To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? This is an illustrated history of one of the greatest cities in antiquity: Antioch on the Orontes or, simply, Antioch. From the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC through the time of the first Christians to the incursions of many conquering armies Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Byzantines, Crusaders, Ottomans, and Turks into the 21st century, the city has seen thousands and thousands of residents and visitors spend much time in this city at the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
But it has also suffered tremendous damage in the loss of life and property from earthquakes and other natural phenomena. Today the modern Antioch, called Antakya, is a provincial capital next to a volatile country Syria that continues to attract hard-working people who want to live in harmony with their neighbors, no matter what their religion or political beliefs are. Read more Read less. Enabled Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download.
Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Editorial Reviews About the Author Dr. Kevin McCarthy earned his B.
ANTIOCH ON THE Orontes: An Illustrated History by McCarthy, Kevin M - $ | PicClick
He has had 54 books published, mostly about Florida, plus 43 articles in scholarly and popular journals and has given over talks to schools and academic groups. Since retiring from the University of Florida in , he has taught writing workshops in Hanoi, Vietnam two times, and has taught English-as-a-Foreign Language in Spain three times. He continues to research and write nonfiction books. For images of his book covers, see his web site: His interest in Antioch stems from his two-year teaching stint in Turkey in the Peace Corps, plus his frequent visits and stays in that country.
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Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. This book felt like a walking tour of the city with a guide well researched in the history and remaining artifacts. It provides a wonderful overview, putting events in chronological order while interspersing the kind of anecdotes a local might share with a visitor.
McCarthy also provides good bibliographic references for further research. My only wish is that the photos were of better quality. Obviously an issue of the printing process, the photos give just enough information to make you look hard at them and wish you could see the originals. I will keep this book by my side as I write the Antioch portion of the historical novel I am working on.
I am grateful to him for providing the in-person view of the city to which I cannot currently travel. One person found this helpful. A good overview of the city and its history, arranged in chronological order by century, from the 4th century B. There also are two brief introductory chapters on the geography and prehistory of the city. This area included many large gardens.
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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, and 25,, not including slaves and native settlers. 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 western world; and indeed Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame. The Seleucids reigned from Antioch.
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", [13] 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.
Local politics were turbulent. The latter, enlisting a body of Jews, punished his capital with fire and sword. The Roman emperors favoured the city from the first moments, 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.
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 most likely the great builder Herod the Great , erected a long stoa on the east, and Agrippa c. One of the most famous urban additions to Antioch, done by the Romans probably under Augustus when the city had more than half a million inhabitants, was the Circus of Antioch: Used for chariot racing , it was modelled on the Circus Maximus in Rome and other circus buildings throughout the empire.
Measuring more than metres 1, feet in length and 30 metres 98 feet of width, [15] the Circus could house up to 80, spectators.
A History and a Guide
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 AD, during Trajan 's travel there during his war against Parthia, the whole site was convulsed by a huge earthquake.
The landscape altered, and the emperor himself was forced to take shelter in the circus for several days. Commodus had Olympic games celebrated at Antioch. In AD, the town was suddenly raided by the Persians under Shapur I , and many of the people were slew in the theatre. When the emperor Julian visited in 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. After being advised that the bones of 3rd-century martyred bishop Babylas were suppressing the oracle of Apollo at Daphne, [18] he made a public-relations mistake in ordering the removal of the bones from the vicinity of the temple.
The result was a massive Christian procession. Shortly after that, when the temple was destroyed by fire, Julian suspected the Christians and ordered stricter investigations than usual. He also shut up the chief Christian church of the city, before the investigations proved that the fire was the result of an accident.
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 goose.
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.
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 until the Persian sack in , by Chosroes. Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity during Roman times. Its converts were the first to be called Christians. Surrounding the city were a number of Greek, Syrian, Armenian, and Latin monasteries. The Christian population was estimated by Chrysostom at about , people at the time of Theodosius I. Between and AD, ten assemblies of the church were held at Antioch and it became the seat of one of the five original patriarchates , [12] along with Constantinople , Jerusalem , Alexandria , and Rome see Pentarchy.
