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Abandonment of Antioch
ancient Greek city in southern Turkey
- 1268
- Middle East
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ancient Greek city in southern Turkey
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Antioch was a city located in northern Syria at the site of modern Antakya, Turkey. Founded in 300 BC, Antioch became one of the most important cities of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. The capital of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, it remained significant under the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and during the Crusades was the centre of the Principality of Antioch.
Seleucus I Nicator, a successor of Alexander the Great, founded Antioch alongside three other cities to secure the surrounding region, which he had recently conquered. He chose a site on the Orontes River in the southwest Amuq plain, a fertile lowland which provided valuable resources for Antioch; the city was strategically located and came to dominate trade routes. It served as the Seleucid capital from 240 BC until 63 BC, when the Romans took control; it was thereafter the capital of Roman Syria. Antioch may have been inhabited by over 500,000 inhabitants at its peak, making the city the third largest in the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria.
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. From the early 4th century, Antioch was the seat of the comes Orientis, head of the Diocese of the East. The city declined to relative insignificance during the Middle Ages due to warfare, repeated earthquakes, and a change in trade routes. The remains of the ancient city of Antioch are mostly buried beneath alluvial deposits from the Orontes River.
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.
The ruins of the ancient city of Antioch today lie underneath Antakya, located in Hatay Province in south Turkey. Like the modern city, Antioch was located in the southwest Amuq plain, a lowland plain watered by three rivers. The Kara Su and Afrin rivers flowed into the Lake of Antioch at the plain's centre, but the Orontes River, flowing northwards from Syria, skirted the plain's southern edge and, joined by the lake's outflow, cut westward through the mountains to reach the Mediterranean Sea. The plain was, and remains, extremely fertile: the cereal crops wheat and barley were farmed alongside olives, olive oil, and wine, while Antioch was renowned for the quality of its cucumbers, cabbages, and medicinal plants such as Oenanthe. Other resources, such as the valuable cypress wood and building stone, were also abundant, while the city's residents drew upon the seafood of the lake, the river, and the sea, in addition to their domesticated livestock. In antiquity, the wild animals of the region included Asiatic lions, Caspian tigers, ostriches, and fallow deer, alongside the scorpions and gnats still present today.
Antioch was built at an elevation of 90 metres (300 ft) above sea level between the slopes of the 560 metres (1,840 ft)-tall Mount Silpius to the southeast, and the left bank of the Orontes, which here flowed from northeast to southwest. Although an island in the river was also urbanised, Antioch was generally hemmed in by its local topography. The area's hydrography presented significant challenges, especially during the rainy season, when the Orontes and the streams descending from Mount Silpius regularly flooded the city and surrounding farmland. Attempts to control the water through a complex network of drains, conduits, aqueducts, and dams failed over centuries; the deposition of alluvial material became so great that the island in the river disappeared and the city itself was buried metres-deep. Antioch, straddling the northern Dead Sea Rift fault line near to the Marash Triple Junction, has also suffered more than sixty notable earthquakes, of which around ten had a magnitude greater than 7.
Antioch was connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Orontes, which was likely navigable up to the city in antiquity; the city's rulers devoted great energy to keeping the river free for trade and transport. The walls, rebuilt at least eight times between the city's foundation and the Crusader era, originally enclosed an area of around 90 hectares (0.35 sq mi), which may have grown to 500 hectares (1.9 sq mi) by 540 AD. Roads radiated in all directions from the walls, including towards the renowned suburb of Daphne, located 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the city at modern Harbiye. Regarded as inextricably linked to Antioch until it was abandoned in the late Middle Ages, Daphne contained numerous springs which provided a regular source of water for Antioch, especially during the dry summer months when no rain fell. One quirk of the city's local climate was an intense wind which continues to be funnelled up the Orontes valley between May and October.
