A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTIOCH

300 B.C.-A.D. 1268

 

 

INTRODUCTION

As a meeting-point of many civilizations, as the first centre of Gentile Christianity and the home of some of the greatest Christian teachers, as the capital of the Roman East for seven centuries, Antioch has peculiar claims upon our interest. Inferior to Alexandria and Carthage during the early Empire, it was destined to outlive both. When the Egyptian city had sunk to the rank of a minor town, far inferior to the new ‘victorious capital’ of the Fatimite caliphs, and the glory of Roman Africa was a mass of desolate ruins, Antioch again became for over a century and a half the home of an able and warlike line of princes, an ecclesiastical metropolis, and again resumed its old position as an outpost of European civilization against the hordes of the Far East. The present sketch is an attempt to gather together a few leading points regarding the history, life, manners, and interests of this great centre of population, from its first foundation by the ablest of Alexander’s generals down to the fearful massacre and devastation at the hands of a barbarian army in 1268, a date which marks the close of its prosperity and importance.

I am quite conscious that such a book, like its predecessors on ancient Spain, Syria, and Sardinia, will be open to a charge of superficiality. The whole sphere of ancient and mediaeval history has been mapped out among specialists, the results of whose labours are often buried in the back numbers of various Mémoires, Denkschriften, and Rendiconti, where, even when found, they are difficult to grasp from the want of background necessitated by the minute treatment of a single point. Yet a real understanding of an historical period can seldom be gained without reference not only to the previous growth of the institutions and civilization described, but to their fate in later ages, perhaps under other races. Further, the close attention now paid to administrative details, the exact nature of the taxation imposed, the functions of particular magistrates, all of them important in themselves, may in some cases obscure the fact that these matters often meant as little to the people concerned as the constitution and duties of a town or parish council of our own day to the majority of the inhabitants. In such a city as Antioch the lectures of some famous rhetorician, the opening of new baths, the presence of an athlete of worldwide fame to take part in the games, the measures taken to repair the damage caused by an earthquake, the arrival of a great caravan of camels loaded with the jewels and spices of the Far East, would be the things to awaken a genuine interest. Then, too, as time went on, and Christianity was generally adopted, there is a danger in fixing our eyes too closely on the leading theological controversies, the embittered wranglings of the Church Councils, the schisms which more than once led to a double succession of bishops and a separation of their congregations. In an age when healthy political activity and a real party spirit were impossible, such matters no doubt roused temporary interest among large numbers; but, again, the average believer cannot have been greatly concerned with the unintelligible conflicts of Subordinationists, Eusebians, Acacians, and Exucontians, while the real thinkers and scholars of the Antiochene school, the learned critics and exegetes, took little part in them. In spite of the unfavourable view of the conditions of the Christian Church, both as regards partisan conflicts and excessive worldliness, which might be suggested by a superficial reading of some Church historians or the exhortations of Chrysostom, extant authorities give evidence of a strong body of genuine believers, some inclining in the direction of severe asceticism and self-denial, others too much influenced by the delights of this world, yet both sincerely devoted to their religion. The citizens were liberal to the Church, which was thus enabled to support many poor and shelter strangers and pilgrims; they were lovers of richly decorated buildings with trained choirs of singers; and their familiarity with the rhetorical training of the day qualified them to appreciate the practical yet impassioned and imaginative addresses of their golden­mouthed fellow-citizen, the greatest preacher of antiquity.

The first chapter deals with local topography, a subject about which our sources of information are not altogether satisfactory. Repeated earthquakes, landslides due to heavy rains loosening the mountain sides, and the ravages of barbarian enemies, have obliterated ancient Antioch except for part of the Byzantine circumvallation. Something will no doubt be one day discovered by excavation, but it is clear that constant rebuilding was going on through all the most flourishing period; and many interesting buildings were simply carted away beyond the walls as rubbish, and replaced by something according better with changes of taste. Such information as we have comes chiefly from the drawings and observations of the older travellers, as Pococke, Cassas, and Chesney, who visited the place before the wanton damage caused during the regime of Ibrahim Pasha, together with such descriptions of sites and buildings as can be found in Strabo, Libanius, Malalas, and certain mediaeval geographers.

Chapter II deals with the two centuries during which Antioch was the capital of a great military monarchy, and at the same time an autonomous Greek city, an inconsistency which scarcely seems to have been felt at the time. The most salient feature of the age is the way in which autonomy prevailed over absolutism, leaving Antioch almost unaffected by the inglorious collapse of the Seleucid dynasty.

In Chapter III we make an excursion to Daphne, the delightful suburb to which the citizens repaired for their amusements, festivals, oracles, and the service of the most gorgeously adorned of their temples.

Chapter IV is no longer concerned with history, but with what the people thought about their origin, the impression made on travellers from the East by this outpost of Graeco-Roman civilization, and the strange collection of talismans which, whether originally designed for the purpose or not, were believed by the largely Oriental lower orders to safeguard their city against various calamities.

Chapter V covers the period of the early Empire, and here, as in Chapter VII, some of the subjects have been already briefly treated in my Syria as a Roman Province; but as far as possible I have avoided repetition. The age is not very fully illustrated either by inscriptions or in literature, and few Romans seem to have visited the city except in connection with one of the Parthian wars, for which it afforded the natural base.

In Chapter VI there is a slight sketch of earlier Church history, a vast subject on which many volumes have been written. The chief heresies are briefly referred to, and something is said about the Antiochene school of critics and teachers, who helped to recall attention to the importance in exegesis of a close study of the words of Scripture, of a knowledge of the life and times of the inspired writers, and of the recognition of the humanity of Christ and the Bible in contrast to the allegorizing fancies of the Alexandrine church.

In Chapter VII we pass to the period for which we have the fullest and most vivid information, that of the last struggles between the Church and paganism, illustrated from various standpoints by Libanius, the Emperor Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, Chrysostom, and the ecclesi­astical historians; and followed by a slow decline of the Roman power in Syria as a result of misgovernment and foreign war.

The chapter called ‘The Coming of the Middle Ages’ includes the great Persian invasions of the sixth and seventh centuries and the conquest of Antioch by the Arabs, under whom it sank to the position of a frontier station against the Empire, its metropolitan rank having reverted to Damascus, the ancient capital of Syria.

Chapter IX describes the decay of the caliphate, the campaigns of the heroic Nicephorus Phocas, and the restoration of Antioch to the rule of a Byzantine Duke, who held the position of a mediaeval Lord Marcher, engaged in ceaseless border warfare with the infidel; also the short lived occupation by the Seljuk Turks, which was abruptly terminated by the First Crusade.

The two final chapters give a brief account of the little Latin State then formed, its warlike Norman princes, its elaborate feudal system, commerce, manners, and unhappy end. Throughout this long period it will be seen that Antioch was, alike in the days of ' Seleucus Nicator, of Diocletian and of Renaud de Chatillon, essentially a bulwark of European civilization, submerged for longer or shorter intervals, but predominantly Western in its culture and sympathies, and correspondingly hated by the peoples of the interior, who again and again sought to weaken and devastate it.

 

I. SITE AND TOPOGRAPHY II. THE SELEUCID AGE III. DAPHNE IV. LEGENDS AND TRAVELLERS’ TALES V. THE ROMAN AGE TO DIOCLETIAN VI. A SKETCH OF CHURCH HISTORY VII. THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES VIII. THE COMING OF THE MIDDLE AGE IX. FROM NICEPHORUS PHOCAS TO THE FIRST CRUSADE X. THE FRANKISH PRINCIPALITY XI. LIFE AND MANNERS UNDER THE FRANKS

 

CHAPTER I. SITE AND TOPOGRAPHY

 

The Syrian capital received its name from Antiochus, a distinguished officer in the service of Philip II of Macedon, and the father of Seleucus Nicator, its founder. This name it retained from its foundation in 300 BC down to A.D. 528, when the title Theupolis was officially substituted; but certain epithets were at times added to distinguish the city from other foundations of the Seleucid family. ‘Antioch the Great,’ ‘on the Orontes,’ ‘of Syria,’ explain themselves; but the origin of ‘Antioch by Daphne’ is less clear. It would seem unlikely that a vast city would take a title from a place five miles off which, in early times, was little but a consecrated grove with a few temples and priests’ or attendants’ houses. Also some authors—as Tacitus in his account of the last days of Germanicus—mention a place called Epidafne, apparently distinct both from Antioch by Daphne—The Orontes Antioch and Daphne. Coins of the time of Antiochus Epiphanes bear the title ‘of the Antiochenes who are by Daphne,’ and as this king greatly extended the southern and western portions of the city, it is possible that he gave the inhabitants of the new district the right of striking coins under a title which would distinguish them from the older Antioch. Eventually, however, the epithet came to be applied to the whole city.

The River Orontes, the fertilizing stream to which was due the rich alluvial plain, the principal element in Antioch’s prosperity, originated in two sources, in Lebanon and Antilibanus respectively. After passing Apamea in its northern course it was, a few miles above Antioch, diverted sharply to the W.S.-W. by the spurs of Mount Amanus, an offshoot of the Taurus range of Cilicia. It then flowed by a line of myrtle-clad hills, parts of the Casian range, and received from a tributary, now the Kara-Su, the waters of the Lake of Antioch, or White Sea. This was an extensive piece of water, rich in fish, lying some twelve miles north-east of the city. When the Orontes arrived within the city area it was some 125 feet wide, and near the centre of the north side of the town divided into two streams enclosing a nearly circular island, the site of the new town of Seleucus II and Antiochus III. Passing under the stone bridge which adjoined the chief northern outlet, the Porta Romanesia, or Bridge Gate, it flowed by the wooded slopes below Daphne, and the more precipitous heights of the north-east spurs of Mons Casius, crowned in Christian times by a monastery of St. Simeon. After a fall of 300 feet in the twenty-one miles from Antioch, it reached the sea a few miles south of the harbour town of Seleucia. Its total course was about 200 miles, and it was navigable to some distance above Antioch. The navigation below the city was improved by the Romans, who cut a canal to avoid a dangerous bend.

Great quantities of alluvial deposit were brought down, and the course of the stream thus became liable to obstruction. The Codes mention that the Imperial Counts of the East were charged with keeping the route open. During the earlier Middle Ages, when the district was much neglected, the Orontes ceased to be navigable for large ships, and the harbour of Seleucia was also silted up. Thus most of the trade passed through the new harbour of St. Simeon, or Souwediah, just to the north of the river mouth. The Orontes had several alternative names—Axius, in memory of the chief river of Macedonia, Dracon, and Typhon, for which various fanciful reasons were assigned. In the Middle Ages the Arabs called it Al Urunt or Al Maklub (the overturned)—a name said to be due to its failure to irrigate the land like other rivers, so that the water had to be raised by water wheels, or, accord­ing to others, because it flowed from south to north. The modern name Nahr-el-Asi (‘the rebel river’) is perhaps a corruption of a native Syrian term Atzoio (the rapid). By the Crusaders it was ordinarily identified with the Pharphar, or Chrysorrhoas, of Damascus, which really disappears in the sands of the desert. Corruptions of this name, as Far, Fer, Feme, etc., are frequent in mediaeval chroniclers. An affluent, the flooding of which gave a good deal of trouble in the rainy season, was the mountain torrent Parmenius or Onopnictes, which descended from the heights to the south of Antioch between the Stauris and Silpian hills through a ravine afterwards spanned by the Iron Gate. Passing a little east of the centre of the city, where the forum of Valens was erected, it fell into the Orontes near the Circus. A similar torrent, the Phyrminus, ran outside the western wall, and, after passing under the Daphne road, met the river below the Bridge.

