for nearly
two centuries.
It fell at last to the Egyptian Mamluk
Sultan Baibars, in 1268,
after another siege.
Baibars proceeded to massacre the Christian population. In addition
to the ravages of war, the city's port became inaccessible to large
ships due to the accumulation of sand in the Orontes river bed.
As a
result, Antioch never recovered as a major city, with much of its
former role falling to the port city of Alexandretta
(Iskenderun).
Archaeology
Few
traces of the once great Roman city are visible today aside from
the massive fortification walls that snake up the mountains to the
east of the modern city, several aqueducts, and the Church of St
Peter
(St Peter's Cave Church, Cave-Church of St. Peter),
said to be a meeting place of an early Christian community.
The majority of the Roman city lies buried beneath deep sediments
from the Orontes River, or has been obscured by recent
construction.
Between
1932 and 1939, archaeological excavations of Antioch were
undertaken under the direction of the "Committee for the Excavation
of Antioch and Its Vicinity," which was made up of representatives
from the Louvre
Museum
, the Baltimore Museum of Art
, the Worcester Art
Museum, Princeton
University
, and later (1936) also the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard
University
and its affiliate Dumbarton Oaks
.
The excavation team failed to find the major buildings they hoped
to unearth, including Constantine's Great Octagonal Church or the
imperial palace. However, a great accomplishment of the expedition
was the discovery of high-quality Roman mosaics from villas and
baths in Antioch, Daphne and Seleucia. One mosaic includes a border
that depicts a walk from Antioch to Daphne, showing many ancient
buildings along the way.
The mosaics are now displayed in the Hatay
Archaeological Museum in Antakya and in the
museums of the sponsoring institutions.
A statue
in the Vatican
and a number of figurines and statuettes perpetuate
the type of its great patron goddess and civic symbol, the Tyche (Fortune) of Antioch – a majestic seated figure,
crowned with the ramparts of Antioch's walls, with the river
Orontes as a youth swimming under her feet.
In recent years, what remains of the Roman and late antique city
have suffered severe damage as a result of construction related to
the expansion of Antakya. In the 1960s, the last surviving Roman
bridge was demolished to make way for a modern two-lane bridge. The
northern edge of Antakya has been growing rapidly over recent
years, and this construction has begun to expose large portions of
the ancient city, which are frequently bulldozed and rarely
protected by the local museum.
Notable people
See also
Footnotes
External references
- Karl Otfried Müller,
Antiquitates Antiochenae (1839)
- Albin Freund, Beiträge zur
antiochenischen und zur konstantinopolitanischen Stadtchronik
(1882)
- R. Forster,
in Jahrbuch of Berlin Arch. Institute, xii. (1897)
External links
-CNG.jpg/180px-JulianusII-antioch(360-363)-CNG.jpg)
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