The Amuq plain, a key link in connecting Anatolia, Syria, the Mediterranean Sea, and the deserts of the Middle East, had been inhabited for thousands of years before the foundation of Antioch. Tell Kurdu, the earliest site yet excavated, was inhabited from the Halaf-Ubaid periods until well into the Chalcolithic. Later Bronze Age sites include the regional powerhouses of Tell Atchana and Tell Tayinat, which continued to be influential into the Iron Age, and smaller settlements such as Çatal Höyük (unrelated to the Anatolian site of the same name) and Tell Judaidah. Large palaces, fortifications, and other structures have been excavated at multiple sites, while ceramic evidence shows commercial links with the city-states of Archaic Greece, such as Corinth, Rhodes, and Athens, which grew as the Iron Age neared its close in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. The region of Syria, including the Amuq plain, was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in the mid-sixth century, and remained under the control of Cyrus's Achaemenid Empire until Alexander the Great invaded in 333 BC. By this time, most of the Metal Age tells had been abandoned and replaced with a intricate network of small farms and fields.
The fourth and sixth century writers Libanius and John Malalas connected the site of Antioch with Greek mythology and legends in order to glorify the city's origins. According to Libanius, three settlements preceded Antioch: Iopolis, founded by Argives under Triptolemus who were searching for their lost princess Io; Kasiotis, a joint settlement of Cretans and Cypriots; and Herakleia, established by the descendants of the hero Heracles. He also recorded that the Persian king Cambyses II gave his blessing to the Greek settlements in the area. Malalas provided different aetiological linkages, writing that the hero Perseus had visited Iopolis and that Herakleia was founded where the nymph Daphne was turned into a tree to escape the god Apollo. Libanius also held that Alexander, renowned for his city foundations, had intended to establish one at Antioch but, prevented by a lack of time, instead founded a shrine to Zeus and a small citadel named Emathia. There is no proof for any of these claims or connections.
The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC precipitated the division of the territories he had conquered amongst his leading generals, termed Diadochi, such as Seleucus, who by 301 BC had established his power over the eastern provinces, up to Babylonia. In that year, his victory over Antigonus I Monophthalmus at the Battle of Ipsus gave him control of northern Syria, but many inhabitants of the region were still loyal to Antigonus's son Demetrius. Meanwhile, the Diadochi Pleistarchus and Lysimachus controlled territories to the north and west respectively, and Ptolemy I of Egypt had taken possession of southern Syria up to the Eleutheros river. To secure his hold on his newly-conquered territory, Seleucus ordered the foundation of four settlements between 301 and 299 BC: Seleucia Pieria and Laodicea on the coast, paired with Antioch and Apamea inland. The settlement was so intense that the area which connected the coast and the Euphrates came to be known as the Seleucis; Seleucia was originally designated as the capital of this Tetrapolis.
Seleucus was disinclined to simply occupy and rename Antigoneia, the nearby city founded by Antigonus several years previously, because usurping its prominence with a new foundation of his own would symbolise his power and prestige. This gave rise to one of Antioch's primary foundation myths, as retold by the later Antiochene chroniclers John Malalas and Libanius: after founding Seleucia Pieria on 23 April 300, Seleucus travelled to Antigoneia and there performed a sacrifice in honor of Zeus. An eagle is said to have carried off the sacrificial meat and, by dropping it at the future location of Antioch, indicated Zeus's favoured site. Malalas writes that Seleucus sacrificed to Zeus at sunrise on 22 May 300 at the site of Antioch, and immediately began construction of a temple to the god.
Ancient sources dispute whether Selecus named Antioch in honour of his father or his son, both named Antiochus. Modern scholarship have conclusively decided in favour of the former, for multiple reasons. Firstly, as the historian Glanville Downey notes: "If Seleucia Pieria was named for Seleucus, Apamea for his wife, and Laodicea for his mother, it seems logical to suppose that Antioch was named for Seleucus' father rather than for his son". Secondly, the tradition favouring the son only became prominent during the Byzantine period; the tradition favouring the father is much older, including the superior ancient sources Strabo and Appian.
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 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 6 kilometres (4 miles) 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 Antigoneia, Macedonians, and Jews (who were given full status from the beginning). 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 6 kilometres (4 miles) 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 (240 BC), 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.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Antioch”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.