Four mountains were partially enclosed by the walls, all of them offshoots of the Casian Range. The whole southern, south-eastern, and south­western parts of the city rested on steep slopes, built over or cultivated where possible, but in some areas so rough and precipitous as to be left in a state of nature. Of the three heights forming the southern limit Iopolis, the most westerly, had been the seat of an earlier Greek settlement. The central, or Silpian, extended farther towards the river than the others, and rose to nearly 1,500 feet above sea-level. Its lower declivities were, however, sufficiently gentle to receive some important buildings, as the theatre, the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and Caesar’s Baths. In the Middle Ages the almost impregnable Citadel of Antioch stood near the summit, commanding a view of a long reach of coast and of the Amanus range to the north, and helping to protect the city at the most vulnerable point of its southern front. The land behind the Silpian shelved more gradually than behind the other mountains, but its eastern face was cut into by the precipitous gorge separating it from the last important height, the Stauris or Orocassias. After this the laud sloped rapidly down to the east gate by St. Paul’s monastery. The general form of the city was an irregular oblong, with the greatest extension from east to west, enclosed in walls which, even after the reduction in the area covered, had a circumference of about seven miles; while thickly populated suburbs sur­rounded it across the river and in the level districts to the north-west and north-east. The names of certain quarters are known, as that of Rhodion (more likely rose-gardens than a Rhodian quarter) on the south-west, Heraclea outside the west gate, Vicus Agrippa outside the east gate, Ostracine of unknown position; but the ground-plan as given by Muller, Le Camus, and other authorities is largely conjectural. The ancient city was laid out on the Hippodamian plan, with straight streets intersecting at right angles, those running east and west being roughly parallel to the river, while natural obstacles were as far as possible smoothed away. The principal east-and-west street, as well as that intersecting it at the centre of the city, from early in the Empire were adorned with colonnades on each side, of a style now most familiar from the ruins of Palmyra, but then common to many Syrian towns. The columns were in many cases adorned with statues and bronzes, and some were gilt or covered with gold leaf. At the junction of these roads was a stone known as the Omphalos, with a statue of Apollo seated on it, and the northerly arm led down to the new town or island, which was joined to the old by two bridges, and also had five bridges connecting with the suburb beyond the river. The island was similarly laid out, having intersecting colonnaded streets with a tetrapyle at the point of meeting, and under the Romans the vast imperial palace occupying the northern face. It is probable that the royal palace of the later Seleucids was not far away, as there is a mention of a regia on the island in Roman times, which probably occupied its site. When the island was abandoned as a result of the changes made in Justinian’s time, a palace was erected in the centre of the city, and is so described by the Chinese and Arab travellers. The Forum, or Agora, close to the Omphalos, had facing it the Senate-house, a museum, and various basilicae; another forum, constructed by Valens to the south-east of the Omphalos, and carried by arches over the stream Parmenius, was also lined with fine buildings. The theatre and amphitheatre stood on the slopes of the Silpian Hill. The hippodrome or circus, one of the chief centres of interest for the pleasure-loving population, was close to the river near the north-east end of the city, in a part which lay outside the reduced area of Justinian’s time. Its outline can still be traced, with the carceres at the city end, part of the spina, one of the metae showing from the swamp, as well as the surrounding wall and stairs. Near it are the walls of Diocletian’s thermae. The theatre, which was in three stories, attributed respectively to Caesar, Agrippa, and Titus, standing below the Acropolis on the Silpian Hill, still shows traces of the stage and vomitories. It probably remained in use after Justinian’s rebuilding, lying in a part not much subject to earthquake. Portions of two churches, St. Paul’s by the east gate and St. John’s on the slopes of the Silpian, remain, but they are of late Byzantine date, and without interest. Nothing is left of the famous Cathedral of St. Peter founded by Constantine, which was in the street called Singon, running parallel to and north of the main street. Other important buildings were the Nymphaeum, where weddings were often held; the Xystus and Plethrium, both used for athletic contests; the temples of Zeus Olympius, Hermes, Ares, and Athena; and the basilicae of Caesar, Rufinus, Zoilus, etc. The styles of architecture were variegated, as taste constantly changed, and buildings were perpetually being renewed, partly to repair the damage caused by earthquakes and landslides, but also from mere ostentation on the part of emperors, governors, or rich citizens. Fine building stone was available in the district; marble could be imported from Egypt or Greece; walls were adorned with gold leaf or mosaics; elaborate archways and shrines supporting statues of gods or emperors stood at the intersection of all the chief streets.

A few examples of the statuary of Antioch survive, naturally not of the purest Greek taste, but of considerable merit. A bronze group of two wrestlers, on a tall pedestal, now preserved at Constantinople, is of such small dimensions that it probably formed a table ornament. Their eyes are of silver with holes for jewelled pupils, like those of the Apollo at Daphne. The victor is probably Hermes (a special patron of Antioch, near whose temple was the Plethrium, or wrestling school), with wings to his head, while masklike heads adorn the base. The group probably dates from about 100 BC. A white marble statue of an orator found by the west gate belongs to the early Empire; he has a long beard, the right hand folded in his robe, the left holding a scroll. The proportions are not entirely satisfactory, but the folds of the robe, the sandals and feet are well worked. Several sarcophagi of the Roman age also exist, carved with genii, Medusa or bulls’ heads, garlands, palm­branches, rosettes, ram’s horns, etc.

One of the most famous groups, of which copies still exist, and which figures on the local coinage, was executed for Seleucus Nicator by Eutychides of Sicyon, a pupil of Lysippus, and represented the Fortune of the city, wearing a turreted crown and holding ears of corn. She sits on the Silpian Hill, while a figure of the river god Orontes swims at her feet. This statue was of bronze gilt, enclosed in an Ionic shrine of four open arches, and stood in the Tychaeum, or temple of Fortune, which was afterwards utilized as the church of the martyr­bishop Ignatius.

The feature which struck strangers most was undoubtedly the magnificent line of walls, which climbed precipices, crossed ravines and torrents, and, with its vast array of strongly fortified towers, between three and four hundred in number, gave the impression that the city was much more secure than proved to be the case. We are unfortunately very slightly informed of the nature of the circumvallation in Seleucid and early Roman times, beyond the fact that the entire city was walled, on the northern face, apparently along the bank of the river, and that each of the four quarters of the Tetrapolis, including the new city or island, had a separate wall, which probably disappeared when the colonnaded streets were laid out in the early Empire. The fortifications which withstood the historic sieges of the Middle Ages were of Byzantine date, partly rebuilt after the destructive earthquake of 528, partly constructed twelve years later. Then, as a result of the burning of the city by Chosroes, Justinian decided to reduce the area both on north and south, and to abandon the island quarter and the whole area bordering on the Orontes, except at the point where the principal stone bridge carried the road to Seleucia. Considerable parts of this line survived half a century ago, apparently little altered by Arabs, Turks, or Crusaders, and affording a valuable example of the system of fortification in vogue in the sixth century, which, in this respect at least, was much in advance of the classical age. A brief review of the lines, which in more exposed parts consisted of an outer and an inner wall, may be added before we proceed to the historical narrative.

The material was cut stone enclosing rubble, but in the case of the towers regularly laid rows of brick were placed on the stone; and they stood out from the walls both without and within. These towers were square, two-storied buildings, having on the ground-floor a staircase leading to an upper room lighted with loopholes, and also having on the upper landing a doorway opening to the chemin de ronde of the curtain-wall, which rested partly on corbels. The gateways of these towers have square lintels with discharging arches to relieve pressure. The curtain was over 6 feet thick, and in the parts where it climbed steep slopes its summit took the form of flights of steps at intervals. Five principal gates are constantly referred to besides the so-called Iron Gate with its adjoining viaduct, carried over the gorge near the south-east angle, and also in addition to various posterns which, especially on the mountain side, facilitated the introduction of provisions or the despatch of spies and messengers. The Bridge Gate, strongly fortified, stood on the city side of the old Roman bridge across the Orontes, on the north, and was the usual entrance for persons arriving from the sea or the coast road from Asia Minor. On the west side, close to the ravine formed by the mountain torrent, Wady Zoiba or Phyrminus, was the gate of St. George, by which Laodicea and other towns to the south-west would be reached. Opposite this, on the road to Aleppo and close to the foot of the Stauris Hill, was the gate of St. Paul (Bab Boulos), named from the adjoining monastery; while on the new northern face laid out by Justinian were the Dog Gate (also known as Warfaru), and, between the latter and the Bridge, the gate which, from its having been invested by Godfrey de Bouillon in the siege of 1098, received the title of Porta Ducis. Elaborate precautions were taken to safeguard the west gate, which was approached from without by a bridge across the torrent, and was dominated by an enormous pentagonal tower built on the escarpment of the adjoining ravine. From this gate the wall rose rapidly, crossed the Iopolis Hill where the aqueduct from Daphne passed under it, and so reached the culminating-point of defence, the citadel, lying on a height inside the ramparts on the Silpian Hill. This castle, of which there are considerable remains, once had fourteen towers, apparently round and not of great diameter. It was in the form of an elongated triangle, and had adjoining a large round reservoir fed by an aqueduct from the mountain. This building, erected by the Emperor’s orders in the tenth century, depended for its strength mainly on its position on an almost inaccessible rock, approached from the city only by a single pathway just passable by horsemen. The wall then descends rapidly, being carried down the ravine to the Iron Gate and up the opposite slopes of Stauris in a series of zigzags. The next stretch of wall round the south-east corner of St. Paul’s Gate remained well preserved, having towers with prismatic projections of cut stone, and inner arches of brick, but no stairs, the upper floor being only accessible directly from the ramparts. Here the chemin de ronde rested on arcades supported on buttresses which stood against the ramparts. The walls continued in fair condition to the north-east angle, but little remained, even when the older travellers drew their plans, of the northern face, which had been pulled down to clear the way for gardens; though in the part near the Bridge Gate some of the towers remained incorporated in private houses. Since the days of Cassas (1799), and even of Rey (1870), earthquakes, floods, with accompanying landslides, and still more the Turkish habit of using ancient buildings as quarries, have greatly lessened the remains of circumvallation. The present town with narrow streets, frequently provided with water-courses down the middle, occupies only one corner of the original site, on the north face by the Bridge; and the paths to the mountain quarters have become so neglected that some can only be reached by great detours. The eccentric genius of Antiochus Epiphanes, which led him to enclose this vast and largely uninhabitable area, gave Antioch its unique appearance, but cannot be said to have added to its security.

We may conclude this chapter with a few quotations from the Antiochicus of Libanius, an oration delivered at the local Olympic festival by Antioch’s most loyal citizen, in the year A.D. 360, at a time when the city, with a population probably exceeding 400,000, was still at the height of its prosperity. This speech, if we make allowance for the patriotic enthusiasm of an orator addressing his fellow­townsmen on a festal occasion, is one of our principal sources of information about local topography, before the destructive earthquakes and wars of the later Empire had impoverished the city and reduced its area.

All the resources of nature, we are told, are poured out liberally for the benefit of Antioch—earth, streams, a temperate climate vie with each other in making the district fertile. Dionysus revels in the midst of them, the land is luxuriant with Athena’s olive, Demeter honours Antioch more than Sicily, making the plains bright with golden corn. Even the mountain slopes can be made fertile, and farmers are seen driving their plough-oxen almost to the summits. The barer heights afforded timber and stone for building, and wood to supply the ovens of bakehouses or the furnaces which heated the baths. The vineyards not only furnished the city with wine, but produced much to export elsewhere, and merchant vessels loaded with olive-oil were constantly passing down the Orontes. Along the river bank such ships were ever to be seen un­loading the produce of the interior, a work in which women and children took their share. The sea was but 120 stades off, and a well-girded man, setting off from the coast to carry goods at sunrise, could be at Antioch by noon. “Landsmen though we are, we enjoy more fish than many maritime peoples,” the rich preferring sea-fish, the poor being content with the eels and other products of the river or of the Lake of Antioch. Tall trees flourished on plain and hill alike, and often crops sprang up under their shadow. As a bad season seldom affected both highlands and lowlands equally, famine rarely occurred. Herds of sheep and goats pastured on the rich grass, kept fresh by the many rivers, some of which were ever flowing, some ran only in the rainy season. The autumns were not unduly hot, winter seldom extended into spring, and all extremes of climate were lacking.

Much is said of the development of the city in its earlier years, and the liberality of kings and queens, who erected successive temples, aqueducts, theatres, burying-grounds, and public buildings of every kind. The city attracted a vast influx of aliens who came for pleasure, for trade, or to display their arts and accomplishments. All were sure to meet a hospitable reception and find fellow-countrymen in good positions.

Though many citizens lived in villas at some distance, the streets and gates were crowded at all times. All the main thoroughfares were carefully levelled, and not interrupted by watercourses, which were, no doubt, as far as possible, arched in. The central streets had a double row of colonnades, the open part between them finely paved. The streets extending to the hills on the north rose gently, the adjoining houses not being so high as to spoil the general harmony of the view. The buildings on the slopes of Epiphaneia itself were surrounded by streams, flowers, and gardens full of singing birds. Private houses were everywhere mingled with public buildings, so that temples and baths were numerous in every quarter, and all had their outer doors opening direct to the colonnades, thus facilitating social intercourse. In the side streets, where colonnades were absent, lattice­work projecting from the houses protected passers-by from rain or sun. Baths to suit every season could be found in all quarters alike. At night all streets were brilliantly illuminated by public and private lamps, and work or amusement proceeded by night almost as by day.

Richer houses were mostly of three stories, and the roofs could be used for sleeping on, catching the cool breezes from the Mediterranean even in the hottest weather. Building operations were always in progress, the vegetable gardens of yesterday soon turned into populous areas; and yet when foundations were being dug traces of buildings destroyed by time or earthquake were generally found, so that old materials were constantly re­used. The houses for receiving strangers which clustered round the gates were so richly equipped and provided with such fine baths that the name inn seemed almost a degradation. All necessaries could be obtained in any street, and in the central parts almost every house had its lower floor occupied by a shop or premises for carrying on some manufacture. Populous artisan suburbs adjoined the city, and every quarter had its special claim to distinction. The mountain area to the south had the freshest air and the finest views; the east end, though not affected by rich citizens, could boast of its connection with Alexander, who was so charmed with the Olympiad fountain in the ancient Bottiaea, while through this quarter the chief corn-supplies from the interior had to pass. It is, however, the aristocratic west end which chiefly rouses the orator’s enthusiasm. As soon as the West Gate was left the pedestrian was struck by the variety of gardens lining the road, of fountains, baths, houses of entertainment, and villas embowered by trees. Then, as far as Daphne itself, extended vineyards, rose­groves, plantations, and streams, till that beautiful suburb with its temples and groves was reached—the golden Colophon of all things, at the sight of which the spectator could not but leap up, clap his hands, and congratulate himself on his good fortune.

