Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes was a Hellenistic Greek city founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BC. One of the most important Greek cities of the Hellenistic period, it served as the capital of the Seleucid Empire and later as regional capital to both the Roman and Byzantine Empire. During the Crusades, Antioch was the capital of the Principality of Antioch, one of four Crusader states that were founded in the Levant. Its inhabitants were known as Antiochenes. The remains of the ancient city of Antioch are mostly buried beneath alluvial deposits from the Orontes River. The modern city of Antakya, in Hatay Province of Turkey, lies in its place.
Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, founded Antioch near the end of the 4th century BC, as one of the tetrapoleis of Seleucis of Syria. Seleucus encouraged Greeks from all over the Mediterranean to settle in the city. The city's location offered geographical, military, and economic benefits to its occupants; Antioch was heavily involved in the spice trade and lay within close reach of the Silk Road and the Royal Road. The city was the capital of the Seleucid Empire from 240 BC until 63 BC, when the Romans took control, making it the capital of the province of Syria and later of Coele Syria. During the late Hellenistic and Roman Principate periods, Antioch's population may have reached a peak of over 500,000 inhabitants, making the city the third largest in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria and one of the most important cities in the eastern Mediterranean. From the early 4th century, Antioch was the seat of the comes Orientis, head of the Diocese of the East. The Romans provided the city with walls that encompassed almost.
The city was the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. As one of the cities of the pentarchy, Antioch was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of early Christianity. The Christian New Testament asserts that the name "Christian" first emerged in Antioch. The city declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages due to warfare, repeated earthquakes, and a change in trade routes.
The city still lends its name to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, one of the most important modern churches of the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean. The city also attracts Muslim pilgrims who visit the Habib-i Nejjar Mosque, which they believe to contain the tomb of Habib the Carpenter, mentioned in surah Yā-Sīn of the Quran.
Geography
Two routes from the Mediterranean Sea, lying through the Orontes River gorge and the Belen Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake, now called Lake Amik, and are met there by:- the road from the Amanian Gate and western Commagene, which descends the valley of the Karasu to the Afrin River;
- the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings at Samosata and Apamea Zeugma, which descend the valleys of the Afrin and the Queiq; 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.
Prehistory
A settlement called "Meroe" pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of the goddess Anat, called by Herodotus the "Persian Artemis", was located there. The site was included in the eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named Io, or Iopolis. This name was adduced as evidence by Antiochenes eager 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. 5th century chronicler John Malalas mentions an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the river.Founding by Seleucus I
is said to have camped on the site of Antioch and dedicated an altar to Zeus Bottiaeus; it lay in the northwest of the future city. This account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th-century orator from Antioch, and may be legend intended to enhance Antioch's status.After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his generals, the Diadochi, divided up the territory he had conquered. After the Battle of Ipsos in 301 BC, Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four "sister cities" in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch, a city named in honor of his father Antiochus; according to the Suda, it might be named after his son Antiochus. He is reputed to have built 16 cities dubbed Antioch. 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. Seleucus did this on the 22nd day of the month of Artemísios in the 12th year of his reign, equivalent to May 300 BC. 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. The citadel was on Mount Silpius, and the city lay mainly on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. A second walled area to the east was added by Antiochus I Soter. North of the city, Seleucus II Callinicus built a third walled area on an island within the Orontes. A fourth and last quarter was added by Antiochus IV Epiphanes; thenceforth Antioch was known as Tetrapolis. From west to east the whole was about in diameter and a little less from north to south. This area included many large gardens.The city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought from nearby Antigonia, Macedonians, and Jews. According to ancient tradition, Antioch was settled by 5,500 Athenians and Macedonians, together with an unknown number of native Syrians. This number probably refers to free adult citizens, so that the total number of free Greek settlers including women and children was probably between 17,000 and 25,000.
About 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 ancient world; and indeed Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame.
Antioch became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid Empire under Antiochus I, its counterpart in the east being Seleucia; but its paramount importance dates from the Battle of Ancyra, which shifted the Seleucid centre of gravity from Anatolia and led indirectly to the rise of Pergamon.
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 being "a populous city, full of most erudite men and rich in the most liberal studies", 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 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 Nicator 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 the Great to occupy the city in 83 BC, tried to unseat Antiochus XIII Asiaticus in 65 BC, and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following year. Antioch's wish prevailed, and it passed with Syria to the Roman Republic in 64 BC, but remained a civitas libera.
Roman period
Roman rule before Constantine
The Roman emperors favored the city, 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 Roman forum was laid out. Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius.Strabo, writing in the reign of Augustus and the first years of Tiberius, states that Antioch is not much smaller than Seleucia and Alexandria; Alexandria had been said by Diodorus Siculus in the mid-1st century BC to have 300,000 free inhabitants, which would mean that Antioch was about this size in Strabo's time.
Agrippa and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work. Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. Other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and 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 Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of this.
One of the most famous Roman additions to the city was its hippodrome, the Circus of Antioch. This chariot racing venue was probably built in the reign of Augustus, when the city had more than half a million inhabitants; it was modelled on the Circus Maximus in Rome and other circus buildings throughout the empire. Measuring more than long and wide, the circus could house up to 80,000 spectators. The most important building though was the Imperial Palace. It housed the Roman emperor on occasion and may have originally been the Seleucid palace. According to Libanius, at his time the palace won in any comparison of its size and was unsurpassed in beauty.
Zarmanochegas a monk of the Sramana tradition of India, according to Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch around 13 AD as part of a mission to Augustus. At Antioch Germanicus died in 19 AD, and his body was burnt in the forum. An earthquake that shook Antioch in 37 caused Caligula to send two senators to report on the condition of the city. Another quake followed in the next reign. Titus visited Antioch in the spring of 71, where he encountered a crowd demanding the expulsion of Jews from the city. He refused, explaining that their country had been destroyed, and no other place would accept them. The crowd then sought to revoke the Jews' political privileges by asking Titus to remove the bronze tablets inscribed with their rights, but Titus declined once more.
In 115, during Trajan's travel there during his war against Parthia, the whole site was convulsed by a huge earthquake. The landscape altered, and Trajan was forced to take shelter in the circus for several days. He and his successor restored the city, but the population was reduced to less than 400,000 inhabitants, and many sections of the city were abandoned.
Commodus had Olympic games celebrated at Antioch. In 256 the city was suddenly raided by the Persians under Shapur I, and many of the people were slain in the theatre. The city was burned, and some 100,000 inhabitants were killed while the rest were deported to Shapur's newly built city of Gundeshapur. It was recaptured by Valerian the following year.