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. The Syriac Orthodox Church is part of Oriental Orthodoxy , a distinct communion of churches claiming to continue the patristic and Apostolic Christology before the schism following the Council of Chalcedon in In AD, 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.
Antioch and its port, Seleucia Pieria , were severely damaged by the great earthquake of Seleucia Pieria, which was already fighting a losing battle against continual silting, never recovered. Antioch lost as many as , people. Justinian I made an effort to revive it, and Procopius describes his repairing of the walls; but its glory was past. The Byzantines were defeated by forces under the generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin Vahmanzadegan at the Battle of Antioch , after which the city fell to the Sassanians, together with much of Syria and eastern Anatolia. 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. His body was brought to the city and buried in a building erected under the emperor Leo. It soon became the seat of a doux , the civil governor of the homonymous theme , but also the seat of the somewhat more important Domestic of the Schools of the Orient , the supreme military commander of the imperial forces on the eastern frontier.
Sometimes both offices were held by the same person, usually military officers such as Nikephoros Ouranos , or Philaretos Brachamios , who managed to retain the integrity of the eastern borderline after the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. The Sultanate of Rum held it only fourteen years before the Crusaders arrived.
The Crusaders' Siege of Antioch conquered the city in At this time, the bulk of far eastern trade traveled through Egypt, but in the second half of the 12th century Nur ed-Din and later Saladin brought order to Muslim Syria, opening up long distance trade routes, including to Antioch and on to its new port, St Symeon , which had replaced Seleucia Pieria.
However, the Mongol conquests of the 13th century altered the main trade routes from the far east, as they encouraged merchants to take the overland route through Mongol territory to the Black Sea, reducing the prosperity of Antioch. Tancred expanded the territory of Antioch by conquering Byzantine Cilicia , Tarsus , and Adana in and founding the principality, Byzantine Latakia , in In Bohemond enraged by an earlier defeat when he, allianced with Edessa, attacked Aleppo , and Baldwin of Bourcq and Joscelin of Courtenay Bourcq's most powerful vassal were briefly captured, as well as the Byzantines recapturing of Cilicia and the harbour and lower town of Lattakieh, he renamed Tancred as the regent of Antioch and sailed for Europe with the intent of gaining support for an attack against the Greeks.
In Bohemond led a 'crusade' against Byzantium, with the Latins crossing the Adriatic in October and laying siege to the city of Durazzo in modern Albania , which is often regarded as the western gate of the Greek empire. Bohemond was outwitted by Alexius, who deployed his forces to cut the invaders' supply lines whilst avoiding direct confrontation.
The Latins were weakened by hunger and proved unable to break Durazzo's defenses. Bohemond capitulated in September and was forced to accede to a peace accord, the Treaty of Devol. The terms of this agreement stipulated that Bohemond was to hold Antioch for the remainder of his life as the emperor's subject and the Greek patriarch was to be restored to power in the city. However Tancred refused to honour the Treaty of Devol in which Bohemond swore an oath, and it is not until that it truly became a vassal state of the Byzantine Empire. After the death of Tancred, the principality passed to Roger of Salerno , who helped rebuild Antioch after an earthquake destroyed its foundations in With the defeat of Roger's crusading army and his death at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in the role of regent was assumed by Baldwin II of Jerusalem , lasting until , with the exception from to when he was briefly captured by the Artuqids and held captive alongside Joscelin of Courtenay.
Antioch was again ruled by a regency, firstly being Baldwin II, after his daughter and Bohemond II's wife, Alice of Antioch attempted to block Baldwin from entering Antioch, but failed when Antiochene nobles such as Fulk of Jerusalem Alice's brother-in-law opened up the gates for representatives of Baldwin II. Alice was then expelled from Antioch. With the death of Balwin in , Alice briefly took control of Antioch and allied herself with Pons of Tripoli and Joscelin II of Edessa in an attempt to prevent Fulk, King of Jerusalem from marching north in , however this attempt failed and Fulk and Pons fought a brief battle before peace was made and Alice was exiled again.