 

CHAPTER II. THE SELEUCID AGE

 

When his victory at Ipsus placed under the authority of Seleucus the greater part of Asia Minor and Northern Syria, in addition to his old satrapy beyond the Euphrates, it became necessary to select a capital for his vast dominions. He might retain Babylon, his former seat of government, and had he done so it is possible that his empire would have proved more united and durable than was actually the case. It would have been a genuine successor to the fallen Achaemenid power, with a veneer of Greek civilization. Again, he might establish himself at Ephesus or one of the other rich Greek colonies, and renounce the ambition of being the successor of the Persian kings. Admiration for Greek civilization, and the yearning for home which led him to give familiar names to his new surroundings and eventually, when old and failing to undertake the fatal expedition to Europe, dissuaded him from choosing a centre where the Graeco-Macedonian element must remain small. On the other hand, as a soldier by profession, he would not appreciate the position of a royal banker and commercial magnate, such as was successfully filled later by the Pergamene line. While Southern Syria was in the possession of one rival, Ptolemy Soter, the Phoenician coast was still held by Demetrius, son of the fallen Antigonus, and Seleucus resolved to fix his capital on the southern frontier of his new conquests. Here he would be within easy reach of the sea, but not subject to direct naval attack, in a position to maintain communications with his Macedonian home, and to open a great trade route between the lands beyond the Euphrates and the Mediterranean coast. This capital would also provide a base for the eventual subjugation of all Syria, a task only accomplished by his successors a century later. The district to be selected was indicated by the rising city of Antigonia, which the aged King of Asia had founded six years before (306) on the north bank of the Orontes, close to the point where the river makes its great westward bend. Yet the dignity of the conqueror forbade him merely to take over his rival’s foundation; and probably he felt the desire for greater proximity to the sea, as well as for the protection afforded to an infant community by the steep range of hills on the south, the wide and swiftly flowing river on the north.

The legends connected with the foundation of Antioch, which mostly bear an official stamp, indicate a desire on Seleucus’ part to claim the favour of the gods of Greece for his undertaking. Apollo, the protector of his ancestors, became the patron of the new city and lord of the splendid temple at Daphne—the true Apollo of Delphi, not any thinly disguised Baal or Hadad, such as presided over many other Graeco-Syrian towns. The population too was Graeco-Macedonian, and no native element was invited or encouraged, except for a certain number of Jews, who had already shown their goodwill to the Macedonian conquerors, and who, being already numerous in Babylonia, were probably known to Seleucus as law-abiding and industrious.

Two of the divisions of the future tetrapolis were peopled under the founder’s supervision. The first inhabitants were partly his own Macedonian veterans and Greek settlers invited by him, but also came in part from a synoecism of existing colonies which had grown up in the district since Alexander conquered Syria thirty years before. The chief was Antigonia, which was now dismantled, its stones shipped down the Orontes to help in building the new city, and most of its inhabitants transported thither. Antigonus and Demetrius had been favourites of the Athenian people, and it is possible, as later chroniclers assert, that their capital contained an Athenian element, which now went to swell the citizen body of Antioch. Athenians enjoyed special privileges under the Seleucid kings; the public monuments of Antioch designedly recalled a connection with Athens which the local orators were unable to keep out of their speeches far into the Roman Empire. Two small Greek or Macedonian settlements already existed on the slopes above the site of Antioch. Iopolis, by tradition the earliest, probably means merely the city of the Javan or Ionians, a name universally given by Asiatics to Greek settlers, but it naturally afforded mythologists with abundant material for elaborating the story of the much-travelled Io. This deity was here looked on as a special protector of the European settlers, and we are told that the Syrian inhabitants annually ran through the streets, striking at the doors of the Greeks with the friendly greeting, “May the soul of Io be saved.” The other settlement, Bottiaea, nearer the river, must have been Macedonian in origin. The villages round about were mostly left to the Syrians, retaining their Semitic names and Aramaic speech even in the fourth century.

The lower classes were no doubt recruited from the Syrians of the district, and certain traces of Oriental cults become visible, such as the worship of some Baal or weather god on the summits of Mount Casius; the annual wailing for Adonis which gave Julian an evil omen on his entry into Antioch; the Maiuma festival in honour of a sea-born goddess, perhaps borrowed from the Philistines of Gaza; vague traditions of human sacrifice; and, it must be acknowledged, the licentiousness which, though long after Seleucus’ day, made the neighbourhood of the Apollo shrine at Daphne resemble many centres of the corrupting Astarte worship. The populace displayed an Oriental fickleness and excitability, united with the love of refinement and beauty, the quick wit and keen critical faculties of the Greeks. They delighted in gorgeous and splendid shows, richly adorned colonnades, baths, and public buildings of every kind, the construction of which was an unfailing avenue to their ephemeral good­will. They would flatter a generous ruler, but were equally ready to insult him in his downfall. Any monotony soon wearied them. The internal dissensions of the ruling house in the earlier period, any attempted usurpation under the Romans, at once supplied them with an opportunity of asserting their independence by joining in often hopeless attempts to subvert the established order.

The active political life of a genuine Greek city was lacking, partly, no doubt, because affairs of real moment were administered by the king and councillors chosen by him, while the senate and assembly retained only the supervision of local business. Yet this was not the sole cause. Municipalities might have a vigorous life even under the absolutism of the Roman Empire, and the Seleucid kings, with their admiration for all things Greek, and their respect, inherited from Alexander, for the Hellenic city-state, were scrupulous in granting their capital full internal autonomy. The mixed origin of the people—the Macedonian and Oriental elements in which cared little for city life—the extensive trade and consequent growth of wealth and luxury, the absence of an hereditary aristocracy to provide political leaders, perhaps even the prevalence of destructive earthquakes which en­couraged the appetite for momentary enjoyment, all produced a peculiar type of character. It lacked earnestness, but was capable of shortlived enthusiasm, was turbulent, but easily quelled, luxurious, but not inaccessible to nobler motives, and often ready to embrace the severest asceticism. The contrast with Alexandria, the other great centre of Greek civilization among peoples first conquered by Alexander, naturally occurs to the mind. It will be seen that Antioch, at any rate during the first two centuries of its existence, was much inferior to the Egyptian capital in culture and importance. It was founded thirty years later, and was from an early date exposed to dynastic conflicts and foreign wars. The Syrian kingdom, which had no uniform nationality to serve as a substratum, was essentially weaker, the provincial governors more independent, royal influence less stimulating. Thus literary and artistic schools failed to develop, and the kings, though often able warriors and statesmen, did little to encourage culture.

Despite political troubles, a great through trade grew up between Antioch and the East, not apparently interrupted even when the provinces beyond the Euphrates passed out of the possession of the Seleucid kings. The numerous cities founded by these monarchs along this route, by which passed silk, furs, spices, gold, slaves, cotton, etc., from China, India, Arabia, and the districts of the Caspian and the north Euxine coast, turned Antioch into a vast entrepot with an extensive and miscellaneous population, which in the century and a half following its foundation twice necessitated extension by the inclusion of new quarters. The close connection with Asia Minor and later the Greek alliances of Antiochus the Great attracted many real Greek settlers, and thus helped to maintain old Greek traditions, checking the tendency to a native revival, which is strongly marked at Alexandria from the middle of the second century BC.

During the earlier reigns the court was frequently at Ephesus or elsewhere in Asia Minor, and it was not till towards the end of the third century, when the troubles under Seleucus Callinicus had weakened the hold of the dynasty on its northern dominions, that Antioch became the regular seat of government. It already possessed the senate and ecclesia of the Greek city-state of the time, elective magistrates (described in the Gurob papyrus as synarchiae from the collegiate principle underlying them), citizens divided into eighteen tribes, gym­nasia—the youths attending which were organized as ephebi—and the usual Greek temples with their priests and priestesses.

Side by side with these republican features appears the complete hierarchy of an Oriental monarchy: royal nominees acting as satraps, secretaries, overseers of taxes, revenue officers, etc., and the inner circle of King’s Friends, who formed his immediate advisers, wore a special costume of crimson, and lost their rank at his death. As in the old Macedonian kingdom, noble youths were brought up at the king’s court as pages, and when able to bear arms constituted a corps d'élite in the army as the Royal Youths. The military centre of the kingdom was away at Apamea, but a camp seems to have existed in the neighbourhood of Antioch, where the Macedonian soldiers and their descendants enjoyed certain privileges, and claimed some share in the appointment of a new ruler. A large part of the Seleucid army, indeed, consisted of foreign mercenaries, especially Cretans and various tribesmen from Asia Minor; and the attempt to supersede the citizen army by these in the time of Demetrius Nicator led to violent conflicts, in which the capital was almost destroyed.

Greek seems to have been everywhere spoken, and buildings were of a Greek type. Greek philosophers, artists, and literary men received some encouragement, and a royal library existed in the reign of Antiochus the Great, under the direction of the well-known grammarian and poet Euphorion of Chalcis. Yet the constant wars and internal troubles, perhaps also the mixed character of the population, stood in the way of any great literary development. Wealth, resulting from trade and the sale of the produce of this fertile district, soon led to the exhibition of luxurious tendencies. The costumes worn were soft and brightly coloured. The king’s robes, though modelled on the Macedonian hunting dress, showed the national broad­brimmed hat dyed purple, the chlamys richly embroidered, the white band or diadem of sovereignty worked with gold thread; its descent from the badge of the athletic victor thus being obscured. The Syrian love of stringed instruments and flutes made a musical accompaniment an ordinary feature of banquets, and sometimes dancing was added to it. At court this might take the form of the old Macedonian dance in armour, performed by some of the King’s Friends. Common banqueting halls, called grammateia, existed, apparently a kind of club where concerts and drinking bouts took place and rich citizens spent a great part of their time. Even the gymnasia, instead of being resorts for manly exercises, became mainly bath-houses, where the Antiochenes, and, indeed, the inhabitants of other Syrian towns, could enervate themselves with hot baths and anoint their bodies with aloes, myrrh, and scented oils.

Little is, unfortunately, known about the relations of the royal house to the citizen body as a whole. The kings anticipated the Roman emperors in encouraging the establishment of occupation or trade guilds with special privileges. It is uncertain whether the city provided a special corps in the Seleucid army, and to what extent its taxation was directed by royal officials. Though the king’s will overrode all law, in practice the self-government of Antioch was seldom interfered with, and as the monarchy declined its position as a republican community was more definitely established. The kings constantly proved benefactors, adding temples, baths, and other public buildings, encouraging new settlers, and doing their best to keep open the eastern trade-routes.

It will be unnecessary to enter in detail on the history of the Seleucid dynasty, which has recently been made the subject of important monographs; but the few episodes in which Antioch was directly concerned must be alluded to.

The two first kings, Seleucus Nicator and Antiochus Soter, were both active and able rulers, but the third, Antiochus Theos, began to show the vices inherent in an hereditary absolutism. He is charged with intemperance and dependence on foreign favourites, and his attempt to end the long rivalry with Egypt by a marriage alliance introduced into the Seleucid family the element of internal discord which largely contributed to its ultimate downfall. Polygamy was not officially recognized, and Antiochus put away his wife and half-sister Laodice, leaving her in Asia Minor, where she had powerful connections. He then married Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was installed as queen at Antioch, and a son was born to them. On the death of Philadelphus the King of Syria returned to Laodice at Ephesus, where he shortly after died, not without strong suspicions of poison. Seleucus Callinicus, the elder son of Laodice, was thereupon proclaimed king at Ephesus, while at Antioch the crown was claimed for the son of Berenice. The former princess, so the tradition says, dressed up a certain Artemon, who resembled the dead Antiochus, as the late king, in order that he might declare Seleucus the true heir. She, however, kept the government in her own hands, and also had many supporters at Antioch, where the citizens may have been unwilling to sink to the position of vassals of Egypt. A leading partisan of hers, a magistrate of Antioch named Genneus or Caeneus, succeeded in securing the child of Berenice, and the queen, believing him concealed in a certain house, mounted a chariot and hastened thither, spear in hand. Meeting Caeneus on the way, and believing him to be the murderer of the child, she aimed a spear at him and missed. A stone was more successful; the officer fell, and the queen, urging her horses over his body, drove amidst an angry crowd to the doors behind which the boy’s body was thought to be concealed. The next incidents are lost, but popular feeling seems to have inclined to the side of Berenice, who appeared as a suppliant, and compelled the magistrates who had put away the prince to make some concessions. They therefore displayed a child surrounded by royal pomp as the young king, but kept him in their own hands.

Berenice withdrew to the Seleucid palace at Daphne, protected by Galatian guards, until help from Egypt should arrive. Yet, as the Hebrew prophet had foreseen, “the daughter of the king of the south who came to the king of the north to make agreement” could not “retain the strength of her arm, but was given up and they that brought her.” Laodice won over the queen’s physician Aristarchus, assassins made an entry into the palace, and Berenice fell. Her women, after vainly trying to protect her with their bodies, concealed her remains; and one of their number was put in her place to keep up the delusion that Berenice and her son were still alive till the arrival of the Egyptian forces.

The dead queen’s brother Euergetes, who already had several bases in Cyprus and Cilicia, organized a naval expedition against Syria. At Seleucia the invaders were well received, and on proceeding to Antioch—whether up the Orontes or by road is not stated—they likewise met no resistance. A large gathering of satraps, military commanders, priests, priestesses, the athletes from the gymnasium, and multitudes of citizens wearing crowns and carrying sacred emblems, met them at the gate with cheers.

