Antioch on the Orontes

ANTIOCHIA (Antakya, Turkey - 36°12'N, 36°10'E) was founded by Seleucus I Nicator ("the Conqueror"), one of the successors ("Diadochi") of Alexander the Great, in 300 BC near the foot of Mt. Silpius on the left bank of the Orontes River about fifteen miles from the Mediterranean Sea. It was laid out on a very regular grid-pattern as a planned city, destined to be the capital of the eastern Seleucid territories. Nicator named the city after his father Antiochus, of whom nothing else is known, and populated it with 5,300 Athenian and Macedonian settlers from the nearby town of Antigoneia, which his vanquished rival Antigonus I Monophthalmos ("the one-eyed") had founded in 307 BC. The city derived pure water from springs at Daphne, about five miles south of Antioch, where a precinct was made sacred to Apollo and Aphrodite. Since there were many Antiochs in ancient days, this Antioch was sometimes known as Antiochia ad Orentem (Antioch on the Orontes), Antiochia Syriae (Syrian Antioch), or Antiochia Epidaphnes (Antioch near Daphne).

The city prospered under the Seleucids and even expanded to a now-vanished island in the Orontes, but with the general decline of the dynasty Antioch was finally seized by the Armenian King Tigranes II in 83 BC. An entangling alliance with Pontus led Armenia into conflict with Rome in 69 BC. Successive campaigns by first Lucius Licinius Lucullus and then Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) led to Tigranes' loss in 66 BC of all territory except Armenia proper and he was reduced to the status of a client king. Antiochia thus passed to the Romans in 66 BC and when Pompey organized the Roman province of Syria in 64 BC Antioch became its capital. Julius Caesar favored the city and granted it autonomous status in 47 BC.

The city continued to prosper under the Romans and played a major part in the spread of Christianity, indeed "the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch" (Biblical book of Acts 11:26) which began to distinguish them from the Jews. Although Antioch had struck coins for both the Seleucids and for local circulation under the Romans (the most famous being a series of tetradrachms), an imperial mint was first established there by Vespasian after his entry into the Civil Wars, but it was closed about 72 in a post-Civil War consolidation. Hadrian seems to have struck scarce issues at Antioch, including the unmistakable orichalcum as which depicts the river-god Orontes swimming in front of the Tyche of Antioch who is seated on a rock. Unfortunately its only reverse inscription is "COS III" and some have attributed it to Rome (although struck for circulation in the east).

Antioch became the major eastern base of operations for the seemingly incessant conflicts with the Parthians (and their successors the Sasanians) which occupied Rome's eastern policy for over five centuries. Antioch had the misfortune of siding with its governor Pescennius Niger during his civil war with Septimius Severus in 193 and 194. Severus punished the city, as he did many other eastern cities, for its support of the unsuccessful Niger. Part of Antioch's punishment was the transfer of the provincial capital and the the mint to Laodicea ad Mare. The punishment of Antioch did not outlast the reign of Severus, and the capital and mint were returned to Antioch sometime during the sole reign of Severus' son Caracalla, who also granted it the status of a colony. However imperial issues of coins do not seem to have resumed until the reign of Macrinus, but then continued virtually uninterrupted (its coins of the late fifth century are scarce) until just before the city was taken from the Byzantines by the Sasanians in 611. The Antioch mint at one time operated the largest number of officinae any Roman mint ever had operational (15 in the reign of Constantius II).

The city's proximity to the eastern frontier, which worked for it as a base of operations against the Sasanians, worked against it in 253 when the Sasanian King Sapor I (also known as Shapur I) invaded Armenia in force, pressed on to Antioch, and sacked what was by then the Roman Empire's third largest city with a population of about 250,000 people. The city recovered and during the Tetrarchy initiated by Diocletian it became an occasional imperial residence of Diocletian and Galerius. After the toleration of Christianity under Constantine I, Antioch's bishop rose to be one of the most important in the eastern church. Constantius II, Constantine's son, was baptized at Antioch shortly before his death in 361. His successor, Julian the Apostate (see JULIAN II) attempted to revive paganism, but his efforts met with dismal failure, and his capital of Antioch particularly rejected him, so much so that when he left for his Sasanian campaign on March 5, 363, he resolved never to revisit Antioch, but to establish his capital at Tarsus. Indeed, when he visited the temple of Apollo at Daphne for its annual festival, he found the temple virtually deserted except for an old priest who had brought a lone goose from his home to sacrifice. Fortunately for Antioch, Julian died on that Sasanian campaign.

The city was (and still is) in a seismically active area and fell victim to numerous earthquakes, including one in 115 for which the Emperor Trajan specifically granted aid. After its restoration from a great earthquake in May, 526 which killed approximately 250,000 people (the majority of its population), it was renamed "Theoupolis" (City of God) by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527-565) and re-dedicated on November 29, 528. Unfortunately the decline of the Byzantine Empire led to the sack of Antioch by the Sasanians in 540, and its capture by them in 611. They held it until the Byzantines under Heraclius recovered it in 628, but the Byzantines had no sooner recovered it than it was lost again to the Muslims in 638. More than three centuries later Nicephorus II (963-969) regained the city for the Byzantines (969), but it fell to the Seljuk Turks in 1085.

Almost nothing remains of the heart of the ancient city before the fourth century, although excavations at the outlying areas, including Daphne, have yielded better results.