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Immediately after assuming control, Raymond was involved in conflicts with the Byzantine Emperor John II Comnenus who had come south to recover Cilicia from Leo of Armenia , and to reassert his rights over Antioch. The engagement lasted until when emperor John II arrived with an army before the walls of Antioch.
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Although the basileus did not enter the city, his banner was raised atop the citadel and Raymond was compelled to do homage. Raymond agreed with the emperor that if he was capable of capturing Aleppo , Shaizar , and Homs , he would exchange Antioch for them. John went on to attack Aleppo with the aid of Antioch and Edessa, and failed to capture it, with the Franks withdrawing their support when he moved on to capture Shaizar. John returned to Antioch ahead of his army and entered Antioch, only to be forced to leave when Joscelin II, Count of Edessa rallied the citizens to oust him.
In John then returned but Raymond refused to submit and John was forced to return to Cilicia again due to the coming winter, to plan an attack the following season. However the emperor died on April 8, Zangi attacked Antioch in both and and succeeded during the second venture in occupying most of the territory east of the Orontes including Artah , Kafar Latha , Basarfut, and Balat, but failing to capture Antioch itself. Louis was welcomed by the uncle of his spouse Eleanor of Aquitaine , Raymond of Poitiers. Louis refused to help Antioch defend against the Turks and to lead an expedition against Aleppo, and instead decided to finish his pilgrimage to Jerusalem rather than focus on the military aspect of the Crusades.
With Louis quickly leaving Antioch again and the Crusades returning home in , [40] Zangi launched an offensive against the territories which were dominated by the Castle of Harim, situated on the eastern bank of the Orontes, after which Zangi besieged the castle of Inag. Raymond of Poitiers quickly came to the aid of the citadel, where he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Inab , Raymond's head was then cut off and sent to Zangi, who sent it to the caliph in Baghdad. However, Zangi did not attack Antioch itself and was content with capturing all of Antiochene territory that lay east of the Orontes.
With Raymond dead and Bohemond III only five years of age, the principality came under the control of Raymond's widow Constance of Antioch , however real control lay with Aimery of Limoges. In Baldwin III of Jerusalem came of age, but from he had proposed three different but respectable suitors for Constance's hand in marriage, all of whom she rejected. In Raynald claimed that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus had reneged on his promises to pay Raynald a sum of money, and vowed to attack the island of Cyprus in revenge. However Aimery refused to finance Raynald's expedition, so in turn Raynald had the Patriarch seized, beaten, stripped naked, covered in honey, and had him left in the burning sun on top of the citadel to be attacked by insects.
When the Patriarch was released, he collapsed in exhaustion and agreed to finance Raynald's expedition. In Raynald's forces attacked Cyprus, ravaging the island over a three-week period, with rapine , killing, and plundering its citizens. After which, Manuel I Comnenus raised an army and began their march towards Syria, as a result Raynald threw himself to the mercy of the emperor who insisted on the installation of a Greek Patriarch and the surrender of the citadel in Antioch. The following spring, Manuel made a triumphant entry into the city and established himself as the unquestioned suzerain of Antioch.
In Raynald was captured by Muslims during a plundering raid against the Syrian and Armenian peasants of the neighbourhood of Marash. To further consolidate his own claim over Antioch, Manuel chose Maria of Antioch as his bride, daughter of Constance of Antioch and Raymond of Poitiers. But the government of Antioch remained in crisis up until , when Constance asked the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia to help maintain her rule, as a result the citizens of Antioch exiled her and installed her son Bohemond III and now brother-in-law to the emperor, as regent.
Bohemond III was soon released, however Harem, Syria which Raynald had recaptured in , was lost again and the frontier of Antioch was permanently placed west of the Orontes. Byzantine influence remained in Antioch and in , Bohemond III married a niece of the emperor, Maria of Antioch , and installed a Greek patriarch in the city, Athanasius II, Patriarch of Antioch , who remained in his position until he died in an earthquake five years later.