All Northern Syria as far as the Euphrates was overrun, and Ptolemy returned home carrying ‘their gods, with their molten images, their goodly vessels of silver and of gold.’ Seleucus soon recovered Antioch and most of his father’s dominions, but not the port-town of Seleucia, while an attempt to conquer Southern Syria failed completely. He was also obliged for a time to cede his possessions in Asia Minor to a younger brother, Antiochus Hierax. These never again formed a permanent part of the monarchy, but were soon absorbed in the growing domain of the Attalids of Pergamum.

Now that the kingdom had lost both its northern and its far eastern dependencies, Antioch became relatively more important, and Callinicus added a third quarter to the future tetrapolis by building over the island in the Orontes, to the north of the old town, a quarter apparently completed by his son Antiochus the Great.

It has already been seen that the Hellenistic princesses were of a masculine and ambitious nature. At Antioch further trouble was caused later in the reign of Seleucus by the return to Syria of his aunt Stratonice, a daughter of Antiochus Soter, and wife to Demetrius of Macedonia. Leaving her husband in disgust at his second marriage, she hoped to be raised to the throne of Syria, but, being refused by Seleucus, she succeeded in causing a revolt at Antioch during the king’s absence in an eastern war. When he returned Antioch was recaptured, but Stratonice fled to Seleucia. Being prevented by a dream from leaving Syria, she fell into the hands of Seleucus and was put to death.

Antioch was not directly concerned in the Roman War of 192-189, but shortly before its outbreak we hear of the banished Hannibal attending one of the festivals at Daphne in order to have an interview with the king’s son, who had recently married the Princess Laodice. After the close of the war Antiochus the Great settled a number of his defeated Greek adherents Aetolians, Cretans, and Euboeans—on the new island quarter which his father had laid out, and which he strengthened by an enclosing wall.

His earlier successes, which had resulted in a considerable accession of territory and of revenue, enabled him to beautify the city in other ways, and the work was taken up by his younger son Antiochus Epiphanes, that “wicked root,” the “king of fierce countenance,” who was yet “bountiful and beloved in his power.”

This extraordinary prince, with his mass of contradictory qualities, Oriental tyrant and republican Greek, low buffoon and lover of the finest art, fierce persecutor and gracious master, with his yearning for unity in government and religion which the heterogeneous Syrian kingdom was incapable of providing, may almost be called a second founder of Antioch, to which he gave an impress that subsequent ages have not altogether effaced. He had spent his youth as a hostage at Rome, and later had resided at Athens; and maintained friendly relations with several Greek states, to which he presented some fine monuments, besides inviting Greek architects and artists to Antioch.

His admiration for Western civilization displayed itself in various forms, not all equally desirable. He himself canvassed for local offices wearing a Roman toga, and when elected sat on the ivory chair of the curule aediles to decide minor suits. He introduced gladiatorial shows of the Roman type, and these at first roused more disgust than pleasure in a city unaccustomed to this murderous sport. Gladiators had at first to be hired at great expense from Rome, but the youths of Antioch before long submitted to the hard training required. The contests, however, in the Greek East never attained to the same popularity as in Italy, while the comparatively harmless chariot-races and theatrical exhibitions proved still more absorbing.

Several stories survive about the way in which Antiochus indulged his tastes for low company and undignified amusements. Among his favourites are specially mentioned Herodotus the mime and Archelaus the dancer. He would steal away from the palace and wander through the by-ways of Antioch with one or two attendants, would visit the workshops of gold and silver smiths, workers in relief, and other craftsmen, engaging in conversation on technicalities connected with their callings. He joined in with citizens or strangers and often, accompanied by a party of musicians, appeared as an uninvited guest at some humble festivity. He flung money about in the streets, and might be seen roaming, wreathed in roses and clothed in a purple-striped toga, pelting with stones any idlers who had the temerity to follow him. In the public baths he would anoint himself with balsam, so that on one occasion a bather of the lower classes exclaimed, “You are a lucky man, O King, to have so expensive a smell.” Antiochus, pleased with the remark, replied, “I will give you your fill of it,” and ordered a vessel containing a large quantity of the unguent to be broken over the man’s head, so that the whole floor became slippery, and the king, with most of those present, slipped and fell about amidst roars of laughter. To men of high rank he solemnly presented a few dates or some dice, to quite unknown persons gifts of considerable value. The gorgeous and extravagant procession which he organized at Daphne is described in another chapter, and it is not surprising that his surname was caricatured into Epimanes. Yet the evidence on the whole goes to show that Antiochus was a man of ability and political cunning, one of whose leading aims was to disarm suspicion, especially that of the jealous republic which had stood in the way of his father’s schemes for restoring the Seleucid Empire to its old splendour, and again thwarted Epiphanes’ Egyptian policy by its instinctive hostility to any state or sovereign who ventured to rise above mediocrity. His aim of securing unity at home was likewise frustrated by the hostility of the more narrow-minded among the Jews, who eventually overbore their Hellenizing fellow-countrymen, and succeeded in establishing their harsh and aggressive principality, which drained the remaining strength of the Seleucid Kingdom and systematically rooted out Greek civilization, till at last confronted by the Roman legions.

To return to Epiphanes’ undertakings at Antioch. The most important was the enclosure of a vast area to the south of the city, including not only the lower slopes of the hills, but the almost precipitous sides; and this new quarter, which received the title of Epiphaneia, completed the tetrapolis. Its enclosing walls, probably in part rebuilt in the reign of Tiberius, were emblematic of their builder’s eccentric genius, scaling steep hills and spanning precipices and torrents. A theatre which seems to have existed earlier, now became incorporated in the city; a senate-house was constructed, and on the upper part of the Acropolis hill rose a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, a compliment to the republic which Antiochus felt bound to propitiate. This building had a gilt ceiling, the whole inside walls were covered with gold plates, and it probably contained a statue of Rome herself with a mural crown. Some such alien figure perhaps impressed itself on the imagination of the prophet Daniel, who saw in his vision Antiochus honouring, in place of the gods of his fathers, ‘the god of fortresses and a god whom his fathers knew not.’ In memory of the suppression of brigands who haunted the Taurus Mountains a statue was raised of a man over­powering a bull.

Part of the army was armed on the model of a Roman legion, and, as seen above, certain Roman usages were adopted, but the influence of Greece was decidedly stronger. A statue of Olympian Zeus copied from the work of Pheidias was set up at Daphne; the Attic month names came in; the Senate-house, which may even then have contained the porticoes and pictures described by Libanius, was probably due to the example of Athens, where Epiphanes set up a golden Gorgon corresponding to the mysterious charm (later known as the Charoneion) which overlooked his own capital. The citizen cavalry who rode in procession at Daphne have their counterparts at Athens. Lastly, the autonomy of Antioch seems henceforth to have been more definitely established, and the city issued coins in its own name bearing the radiated head of Epiphanes, “the god manifest,” as its patron deity.

After the short and inglorious reign of the child-king Antiochus Eupator (164-162) and his guardian Lysias, during which Syria sank to be little more than a client state of Rome, we again find a strong man at the head of affairs, Demetrius Soter, a nephew of Epiphanes, whose romantic escape from the position of a hostage at Rome forms one of the most exciting episodes in the prosaic narrative of Polybius. This king, though able and ambitious, and perhaps the prototype of the aspiring Nabuchodonosor of the Book of Judith, did not prove a successful ruler. The hostility of Rome ever thwarted him, and her client Eumenes of Pergamum was encouraged openly to flout him. Even in Antioch the citizens, who had welcomed him at first, showed their dislike of the stern manners of' Demetrius, which contrasted unfavourably with the affability of Epiphanes. The king accordingly established himself in a square tower near the capital, admitting few to his presence and meditating schemes of conquest. No result followed from the first attempt to dethrone him, organized by a treacherous general, Orophernes, perhaps the original of the Holofernes of Judith, in alliance with the malcontents of Antioch. A second, undertaken by the adventurer Alexander Balas, who claimed to be a son of Epiphanes and was favoured both by Rome and by Ptolemy Philometor, was successful. Demetrius was killed, and Balas, who married the ferocious Alexandrine princess Cleopatra, set up his court at Ptolemais, ruling Antioch by means of an oppressive governor. In this reign (148) took place the first of the long series of destructive earthquakes which mark stages in the history of the city.

Demetrius Nicator, a son of the dead Soter and, despite the beauty of the face which distinguishes his earlier coins, one of the most worthless of the Seleucid line, began to make head against the frivolous Balas, whose rule was already unpopular at Antioch. Ptolemy Philometor, the last of his line to show any degree of ability, marched into Syria to uphold his nominee, who had been obliged to retire into Cilicia. However, finding himself plotted against by the treacherous minister of Alexander, Ammonius, he changed sides, and resolved to restore Demetrius to his father’s throne. The citizens of Antioch, disliking both Seleucid lines, invited Ptolemy to unite the two realms, and he was crowned King of Syria in the city. Knowing, however, that the Romans were not likely to welcome this accretion of strength, he persuaded the Antiochenes to accept Demetrius as their king, retaining Coele Syria in his own hands. Alexander had by now gathered fresh forces, but was defeated and killed in the neighbourhood of Antioch, and the Egyptian monarch received a mortal wound in the same battle. Antioch was now at the mercy of Demetrius, who treated with great cruelty the partisans of Alexander, dissolved the native armed forces after fierce rioting, and set up an undisguised military despotism. He depended chiefly on a corps of Cretan mercenaries with their captain Lasthenes, and the infuriated citizens proceeded from satirical remarks on the government to open attacks on the palace. Demetrius had already bought the favour of the Jews by recognizing the independence of their kingdom and withdrawing the Syrian garrisons from Judaea. He was now repaid by receiving from Jonathan 3,000 mercenaries, who were let loose upon the half-armed populace, which, the Jewish historian proudly records, numbered 120,000 men. Missiles hurled from the roof of the palace drove the citizens from the neighbouring houses, which were set on fire, perhaps by resident Jews in sympathy with the king. Being closely built and mostly of wood, probably hastily run up after the recent earthquake, they were rapidly consumed. As the Greeks dispersed, trying to save their families, they were pursued by the barbarians, who leaped from house to house, while Demetrius with his personal adherents cut off their retreat in the narrower streets. After many—100,000 it is said—had fallen, the remainder dropped their arms and surrendered. A great part of the city had by this time been consumed. The brigands returned to Judaea loaded with booty, and at last ‘King Demetrius sat on the throne of his kingdom, and the land was quiet before him.’

Executions and banishments still continued, and Syria was full of fugitive Antiochenes seeking an opportunity against the tyrant. A fresh usurper was not slow in appearing. Diodotus, a former minister of Balas, while professing to uphold the claims of his master’s son Antiochus Dionysus, occupied Apamea, the military centre of the kingdom, and himself assumed the crown under the name of Tryphon. Demetrius’ troops were defeated and he retired to Seleucia. Tryphon was then accepted at Antioch, from which he ruled over the Orontes Valley as far as Apamea, other parts remaining to Demetrius. The latter, in the course of an expedition against the Parthians, was taken prisoner but his brother Antiochus Sidetes, a man of ability and courage, crushed the usurper Tryphon. Lured by the vain hope of recovering the lost Seleucid possessions beyond the Euphrates, Antiochus, like several of his predecessors, organized an extensive eastern expedition. This army, drawn largely from the population of Antioch, was gorgeously equipped, with great quantities of gold and silver, which adorned even the soldiers’ shoes, and the very cooking vessels were of silver. Cooks, bakers, actors, and other camp-followers greatly outnumbered the fighting men. When, after an initial success, this host and its brave leader perished almost every household was thrown into mourning (128 BC).

It is perhaps unnecessary to follow out in detail the miserable years which followed, a time of perpetual petty wars, usurpations, and divided authority with rival capitals. The Romans, likewise a prey to domestic discord, left the East to manage its own affairs, with the result that most  of Syria was divided among native powers, Jewish, Arab, or Armenian, with some independent cities of Greek constitution near the coast. For some time past Antioch had been a member of the league of four ‘sister cities,’ uniting with Laodicea, Seleucia, and Apamea to issue a joint coinage. When in 83 BC the ambitious Armenian Tigranes overran all Northern Syria, the remaining members of the Seleucid house retired to an obscure corner of Cilicia. An Armenian viceroy was set up at Antioch, and his authority seems to have been not unwelcome. Yet it was clear that a permanent subjection to a barbarian power would mean the eventual obliteration of the higher qualities of Greek civilization. The campaigns of Lucullus obliged Tigranes to withdraw his garrisons from Syria, and with the approval of the Roman commander one last scion of the Seleucid house, Antiochus Asiaticus (69-65), again occupied the palace at Antioch. His kingdom only included a small area round the city, and he proved incapable of checking the advance of Arab tribes, who were pressing the Greeks towards the sea along all the northern coasts.

The Macedonians’ contribution to the maintenance of Greek civilization in the East was now over; Syria was reverting to native powers, when one of the most wonderful contingencies in ancient history brought forward another nation, not less warlike than the Macedonians, and hardly less susceptible to the superiority of Hellenic culture, now ready to restore Antioch to its old position as the capital of European civilization for another seven centuries, and to roll back the advancing tide of barbarism.

