A Map of the Routes Around Antioch

This little map pretty much explains itself: the routes and towns in proximity to Ancient Antioch.

Alexander II Zabinas and the Statuette

I have not dwelt much on the pre-Roman history of Antioch mainly because there is so little physical evidence excepting the political history of the fractious Seleucid Dynasty.

One tidbit appeared to us this week about Alexander II Zabinas (Greek Ἀλέξανδρoς Zαβίνας), ruler of the Greek Seleucid kingdom, was a counter-king who emerged in the chaos following the Seleucidian loss of Mesopotamia to the Parthians.

The part of his story which interests me most is that when he fled to Antioch in 123 BC, he reputedly plundered several temples, including that of Zeus, reputedly to pay his troops. He is said to have joked about melting down a statuette of the goddess of victory Nike which was held in the hand of a Zeus statue, saying "Zeus has given me Victory".

He is pictured on the obverse of this coin holding the statuette of Nike in his hand.

Enraged by his impiety the Antiochenes cast Zabinas out of the city. He soon fell into the hands of robbers, who delivered him up to Antiochus, by whom he was put to death, in 122 BC.

For more controversies on this character one might visit:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seleukids/message/2184

Another Curse Scroll

On the 2nd of January, 2012, in an article by Sindya N. Bhanoo the New York Times reported on the unravelling of a cruse scroll found in the 1930s by the Excavation Committee. It clearly represents a good example of the treasures that lie awaiting calssification and proper examination in the basements of Princeton University.

The article says:

"A vegetable seller named Babylas was the target of an alarming curse nearly 2,000 years ago. Written on a lead tablet found in Antioch, one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, the curse calls on the gods to tie up the hapless greengrocer, then “drown and chill” his soul.

The curse is described in the German journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik by Alexander Hollmann, a classicist at the University of Washington who studies Greek and Roman magic.

The curse was written on both sides of the tablet. One side calls upon the god Iao to bind Babylas; the other side addresses multiple gods and calls for the tablet to be thrown down and “killed” in a well — followed, in the same way, by Babylas.

“It also shows where he lives,” Dr. Hollmann said. “It’s all sort of designed so the gods know exactly where to find him.”

Although the author of the curse is not mentioned in the writing, Dr. Hollmann speculates that it may have been a rival businessman.

“This is a pretty serious curse,” he said. “And we have other evidence that these kinds of practices went on.”

The tablet was found in a well in the 1930s, presumably the same one it was dropped in. Since then, along with many other items excavated from Antioch, which lies near Turkey’s Syrian border, the tablet has been at the Princeton University Art Museum.

Curse tablets like this one have shown up in Rome, in Carthage in Africa and throughout the ancient Mediterranean region, said Dr. Hollmann, who has deciphered one other such tablet from Antioch and is working on six others.

“They are so similar, because professionals were using magic books that circulated,” he said. “These had templates that were used for hundreds of years.”"

Yet another Toselli Discovery

Richard Forster, the most prominent Antioch scholar between Muller and Downey, worte a small piece in the Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Volume 16 in 1901 highlighting another find by the enigmatic Engineer Toselli.

Speaking of this find, Toselli said "Je vous joins ici le releve de inscription gravee sur la roche dans laquelle est ouvert un puisard sur le canal des eaux de Daphne un peu au sud et en amont des ruines du Monastere antique des St St Pierre et Paul laquelle est gravee en trois lignes dans un encadrement de 40 centimetres environ de la maniere suivante:"

Forster dismisses the likelihood of its dating from the time of Trajan's building of the water channel and instead thinks it is late Greek. He transliterated the above as: ΘΠΟΙ ΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΙΟΥ ΡΑΛΛΑΔΙΟΝ.

Procopius of Gaza's lost Monody

The paucity of materials on Antioch in the ancient literature means that each mention much be cherished. One of the pieces that we know of and that is now lost is the Monody for Antioch (Monodia per Antiochia/μονωδια Αντιοχαιαζ)by Procopius. This work appears to have still existed into the 12th century when it was used as a reference source for some homilies written and delivered by a Sicilian monk, Philagathus Cerami (otherwise known as Filogato Cerameo). 

The most extensive reference to this lost work is made in an article by Professor Aldo Corcella in, «Echi del romanzo e di Procopio di Gaza in Filagato Cerameo», Byzantinisches Zeitschrift 103, 2010, pp. 25-38..

Procopius (c. 465-528 AD) came from Gaza, a city now better known for its political football status, but back in the fifth century had somewhat of a literary fame. The Monody (in form most usually a poem in which one person laments another's death) he wrote was in relation to the devastating earthquake of AD 526 that flattened Antioch.

Allusions to the Monody in Philagathus's Homily No. XII (in the Patrologia Graeca numbering): "In Sanctos Innocentes dicta in ambone archiepiscopalis ecclesiae" on the theme would appear to be a vestige of this elusive work by Procopius of Gaza.

Hilton in the Forum of Valens?

Rumours that a "Hilton" was being built on the site of the Forum of Valens have swirled for a couple of years now. The brand name may be wrong but the latest discovery on the site would seems to suggest that we are talking of a site that could very well be the long-lost forum that was redesigned by the Emperor Valens. The area had structures built by the Romans as far back as Julius Caesar, while others such as Tiberius and Commodus has added to the mix.

The article recording the discovery is here:

The site photo in the article shows the massive area uncovered.

Our thoughts are that 3,000 sq metres of marble paving is not even one of the famed marble streets but quite clearly a very large open space. Morover the 850 sq metre mosaic uncovered is clearly not a domestic structure to have a room of such dimensions and could very well be one of the many basilicas the surrounded the forum, or the Library (the Museion) or some other significant structure.

Here is the google maps view:

This is an enormous shame that this will be buried in a "museum" in the hotel's basement. There should be no building at all in the still lightly covered northern section of the old walled city. While the mayor of Antakya gets all excited about tourists he should maybe look to Ephesus to see what his real potential could be rather than building over the sites. This hotel should go somewhere else.

A Triple Arch/Gate

The search for information on Antioch is now reduced to serendipity as so much of what is left extant is known. Well may we say that "there is little new under the sun" for what we need to know still remains out of daylight.

In my peregrinations I stumbled upon an article in Revue archeologique, Volume 4, Part 1 of 1847 entitled "Arc de Triomphe de Theveste" by Antoine Jean Letronne.

"A la troisième espèce, tripyle, appartiennent les arcs qui se composent de trois portes : une grande pour les voitures, deux petites pour les piétons. Tels sont les arcs de Septime Sévère et de Constantin à Rome, l'arc d'Auguste à Fano, la porte d'Herculanum à Pompéi, la porte d'Autun, deux des portes de Lambésa. Je pense que c'est une de ce genre qui était désignée par le mot tripylon, dans un passage où Théophane parle d'une porte d'Antioche qu'il désigne par η πυλη τηζ πολεωζ επι το χαλουμενον τριπυλον , ce qui veut dire que cette porte d'Antioche était formée par un arc triple, comme celle d'Autun ; et l'on peut même conclure de l'expression το λεγομενον τριπυλον , que cette porte était à Antioche la seule de ce genre.

The passage from Theophanes' Chronographia page 36 (ed.Bonn).

What this effectively tells us is that one of the city gates was a triple gate with a large central arch for traffic and two side arches for pedestrians to pass through. As most of the city gates were at the riverside, it would seem that Theophanes is most likely talking about either the Beroea gate or the gates leading to Daphne, the internal Cherubim gate and the external Golden Gate.