Cnaeus Pompeius, the instrument of this great work, seeing that Antioch was much more than an administrative centre, but a highly developed political community, determined, with the hearty approval of the citizens, to remove the worn-out royal dynasty and, while leaving internal administration to locally elected magistrates, to transfer the duty of protecting the city and province generally to a direct representative of the Roman people.

It will have been seen that, in the almost complete absence not only of inscriptions but of any continuous history of the period, Seleucid Antioch is very imperfectly known to us. A few literary men, the astronomical poet Aratus of Soli, Euphorion of Chalcis, Hegesianax the historian, Philonides the Epicurean, and Archias the epic poet and client of Cicero, had a more or less transitory connection with Antioch, but no literary school was evolved and no contemporary descriptions of the city exist.

 

CHAPTER III. DAPHNE

 

The surpassingly beautiful situation of the House of the Waters, as the village is now called, five miles south-west of Antioch, attracted the attention of the founder of the city, who determined to establish here the principal shrine of Apollo. This was the protecting deity of his family, and with him was associated his sister Artemis, while round about was planted a sacred grove where cypresses and laurels stood so closely massed as to form with their boughs a continuous roof. Modern travellers describe the site as an amphitheatre in shape, amidst wild, rocky scenery, where numerous fountains burst out from a laurel grove, form into streams which pass over rough ground, and disappear in two cascades overgrown with flowers and vegetation. Thence they descend to join the Orontes a few miles below Antioch. One of these streams, probably adjoining the temple of Apollo, was called the Castalian, and was the seat of an oracle. The water was believed to be periodically troubled, winds and vapours escaped from it, and the priests were seized with ecstasy, so as to be inspired with the answers to be returned to enquirers. Leaves of bay dipped into this magic fount were brought out miraculously inscribed with prophetic lines. Hadrian by this means, while still in a private station, was forewarned of his coming elevation; but the cautious emperor, knowing that prophecies of this kind have a tendency to produce their own fulfilment, had the stream filled in. The way later oracles, such as that which informed Julian that the god disapproved of the place being full of corpses, were conveyed to enquirers seems nowhere recorded.

The temple had the right of asylum, and the whole grove, both under Seleucids and Romans, was protected by law from violation by the axe. It was amphiprostyle, with rows of columns on two sides, and had other rows in the sanctuary or cella. Its walls were bright with coloured marbles, and the roof was panelled with cypress-wood. Within were statues of kings and benefactors, but the pride of the temple—indeed, of all Antioch—was the colossal statue of Apollo, made for Seleucus by the Athenian sculptor Bryaxis, and preserved till the destructive fire during the visit of Julian, which left the building a ruin. This statue of Apollo as Musagetes, leader of the Muses, and playing a harp, appears on the local coinage, as that of Antiochus Epiphanes, who enlarged or rebuilt the temple. It was a characteristic of Bryaxis, who was perhaps obliged to defer to the tawdry taste of the age, to mix up a number of well-polished materials, jewels, metals, ivory, or wood, in his statues. It reached almost to the roof, and was of vine-wood covered with a golden peplos, but the exposed parts of the body were of white marble. The god’s hair was of gold intertwined with a golden laurel wreath; his eyes were two jacinths of great size; he wore a long tunic, held a sacrificial bowl in one hand, with the other touched a harp, his mouth open as if singing. Probably, like the work of Scopas, the Daphnaean Apollo was inspired by the old Pythian type.

Not less colossal was the chryselephantine statue of Zeus Olympius added by Antiochus Epiphanes, either under the same roof or in an adjoining shrine. The interest taken by this king in the sculptors and metal-workers of Antioch is well known, and by his orders this copy was made of the famous statue by Pheidias. The god was seated, with robe drawn round the waist, holding a sceptre in one hand, a golden victory in the other, a type which often appears on the coins of this and subsequent kings. In honour of this deity the Olympian games came in under the Romans, and the racecourse apparently adjoined the temple.

The bay-tree from which the place took its name stood by the Apollo shrine, and was the subject of a myth of an obviously artificial character. Daphne, daughter of the Arcadian river-god Ladon, pursued by her lover Apollo, was miraculously transformed into this tree, and the god in his anger and disappointment shot his arrows into the ground. While Seleucus was out riding with hounds, his horse stamped on the ground and brought to light a golden arrow point, on which the god had thoughtfully inscribed his name Phoibou. The king, on picking this up, found himself faced by a serpent rearing up and hissing. Instead, however, of attacking, it looked mildly at him and disappeared, an additional proof of divine prescience. Seleucus marked out a sacred temenos planted with trees, being encouraged thereto by an oracle from Miletus.

References to these shrines are not very numerous in the Seleucid age. One of the few inscriptions found in the district relates to the appointment of the high priest to preside over the cults of Daphne by Antiochus the Great in 189 BC. He was an officer who had done good service, and perhaps become worn out by his labours in the Roman War; so it seems to have been looked on as a kind of retiring post or canonry. After giving the clearest proofs of devotion to the king’s service, sparing neither pains nor expense, but performing all his duties with faithfulness, despite the readiness of the king to retain him, he pleaded the physical exhaustion resulting from past hardships, and desired rest. “So, whereas the high priesthood of Apollo and Artemis, and the other cults whose shrines are in Daphne, need a man who is our friend, and able to preside in a manner worthy of the zeal which our forefathers and ourselves have shown for the place and our devotion to religion, we have appointed him high priest of these shrines; and all persons are called on to give him the help he needs.”

The Egyptian adventurer Alexander Zerbinas, who between 128 and 122 BC usurped the Seleucid throne, attempted to steal the Zeus statue, but without success. Lacking money to pay his mercenaries, he ordered the Victory, which was of solid gold, to be removed from the temple, humorously remarking that Victory had been given him by Zeus; and a few days later was caught in the act of having the enormously heavy gold and ivory figure of the god himself dragged out, but was forced to flee before a crowd of indignant citizens.

A royal palace existed at Daphne under the Seleucids, but in Roman times emperors who stayed there encamped in tents, and it was not till the time of Diocletian that a palace was constructed for their use. It was supplied by a special aqueduct, and certain pipes from this were connected with private houses, but owing to the greed of the occupiers these were made too large. Thus, an order was issued by Valens and his colleagues directing that alterations should be made, and the amount to which each was entitled placarded at the reservoirs, Water was so extraordinarily plentiful that Daphne was one of the chief sources of supply for Antioch, whither aqueducts were carried both under Caligula and Hadrian.

The age of Trajan and Hadrian was one of great architectural activity at Daphne. The former built a temple of Artemis in the middle of the grove, while the citizens who escaped in the terrible earthquake during his visit added a shrine of Zeus Soter. Hadrian supplied a theatre, and, at a spot where the water welled up, founded a temple of the Nymphs, containing a seated Zeus Aetophorus. He improved the water-supply of Daphne itself, which by then seems to have been changing into a regular residential suburb, and instituted a Festival of the Springs, to be held in June.

The old western suburb Heraclea already extended some distance from Antioch, and by this time the intervening space was mostly filled up with villas, gardens, and houses of rest and refreshment. The park in which Daphne stood had a circumference of ten miles, and even on the farther side villas, gardens, and baths extended towards the sea.

Daphne had a synagogue from an early date, and churches began to appear from the third century; but the heathen revival under Diocletian led to the establishment or restoration of various temples—one of Zeus Olympius, either a rebuilding of a work of Antiochus Epiphanes or an entirely new structure, a shrine of Nemesis adjoining the race­course which was then laid out, and a subterranean temple of Hecate, reached by 365 steps. At the same time the great Apollo shrine was restored with marbles of various colours. Under the Empire Daphne was occupied partly by richer villa residents, partly by the keepers of the various houses of entertainment and refreshment, which enjoyed no very good reputation.

Before passing on to the festivals, which were famous throughout the Greek world, we may glance at the description of Daphne by the Syrian ecclesiastical writer Sozomen, who, while reprobating all heathen sanctuaries, rises into unwonted enthusiasm over the beauty of the site. “Daphne, the celebrated suburb of Antioch, is adorned with a grove thickly set with cypresses and varied with other plants interspersed. Beneath the trees the earth brings forth every kind of fragrant flower as the seasons change. A roof rather than a shade covers the whole area, and the closeness of the branches suffers not the rays to strike the ground. The abundance and beauty of the waters, the temperate climate, the breath of gentle breezes lend it only too much charm. The sons of the Gentiles tell how Daphne, daughter of the River Ladon, fleeing from Arcadia before her lover Apollo, changed into a plant named from her; and how he, not even then quit of his passion, clasped her about though now a tree, and honoured the place, above any that he favoured, by making his abode there. This suburb being such as we have described, it was thought disgraceful for men of sobriety to set foot therein. The site and nature of the place, well adapted to foster luxurious ease, as well as the amatory character of the legend, doubled the passions of youths of corrupt mind on the least provocation. Alleging the myth as an excuse, they were still more inflamed, and could not endure to see persons of respectability there.”

An annual Daphnaean festival was held under the Seleucid kings in Lous, or August, in honour of Apollo, a festival which Julian found so sadly neglected that a goose from the high priest himself was the only offering which Antioch cared to make to the protector of its founder. Other occasional celebrations took place; some of a musical character, where the fondness of the Syrians for noisy stringed instruments, flutes and drums, castanets, etc., found free play. A minute description remains of a festival organized at Daphne by Antiochus Epiphanes, who invited Greeks from all parts to witness the gorgeous procession and feasts with which he strove to eclipse the splendid games recently celebrated by Aemilius Paullus in Macedonia. Both the military and religious elements played prominent parts. It cannot, however, be regarded as a proof of the military resources of the monarchy at the time, as many of the processionists were doubtless volunteers or hirelings.

Five thousand men armed as Roman legionaries led the way, wearing breast-plates of chain-mail, followed by a like number of Mysians and 3,000 light armed Cilicians with gold wreaths. Then came Thracian and Galatian mercenaries, a corps with silver shields, and gladiators in pairs. This king, with his Roman training, had first accustomed the city to gladiatorial shows. Several cavalry detachments followed, some in complete mail which covered horse and rider alike, some wearing purple cloaks shot with gold or embroidered with figures. Gold wreaths distinguished the riders, gold or silver caparisons the horses. Four or six-horsed cars, elephant cars, richly bedecked single elephants, a vast herd of oxen, and sacred envoys from foreign states, occupied the middle of the procession. Then followed statues of all the gods and heroes ever heard of, gilt over and wearing golden robes, with their proper attributes magnificently wrought; besides allegorical figures of Day and Night, Earth and Heaven, Dawn and Noon. Vessels of gold and silver plate past counting were carried by the pages of the king and of his chief officers. At the rear women sprinkled perfumes from golden jars, and the great ladies of the city were borne along in litters with feet of silver or gold.

The month’s festival which ensued was attended by various contests, including gladiatorial shows and combats with wild beasts after the Roman manner. The competitors anointed themselves with saffron, cinnamon, nard, marjoram, etc.; and the banquets provided under the king’s own supervision were on an equally lavish scale, accompanied by performances of mimes and jesters, among whom Antiochus, to the consternation of his friends, did not disdain to appear. Yet at the end he had the address entirely to disarm the suspicions of the Roman ambassadors, which had been aroused by the king’s Egyptian policy and possibly augmented by this pompous military display.

The tradition of prodigal expenditure maintained itself half a century later, when, despite the progressive impoverishment of the kingdom, Antiochus Grypus would distribute at the Daphnaean festivals entire animals, live geese, hares, and gazelles; while those whom he entertained at his banquet received gold wreaths, articles of plates, slaves, or horses. Some were bidden to mount camels and drink there, subsequently receiving the animal, its equipment, and attendant, possibly an embarrassing gift in some cases.

In the time of Augustus began the games which developed into the gorgeous Olympian festival of Daphne. Sosibius, a senator of Antioch, returned with the emperor after one of the latter’s visits to Syria, and, settling at Rome, bequeathed his fortune of fifteen talents in gold to his native city for a three days’ festival, to be held every fifth year in October, with scenic performances, recitations, musical and athletic competitions, and a chariot race. This was kept up for a time, but in the reign of Claudius a petition from the richer citizens, called ktêtores or landowners, was sent in to the emperor, stating that the games were neglected and the revenues embezzled by the magistrates. They asked permission to buy from the Pisaeans of Elis the right to change these into an Olympian festival. Consent having been obtained, the old routine was restored. Again, however, neglect occurred, and in the troubles of the Antonine age the games came to be held at intervals of some fifteen or twenty years. A similar petition was eventually addressed to Commodus, as a result of which the festival was put on a new and permanent footing. They were held every fourth year, and lasted forty-five days in July and August. The revenues were received and paid out from the city treasury, which doubtless contributed a large part of the costs from other sources than the original legacy. An unwritten agreement was made with the Eleans by which Antioch obtained the right to hold ninety of these festivals, and seventy-seven actually took place before the Christian emperor Justin at last suppressed them. It is uncertain at what period they came to be celebrated at Daphne, as Malalas says the first performance after the reorganization under Commodus was in the Xystus. This was an open promenade surrounded by porticoes and seats, between the bath of Commodus and the temple of Athena, on the eastern side of Antioch, lying close to a temple of Olympian Zeus which stood between it and the Orontes. It was rebuilt in the reign of Commodus.

A regular Olympian racecourse was laid out by Diocletian at Daphne, and is mentioned by Libanius as one of its chief ornaments; but the Xystus, being easier of access, was still used by athletes training for the games, especially during the first thirty days of the Olympian festival.

The supervising officials were appointed by the senate and people of Antioch, and their titles were borrowed from the Greek Olympia. Perhaps as a result of the close identification in the East of priests with the gods they served, the curious custom prevailed of arraying the chief officials in priestly robes and attributing to them the honours due to particular gods. At the head stood the alytarch, who superintended the whole performance and awarded the prizes. He had a snow-white robe shot with gold, a crown of rubies and other jewels, an ivory staff and white shoes, and received the honours due to Zeus, to whom the festival was dedicated. He might not sleep under a roof during the festival, but passed the night on a reed mat in the open courtyard of Caesar’s basilica opposite the temple of Ares in Antioch, a custom which may have lapsed when the celebration was transferred to Daphne. Diocletian himself held the alytarchia during a visit shortly before his abdication, and substituted the imperial purple for the white and gold robe. Later his colleague Maximian did the same, and in the fifth century the office was filled by the Count of the East, no inconsistency being felt in investing a Christian with a presidency which by then had lost any religious character.

The grammateus, who impersonated Apollo, wore a white robe and a gold crown adorned with gold laurel leaves; and the amphithales, the human representative of Hermes, a white silk robe and a wreath of laurel, having at the centre a small gold figure of Zeus.

Young nobles gathered from all the eastern provinces to take part in the contests, and split up into opposing sides as in mediaeval tournaments. Being rich, with their own attendants, they involved no expense to the city, and joined in the various competitions, as wrestling, boxing, driving chariots of young unbroken horses, blowing of trumpets, or reciting of tragic passages. In earlier times women were excluded, as at the Greek Olympia. As manners degenerated, we hear of some of the female students at the philosophical schools wrestling with one another scantily attired, running foot races, and delivering tragic or lyrical recitations. Victors in these contests received certain priestly honours, and if they resided in Antioch they were exempted from land-tax, and their business establishments released from contributions to the public liturgies. A solemn coronation ceremony closed the festival, and was sometimes made the occasion for vulgar display, as when the alytarch Artabanus scattered among the people tokens entitling them to grants of bread for life, setting apart a portion of his revenues to maintain the dole. In perpetual memory of this benefaction the citizens set up a marble statue of Artabanus at Daphne.

When the Caesar Constantius Gallus, whose character, unsatisfactory in some respects, was not devoid of religious feeling, came to reside at Antioch he decided to counteract the heathen associations of Daphne, and, as the chronicler says, to purify the place from Hellenic superstition and the insolence of profligate men, by setting up an oratory opposite the temple of Apollo and transferring thither, from the cemetery adjoining the city, the coffin of the venerated martyr Babylas. Soon after the oracle began to fail, a catastrophe at first ascribed to the insufficiency of the sacrifices and of the reverence now given to Apollo. However, the sequel proved1 that the saint’s bones were the restraining influence. When the apostate emperor arrived in Antioch and the offerings were renewed, no oracles were obtainable, the god merely replying to enquiries “the place is full of corpses.” In fact, the bodies of several other believers had been interred in the same spot.

Julian accordingly ordered the removal of the bishop’s remains, and the occasion was seized to make a striking demonstration against the last and most detested of the persecutors. The Christians gathered in procession to carry the relics back to Antioch, and old and young alike, professedly to relieve their labour, encouraged each other with psalms. Singers trained to the services of the Church recited a passage, and the whole assemblage joined in the refrain, “confounded be all they that worship carved images and that delight in vain gods.” The praetorian prefect, who saw the uselessness of a persecution, was yet ordered by Julian to imprison some of the demonstrators. Among them a young guardsman named Theodore showed great fortitude under torture, and while his flesh was being torn by sharp hooks, such as were now commonly used by the despotic government of the time, declared that an angelic figure stood beside him, wiping away the sweat with a fine linen cloth and pouring cold water over him. The prisoners were eventually released, and shortly after a mysterious fire, ascribed by the Christians to lightning, broke out at night in the temple, destroyed the famous image of Apollo, as well as other figures, the columns and roof, leaving little but bare walls and the lines of pillars outside. Julian’s enquiries failed to throw any light on this occurrence, which is the subject of one of Libanius’ most pathetic orations. As the last heathen emperor soon met an early death the shrine never seems to have been built; but even two centuries later the Hellenic god of art and beauty still drew a few votaries to his desolate sanctuary.

 

CHAPTER IV. LEGENDS AND TRAVELLERS’ TALES

 

For a city founded on an artificial plan by order of a single ruler in an age when historical writing was well developed, Antioch possessed a large body of folklore, drawn from many sources. This is worthy of some study, both for any elements of truth that may be included and from the way it illustrates the outlook of a number of settlers from various parts of the Greek world planted in a country poor in legend and with a completely alien mythology. One group of legends concerns the foundation of the city, and bears the stamp of official panegyrists desirous of glorifying the Seleucid dynasty, representing Antioch as a divinely appointed settlement, already chosen by Alexander and looked on with favour by the ancient Assyrian and Persian rulers. Then the general body of Greek myth was laid under contribution, and connections invented with Argos, Crete, Arcadia, Athens, and with such far-off traditions as the Battle of the Gods and Giants or the madness and recovery of Orestes. As the city filled up with a lower-class Aramaean population, the Oriental appetite for the marvellous had to be fed by strange tales of demons, wizards, and talismans, a variety of fable plentifully represented in the pages of the credulous Malalas, and in the Arabic description of the city, which is apparently a gathering up of popular tales current among the half-educated populace by some Syrian Christian of the Byzantine era.

Again, there is a group of legends connected with the Church and its martyrs, and another illustrating the impression made by this vast city with its magnificent streets and public buildings on travellers from outside Syria, in particular on Chinese merchants, whose naive records are handed down by their own chroniclers and geographers.

Lastly comes the mediaeval Arabian romance about the conquest of Antioch and the rest of Syria which has come down under the name of a valuable ninth­century historian, Al Wakidi. This was largely drawn on by the Cambridge scholar Simon Ockley from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, and made the substratum of his History of the Saracens, without his recognizing the legendary character of most of the facts presented. Ockley in turn misled a greater man than himself, for Gibbon, who depends on him, gives an almost wholly unhistorical account of the overthrow of the imperial armies. However, the succinctness of trustworthy Arab chroniclers and the natural unwillingness of Byzantine chroniclers to enlarge on this painful topic make one desirous not to neglect any possible source of information. The romance, while misrepresenting the general course of the campaign, and actuated by the evident intention of exalting individual Arab chiefs, is the work of a writer who had studied the period, and in particular saw that the petty internal quarrels and the self-seeking of the Christians of Syria were a large element in the rapid success of the Saracens.

The earliest in assumed date is the myth of Io. This princess, daughter of Inachus, King of Argos, pursued by the jealousy of Hera, fled to Egypt and other countries, and at last came to the Silpian Mount above Antioch and died there. Her father, anxious to learn her fate, fitted out an expedition, including some famous Argives, under the leadership of Triptolemus, prince of Eleusis in Attica, ordering them not to return without her. They visited Cilicia, where they founded Tarsus, and passed on to Syria. Arriving by night, they marched up to the mountain and went round to every house, knocking and asking for Io. The Greeks were well received by the few inhabitants, and while staying on the Silpian Hill saw by night a vision of the fugitive in the form of a cow, saying with a human voice, “Here am I, Io.” Realizing that she was dead, and liking the place, they built the city of Ione or Iopolis, with temples of Zeus Nemeus and of Cronos. As the land round became more and more fertile the surname Epicarpius was bestowed upon the former deity. After his death Triptolemus continued to be worshipped as a hero, and a festival in his honour was still celebrated in the Casian Mount when the Romans occupied Syria. The Syrians continued to call the Greeks Ionita, and to knock annually at their doors in Antioch at the same season of the year. It may be assumed that a small Greek settlement on the hill dated from soon after the Macedonian conquest, and received some name like Ione from the natives; and this, when Hellenized into Iopolis, gave rise to the whole myth. One cannot, however, exclude the possibility that the introduction of the cult of Egyptian Isis under the Seleucids may have led to a confusion between the two homed deities.

Casus was the next arrival, according to some accounts a son of Inachus, to others a Cretan, expelled with several leading fellow-countrymen through the envy of Minos. These were gladly received by the Argives, who gave them a share of their city and land. Casus, finding that many of the institutions of Triptolemus had gone out of use, restored them, and settled the mountain district of Casiotis. Desiring the friendship of the Cypriots, he married Amyce, a daughter of the King of Salamis; and a plain in the neighbourhood of Antioch was named from her. Some of her country­men who accompanied her were so much delighted with the situation that they also joined in the settlement. Casus is no doubt an inference from Zeus Casius, a Syrian weather god worshipped in an open-air mountain shrine near Antioch; and one is inclined to suspect that some early shrine of Heracles-Melcarth stood in the western suburb of Heracleia, which, the mythologists say, was built by several descendants of Heracles who, still persecuted by Eurystheus, arrived with a number of Eleans and settled close beside their Argive fellow­countrymen.

As a result of this extensive colonization, proudly concludes the orator Libanius, the Antiochenes united in themselves the ancient lineage of the Argives, the law-abiding nature of the Cretans, the royal ancestry of Cyprus, the divine descent of the Heracleids, and (in virtue of the Athenian birth of Triptolemus and the transference of the inhabitants of Antigonia) the intellectual ability of Athens.

Perseus, the son of Danae, after ruling Persia many years, visited his Argive kinsmen at Ione, and was received with hymns and other honours. He rewarded them by checking a disastrous flood of the Orontes. While, on his suggestion, certain prayers and mystic rites were being gone through, a fire-ball fell from the sky, and the flood ceased. Perseus kindled a fire from it and carried it away to Persia, teaching his subjects to honour fire under the direction of the Magi. He also established a temple of Zeus Ceraunius at Ione. The latter is probably historical, being the sun-temple of some small Persian settlement partially adapted to Greek rites. There are in fact several mysterious allusions to sidereal temples far on in the Empire, but it can hardly now be determined whether they represent a genuine survival from pre-Hellenic days, or rather imply that the shrines of purely Greek gods had, as the population became more Orientalized, taken on the externals of Babylonian or Persian worships. Thus Hadji Kalifa, the Arab geographer, whose information dates from Byzantine times, refers to a temple dedicated to Saturn towards the east of one of the bridges, Kantara Tulsemeh (bridge of fish), and one of Mars near the centre of the city, later changed to a church of the Virgin. The Mars temple had forty bronze gates, walls painted in gold and silver, a pavement of variegated marbles, and on the lofty dome a figure of the god with a scorpion and serpent under his feet.

When Orestes consulted the Pythian oracle he was advised, after escaping the murderous altars of Scythian Artemis, to seek the great temple of Hestia on Melantius (the mountain bounding the plain of Antioch on the north, famous for its hermitages and monasteries), and there to be cured of his madness. After various adventures he entered this shrine, sacrificed, and went to sleep. Here his madness left him, a cure recalled by the name Amanus, an alternative title of the mountain. Orestes washed in the stream of the two Black Rivers which rise in this range, and passed over the Typhon or Orontes to visit his countrymen at Ione. These came out to meet him and his companions, and Orestes, fearing a recurrence of the malady, turned round, pointing back to the temple he had left. The people set up a statue of Orestes the Runaway on a bronze column in this attitude before the city, and it was still standing in the time of Malalas’ informant Domninus. It is suggested by Babeion that the statue was one of Olympian Zeus holding out a wreath, a type which appears on the local coinage.

The name Typhon was derived from that of a snake which, when injured by lightning, sought out a subterranean hiding-place. As he dragged along his body he made a deep furrow, and descending into the earth sent out the river to fill up the cavity. The name Orontes was variously derived from an Indian giant of the name or from the first builder of a bridge across it. A few miles north of Antioch lived another giant, Pagras, who was struck by a thunderbolt; and in the same part were found the bodies of men turned to stone through the anger of the gods, doubtless the fossilized remains of some prehistoric monsters. The numerous hot springs of the district, however, point to the presence of volcanic agency, as well as the frequency of earthquakes. Some tradition of active volcanoes seems incorporated in several of the local myths.

Coming now to the dawn of history we find a temple of Artemis (probably the Asiatic Anaitis) on the future site of Antioch, ascribed to the Assyrian queen Semiramis. When Cambyses and his wife Meroe encamped here on his way to Egypt with the Persian army, they found the roof falling in through age. The queen asked Cambyses to have it repaired, and the king raised its height, adding an enclosure large enough for a religious festival named from Meroe, a celebration still retained in Roman times. The queen set apart some estates for the upkeep of the temple, which may actually have preceded the foundation of the city, and established priestesses to serve it. The interior was furnished with Persian splendour, equipped with thrones, couches, and bows all of gold. Cambyses received a visit from the Argives of Ione, and presented them with gifts. In consequence of a vision, which also foretold the Macedonian dominion, Cambyses erected a sun-temple in the vicinity.

Two centuries later, Alexander, marching southwards after his victory at Issus, pitched his camp by a fountain, apparently that rising by the eastern (St. Paul’s) gate of the future city. Charmed with the cool and refreshing water, which he declared reminded him of mother’s milk, he named the fountain from Olympias, and had it enclosed. Afterwards it was made the centre of a regular shrine. Alexander also erected a temple to the national god Zeus Bottiaeus and some other buildings on the plain, which the Macedonians, in memory of their old home, now named the Emathian Plain. The exigencies of the campaign obliged him to leave the completion of the settlement to others.

Seleucus, after his victory at Ipsus, on reaching the district, first offered sacrifice in the temple of Zeus Ceraunius on the Silpian Mount. Next he proceeded to Antigonia, making offerings on altars already set up by his fallen rival Antigonus; and he asked the priest Amphion for a sign whether he should retain Antigonia as his capital or not. A bull had already been offered and the other rites performed. A fierce fire was beginning to consume the victim when an eagle came down direct from Zeus, snatched the thigh-flesh from the flames, and flew away. The king despatched his son Antiochus on horseback to watch the bird, which led him to the Emathian plain five miles off, and there dropped the offering on the altar of Alexander’s temple of Bottiaean Zeus. Seleucus, yielding to the divine will, and dreading the mountain torrents and land­slides of the mountain slopes, prepared to found his capital between the Silpian Hill and the river. He collected all the skilful builders and artificers available, and gathered stores of fine building stone. Woods were felled to provide timber for the roofs, and immense sums were devoted to the work. When drawing the lines of the city the king had elephants stationed at points where he intended to raise towers, and utilized flour from the corn-ships then at anchor in the Orontes to mark the direction of the future colonnades and streets, as had already been done at Alexandria. The Argives, on coming down from Ione, were welcomed by the Macedonian descendants of the Argive Temenus, who respected them as a priestly race of ancient lineage. The Cretans, the Heracleids, and such of Seleucus’ own soldiers as cared to participate, joined in the settlement. He also destroyed Antigonia, the monument of his ancient enemy, and transferred 5,000 citizens to Antioch, which now received the name of the king’s father. So far, with the exception of the eagle’s flight, the tradition seems fairly plausible, and there is no difficulty in supposing that some record of the facts of the foundation was actually preserved in the city archives; but a series of improbabilities follows, the result perhaps of a fanciful interpretation of ancient monuments. The priest Amphion sacrificed a maiden named Aemathe between the city and the Orontes; and, when the temple of Bottiaean Zeus was rebuilt by Seleucus’ chief architect Xenaeus, a bronze statue of her was set up overlooking the city to typify its Fortune, and sacrifices offered to it. The extensive alterations carried out in the reign of Tiberius were similarly attended by the sacrifice of a maiden Antigone. Absurd though these explanations of the female allegorical statues so often set up both by Greeks and Romans may sound, they would not unnaturally occur to Syrian antiquaries, among whose country­men human sacrifice had lingered on at any rate to the Antonine age, and was periodically revived for magical purposes at a much later date.

When the materials of Antigonia were shipped down the Orontes to Antioch, the Fortune of that city, a bronze figure holding a cornucopia, was also transferred, and placed in an open-air shrine, or tetracionium, with a lofty altar in front. For the benefit of the Athenians then removed Seleucus also erected a martial statue of their patroness Athena. Before the city was placed a stone figure of the eagle which had indicated the site, and across the river one of a horse with gilt saddle, to commemorate the king’s escape on horseback from Antigonus. By the Porta Romanesia was a marble statue of the priest Amphion watching for omens from the flight of birds. Another story, apparently originating, like the preceding, from an attempt to explain an extant monument, relates to the mysterious Charoneion, the huge sculptured head cut in the mountain-side above Antioch, possibly a native work anterior to the foundation of the city. Under Antiochus Epiphanes, we are told, a destructive plague broke out, and Leïus, a diviner, ordered a projecting cliff overhanging the city to be carved with a face of Charon and the head wreathed. By inscribing some words on it be stayed the plague. Similar masks have been found elsewhere cut outside caverns from which pestiferous exhalations arose, and in a rock near Seleucia is a magic eye worked inside an incised square.

Numerous other talismans are described, some perhaps really due to Oriental superstition, but more of them ludicrous perversions of some ancient Greek sculptures or bronzes. We begin to hear of them as forming part of the buildings of Tiberius’ time. On the Omphalos of the city then constructed a bronze statue of Tiberius, on a large column of Egyptian marble, was set up by the senate and people of Antioch, having a stone eye worked on it, and a stone box was attached to the same by the diviner Ablaccon. This received the name of the Redemption of the city, and not only controlled the flooding of the Parmenius and other mountain streams, but made the walls impregnable against the attacks of Persians and Saracens. This last remark of Malalas suggests that the whole con­trivance belongs to the age of gross superstition preceding the Arab conquest.

Several others are vaguely referred to the half legendary wizard Apollonius of Tyana, who, if we may trust his biographer, treated the Antiochenes with contempt and made the shortest possible stay among them. He was invited (1) to provide a specific against scorpions, and accordingly had a bronze scorpion set on a tall column in the centre of the city, and the creatures all disappeared from its borders; (2) to keep off the keen north winds coming from the snow-clad Taurus and Amanus ranges, and a talisman for this purpose was erected at the east gate; (3) to provide against mosquitoes, for which purpose a festival was instituted: every June a procession of men on horseback carried on reeds leaden busts of Mars, and below a small shield and sword hanging. Thus arrayed, they rode into Antioch crying “gnatlessness for the city,” and then laid up the image in their own houses till next year; (4) to avert earthquakes. Apollonius found at the centre of the city a pillar of purple marble with nothing on it, as it had been struck by lightning, and was told that Debborius, the philosopher and diviner, after the disaster under Caligula, had set it up as a specific against earthquakes. A marble bust had stood on it, inscribed on the breast with ‘unshaking,’ ‘unfailing.’ As this figure had fallen the people feared a renewal of the visitation; but Apollonius, probably with an eye to his own credit, hesitated to provide another seismic talisman, and at last, taking up tablets, wrote a dismal prophecy of future shocks and conflagrations which would make the river god weep upon his banks.

An incident reflecting the same feeling is the imaginary Persian conquest of Antioch under Trajan. Malalas here quotes the authority of Domninus, and the story seems so circumstantial that some incident attending the liberation of the city from the Persians in the time of Valerian may have become attached to a wrong period. The leading citizens, we learn, had made a compact of peace and submission with Santruccus, the Persian king, through an embassy, and a garrison of 3,000 men was holding the city when Trajan, arriving at Seleucia and learning of the defection of Antioch, ordered every citizen to murder the Persian lodging with him. This was done, and the two Persian generals were seized, killed, and dragged through the streets. However, some fugitives fired the city, which burned as far as the district Scepine. Trajan when he came mounted up to Daphne, and celebrated rites in the temple of Apollo. To remove the pollution resulting from the murder of guests, the bodies were collected and burned, and on the pyres which were set up by the gates laurel boughs and incense were also burned. Drums of bull’s-hide were beaten to drive away the malefic spirits of the dead Persians, and the emperor himself, entering by the Daphnetic gate wreathed with laurel, ordered drums to be beaten for thirty nights, and the ceremony to be renewed yearly. The frequent beating of drums at Antioch, as before the carriages of dignitaries, also impressed the Chinese travellers.

The anonymous Arabic description dates apparently from shortly before the Arab conquest. The latest event alluded to is the occupation of Antioch by the Persians, probably that in the reign of Heraclius, as some buildings erected by the conquerors are alluded to, and the work of the elder Chosroes was entirely of a destructive kind. It represents the point of view of the intelligent but credulous and ignorant Syrian, nominally a Christian, but greatly interested in mysticism and magic.

We are introduced to a potentate not elsewhere recorded in history, Antiochus, King of Rome, a monarch of wide fame and extensive dominion, who had overcome all hostile kings and emperors, and amassed riches past counting; but he was an idolater. Resolving to found a new capital for his eastern dominions, he gathered architects from all parts of the world, had stones cut in quarries two days’ journey off and brought to the site in ships. When the work began, demons every night covered over the foundations as fast as they were laid, and the superintendents had much ado to keep the labourers at their work. Informed of this contretemps the king despatched from Rome a number of Brahmins, wizards, and astrologers, who prayed to Saturn and other planets and sacrificed. At last Mars informed them that a people lived in that plain over which they had no power. When they had promised to dedicate a great temple with an image of Mars, and to place Antioch under his protection, he not only directed them how to dig, but in the form of a white bird pointed out the proper lines of foundation. A special quarter was established for inspectors and builders, many of whom were employed to burn lime or mix earth to make bricks. Work began from a temple of Mars east of the Fish Gate, and a three days’ annual festival, attended by sacrifices outside the city in honour of the god, was instituted. Near the temple were baths supplied with hot water from a spring in the mountain. To hold his treasure the king built a fine house, and set up his own image. Several neighbouring cities were wholly destroyed to provide a population, and the architects enclosed the mountain area lest an enemy should use it as a vantage point. They also laid out hanging gardens carried on arches, connected with the western wall. Three gates were erected, on the north, the east, and the Bridge Gate. This bridge, supported on arches, could be interrupted in the event of a siege. On the river stood two lookout towers, and the total number of towers was 360. The temple of Mars had 120 columns of white marble, 40 great gates, and bronze walls covered with gold and silver. A fairly accurate description is given of the Iron Gates across the torrent, and of the viaduct by which pedestrians could pass from the Silpian to the Stauris Hills when floods came. To safeguard Antioch from evils, natural and supernatural, the royal founder set up four talismans: (1) on the top of the mountain, but within the wall, the Tower of Spiral Stairs, a specific against gnats; (2) one on the East Gate, against destructive female demons; (3) one on the West or Dfun (Daphnetic) Gate against storms, which were sometimes so violent as to carry away houses; (4) in the middle of the market, on a cupola, an image of a girl. Anyone suffering from the (evil) eye had to wash it, burn incense, offer a bird, and he would be cured. There were three covered and four open markets, and a finely built palace of red and white marble with seven lofty doors of gilt iron. Above each gate was an equestrian statue with magical properties, and outside stood law courts and judges’ quarters, as well as some scientific establishments. One of these was circular and of great height, with a cupola at the centre, the firmament being pictured within, with its stars, signs of the zodiac, horoscopes, and movements of the heavenly bodies. This may be the same as the hall of huge blocks called Ad Dimas, and described by the Arab geographer Masudi as originally a Persian fire-temple, so arranged that in the summer the moon’s beams every night shot through a different window as it rose.

It is unfortunate that the anonymous writer gives no clearer description of the date and purpose of the building, which must have been almost unexampled in a Greek city. Here, too, his interest in magic leads to the inclusion of details which may throw some doubt on the whole story. There was an image of a youth outside, and if a boy were slow to learn his father brought him here, bathed this statue, and made his son drink the water as an incentive to industry. Another effigy had on it a representation of every occupation, and a boy had to put his hand on one of them, and was then set to pursue it. Curative fountains are alluded to, and Hadji Khalifa mentions seven in all within the city—one, a hot spring, near the church of the Virgin which succeeded the temple of Mars.

More mysterious cures were also obtainable, as when persons suffering from snake-bite touched a marble column supporting the image of a serpent. Here, as in Malalas, we meet with Apollonius, whom King Antiochus, regardless of chronology, employed to provide talismans, such as a stone dragon supported by two stones, and a figure of a female demon riding, set on a bridge over the river. We see here what interpretations might be put on the efforts of Greek sculptors by ignorant and superstitious Orientals.

There is, finally, an interesting account of the former synagogue near the west end of the city on the hill and renamed by the Christians from Asmunit, the mother of the seven Maccabeans who suffered under Antiochus Epiphanes. Beneath this church was a crypt reached by a flight of steps, and containing the tomb of Ezra and of Asmunit herself, Moses’ rod, Joshua’s staff, a fragment of the Tables of the Law, Jephthah’s knife, the keys of the Ark of the Covenant, etc. It is possible that some of these curiosities were really brought from Jerusalem in the time of Epiphanes, and had been preserved first by the Jews, then by the Christians down to the writer’s age, which attached an exaggerated importance to relics.

Chinese travellers and merchants who reached as far as Syria, being ignorant of the existence alike of Rome and Byzantium, not unnaturally looked on the splendid city of Antu as the capital of the entire Empire. Though some trade relations with Syria had existed even in the Seleucid age, there was little direct intercourse with China till the time of the Antonines, when we hear of an embassy from Antun (M. Aurelius), King of Tat’sin (Roman Asia), carrying offerings of ivory, rhinoceros horn, and tortoiseshell as far as the frontiers of Annam to be conveyed to the Chinese monarch. From this time a fairly brisk trade was carried on, the products of Syria being transported by Parthian or other foreign merchants, and exchanged for silk. At times the Anksi (Parthians) interfered with the passage of embassies and probably with the safety of the land­route, so that Chinese goods were often brought by sea from the Persian Gulf to the head of the Aelanitic Gulf, and so into Syria. Chinese travellers occasionally traversed the entire distance, and their records, though marred by ludicrous misunderstandings, with details relating to quite diverse periods fused by the geographers who preserve their stories, have a certain interest as showing what impression this Greek city made on strangers unfamiliar with European civilization.

The great man, the Count of the East, living in a sacred palace over a mile in circumference at the centre of the city, was clearly the king, and as such had his official council and went round periodically administering justice. A difficulty, however, arose in explaining why a fresh functionary was constantly found installed; and the travellers carried back the report that worn-out monarchs, or those whose reign had been attended by some calamity, were deposed by their subjects.

The city was 100 li (probably about fifteen miles) in circumference, its defences of stone and of vast height. One of the gates (the Daphnetic, thus adorned by Theodosius) shone with gold from top to bottom to a distance of several stades. There were five palaces where the king administered justice, perhaps a confused reminiscence of the tribunals of the exalted officials who after the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine had their head­quarters at Antioch.

Traditions of the ancient tetrapolis still lingered, for we read that the city was divided into five quarters, the fifth perhaps the later suburb across the Orontes. The king resided in the middle city, assisted by eight high officials who divided the administration of the four remaining quarters, besides helping in the government of the surrounding districts. Councils were held in the palace, and their decisions when sanctioned by the king were put into execution. Once in three years the king went out to assure himself of the good behaviour of the people; and if anyone had suffered injustice in the interval he would state his complaint, and the king might censure or dismiss the offending official. He was further assisted by thirty-six generals whom he consulted on public matters. The regular postal stations, a common feature in the provinces, are compared to a similar institution in China.

Antu contained over 100,000 households, implying a population of some half a million, a number probably not far wide of the truth in the fourth century. The inhabitants were tall and upright; their dress, carriages, and flags resembled those of the Chinese. Men had short hair, and their clothing left the right arm bare, the toga being still retained among the official and senatorial class; but richly embroidered garments were also affected, and the women wore turbans of embroidered cloth. Silk, wool, and vegetable fibre were much used for wearing; and the suburbs were thickly planted with mulberries (introduced into Syria about the sixth century), grain, and hemp, besides producing pines, bamboos, cypress, poplars, and willows. Horses, asses, mules, and camels were kept in large numbers, but farther off the country was infested with beasts of prey which made it necessary to travel in caravans. One of the most extraordinary stories in the collection is that of the water-sheep which grew from a plant in the ground, and were hedged in by a wall to prevent the wild beasts outside from devouring them. These singular animals were attached to the water-plant by the navel, and might not be forcibly detached or they would die. They were therefore frightened from their position by the sound of drums or of horses prancing outside their enclosure; and their hair was woven into a fine cloth. I have no explanation to offer of this story, which looks like an absurd perversion of some equestrian spectacle; but it may be noted that we are told by a more reliable authority of goats near Antioch the udders of which were so long and delicate as to need to be swathed in a special bag to avoid injury from the stony ground.

In the palaces the floors were of yellow metal, the leaves of the folding doors of ivory, the beams of fragrant wood, pillars and implements of crystal, which probably means white marble. Powdered plaster was rammed down into a fine glossy floor on the tops of the houses, and water was carried up in pipes and spread over the platform. The draught set up by the rapid movement of the water produced a cooling breeze in summer. Libanius mentions the custom of sleeping on roofs, where the summer breezes would gently stir the garments of the sleepers; and probably the richer families, with their copious supplies of water to every house, had some contrivance for making a fountain play on the roof. The king wore an official cap adorned with pearls and birds’ wings; his garments were of embroidered silk with gold ornaments. By his side stood a green bird which would crow when he was about to drink anything poisonous. Physicians were able to cure blindness by extracting a worm from the head (couching for cataract). The jugglers and entertainers who roused Chrysostom’s wrath made a great impression on the Celestials. They breathed out fire and made streams of water flow from their hands, banners and feathers drop from their mouths; by raising their feet they let fall pearls and jewels; they bound and released themselves, and danced on twenty balls. Coral, amber, pearls, and jewels were extensively worn. In the streets people went about in small carriages with white canopies, and they beat drums and hoisted flags when going out. The traveller had evidently fallen in with some processional festival, at which noisy musical instruments were throughout popular at Antioch. We may close with the description of a marvellous clock, the intricate mechanism of which was characteristic of Syrian towns in the Byzantine age; a somewhat similar example at Gaza is described by a Greek writer. On the upper part of one of the three gates leading to the palace was a large golden scale, and twelve golden balls suspended from the scale stick, showing the twelve hours. A human figure in gold stood there, on whose side, when an hour came, one ball dropped, and a sound was heard to mark the hour.

The Christian legends have a considerable resemblance to those of other places, and two or three examples may suffice. In the persecution under Trajan to which Ignatius fell a victim, five women, according to Malalas, were brought before the emperor and questioned as to the hope which induced them to defy his authority and continue their forbidden worship. They replied that even if he put them to death they would be raised again in the same body to everlasting life. The offended despot had them burned, and their ashes mingled with molten bronze from which a public bath was made. However, every bather on entering the fatal vessel was seized with giddiness, and had to be carried out. Trajan thereupon substituted ordinary bronze, and had the offending bath melted down again and formed into statues of the victims, remarking that he, not God, had raised them up in the same form. These statues, which were probably those of some of the Greek goddesses or Muses, were visible in the baths some centuries later. Trajan also set up a burning fiery furnace, inviting any Christians who felt sufficiently confident about the future to im­molate themselves, and many martyrs voluntarily appeared.

In a later persecution a humble labourer near Antioch named Barlaam attracted the attention of the governor as a zealous Christian. He was racked and scourged, and his hand was held over a burning altar with hot coals and incense laid on the palm. It was hoped that the hand, shaking involuntarily through pain, would drop some grains on the flame and thus perform a formal act of heathenism. Barlaam, however, held it immovable till it was all consumed.

The last heathen persecution was that of Julian. After the suspicious circumstances attending the burning of the temple at Daphne, this emperor ordered the confiscation of the treasures in the great church of Constantine, “which were inferior to none in magnificence,” and further gave over the building to the Arian crew (thiasotae). Terrible fates overtook the imperial commissioners who went in to seize the sacred vessels. The emperor’s uncle Julian, who showed gross disrespect to the consecrated site, so as to rouse the protests even of the Arian bishop Euzoius, fell speechless and sense­less, and soon developed a hideous disease, minutely described by the chroniclers. This ended fatally just as he was reading an oracle from one of the heathen shrines that he would recover. Felix, a recent pervert from Christianity, who, on seeing the magnificence of the church furniture, remarked “with what vessels the Son of Mary is served!” died of a broken bloodvessel; a third commissioner was soon after put in prison for aiming at tyranny, and died there. Similar ends befell other agents of the emperor, who had so greatly infuriated the inhabitants that they were able to believe that this philosophical recluse had ordered Christians to be secretly drowned in the Orontes by night, and that, as a result of his criminal desire to ascertain the future by haruspicy, heads and bodies of human victims had been found in chests, in wells, and various corners of the palace, after the emperor’s departure. The possibility cannot, indeed, be excluded that some of Julian’s pagan followers were not inaccessible to the attractions of black magic, with which the remains of heathendom had by this time become closely associated.

A last wonder may be quoted from the time when Julian’s visit to Antioch, which had done so little credit to either side, was over, and in fulfilment of the prophecy uttered to the emperor by the fair-haired boy in the vision at Daphne, he had fallen in the Persian War. This event, which gave rise to frantic rejoicings, was miraculously made known at Antioch the same day. A pagan judge, who was engaged in safeguarding the senate-house at night, saw in the sky a row of stars arranged so as to spell the message in Greek, “Today Julian is slain in Persis.”

We may now pass on to the legends which grew up in connection with the Saracen conquest of Antioch, an event which is passed over with the barest mention by the historians. Heraclius is described by the author of the romance as making the city his headquarters during the greater part of the war, and there organizing various expeditions against the invaders. When Damascus fell, and a large body of fugitives sought refuge in Antioch, the emperor refused to admit them, fearing that their stories of Saracen prowess would spread dismay, and ordered them to march to the coast for conveyance to Europe. Thus time was given to the bloodthirsty Kalid, the Sword of God, urged on by the renegade Jonas, whose affianced wife was in the convoy, to pursue the Damascenes and put the whole company to the sword. Next our attention is called to the strange story of Aleppo and the brothers Youkinna and John, who inherited a vast domain extending to the Euphrates from their father. They were the most powerful men in the city, but Youkinna, who was grasping and treacherous, murdered his peace-loving brother. When the castle of Aleppo, after a stout resistance, fell into the hands of the Saracens, he embraced the Moslem faith and contrived a plot with the Arab leaders to insinuate himself into the emperor’s confidence and hasten the fall of Antioch. With some 200 followers, many of them Greek renegades, he effected an entry, concealed his treacherous designs, and was given a command by the deluded Heraclius, who entrusted him with the duty of escorting one of his own daughters from a neighbouring town. Youkinna on his return fell in with a detachment of Christian Arabs, having among them a number of prisoners, including the redoubtable chief Derar. These were brought in by Youkinna to Antioch; and by his intercession he saved their lives, that they might be exchanged for Christians taken by the enemy. The emperor examined them about their faith, and an aged man who had known Mohammed personally, gave a long account of the prophet’s revelations, miracles, and visions, telling how a tree had once, when called, come to him upright, ploughing up the ground with its root, and then returned to its own place. Abu Obeida, with the main Saracen army, now reached the Iron Bridge, and Heraclius committed the care of the army and of the city to Youkinna, delivering to him a crucifix from the cathedral of extraordinary sanctity. When Heraclius reviewed his army outside the walls “at the head of every regiment there was a little Church made of Wood for the Soldiers to go Prayers in.”

Suddenly news came that the enemy had crossed the Orontes, for the garrison of the two towers by the bridge, exasperated by the severity with which one of the court officials had punished their negligence, capitulated as soon as the Arabs appeared. Heraclius now lost heart, assembled the clergy and leading citizens in the cathedral, and lamented the unhappy fate of Syria. After some single combats, more appropriate to the era of the Crusades than to the seventh century, the emperor (terrified by a dream of someone thrusting him from his throne, so that his crown fell from his head) escaped to the sea with a few followers. In the final battle (perhaps intended for that preceding the first capture in 636), owing to the treachery of Youkinna and other officers, who had mixed a number of Arab prisoners with their own troops, the Moslems won a decisive victory. The citizens, shrinking from further conflict, surrendered, paying the enemy 300,000 ducats to have the city spared. One of the Chinese chroniclers already referred to says that when the Arab commander arrived the citizens made a compact to pay a yearly tribute of gold and silk, though this was later exchanged for complete subjection. The real facts of the two surrenders of 636 and 638 are, however, nowhere recorded.

The romance concludes, so far as Antioch is concerned, by describing the entry of Abu Obeida, who, after three days’ refreshment, found it desirable to remove his troops, fearing that the hardy warriors “effeminated with the Delicacies of the Place should remit anything of their wonted Vigour and Bravery,” and even be ensnared into marrying some of the Grecian women.

 

CHAPTER V. THE ROMAN AGE TO DIOCLETIAN

 

Under the later Seleucid reigns Antioch had approximated to the position of an ordinary Greek city-state of the later type, ruled by its own senate and locally elected magistrates. Persons who claimed the title of king were occasionally in residence, but were little but captains of mercenary bands, and the majority of the citizens cared little about them. The internal administration went on alike when the viceroy of the Armenian sovereign, a claimant to the crown of Seleucus, or one of the early proprietors or proconsuls was stationed in the palace. Antioch had already ceased to be the capital of a Syrian kingdom, and became only in theory that of the new Roman province.

We need not take very seriously the statement in Eusebius that the citizens bribed Pompey to reject the claims of Antiochus Asiaticus, and that he was thereby induced to give them liberty and the enjoyment of their laws and constitution. Yet it is clear that the Roman commander, whose statesmanship has perhaps been unduly depreciated, saw that the only hope of holding Syria and keeping back the native peoples, who were on the point of overwhelming the European civilization, was to encourage and develop the Greek city-states. More outlying parts might be left to native client kings, but the Seleucids had proved their incapacity to hold their hereditary dominions.

The duty of protecting Antioch now devolved on a Roman governor, with a strong military force encamped in the neighbourhood; but the citizens were not subject to his jurisdiction or to the payment of tribute. A like privilege was conferred on Seleucia, which had held out against Tigranes during the whole period of Armenian rule in Syria. Pompey restored to Antioch the hostages whom it had been obliged to give, probably at the time of his first arrival in Asia; and on visiting the city he was so much delighted with the beauty of Daphne and its many waters that he annexed to it additional land, perhaps once State property now inherited by the Roman people, to enlarge the sacred grove. He rebuilt the ruined senate-house of Antiochus Epiphanes by the forum; the year of his visit, 64 BC, was taken as the starting-point of a new era; and for the time he became very popular. This favour was extended to Pompey’s freedman Demetrius of Gadara, a fact which gave the philosophic Cato an opportunity for ridiculing the foolish adulation of the populace. Not long after Pompey’s departure, probably during his own term of office in Cyprus, Cato visited Antioch, walking, as was his custom, while his friends attended him on horse­back. Before the gates he saw a crowd in white festal robes, the young men lining the road on one side, the boys on the other. He concluded that the news of his approach had anticipated him, and that his Stoic modesty was to be exposed to the ordeal of a public reception. However, he bade his suite dismount, and as the party came up the master of the ceremonies approached, crowned and holding the staff of office, and asked where they had left Demetrius, and when he would arrive. His friends began to laugh, but Cato, merely remarking “Alas, unhappy city!” went on unmoved.

The first proconsul to be stationed at Antioch was A. Gabinius (57-55), an active but unscrupulous officer, and he was succeeded by the triumvir M. Crassus (55-53). On the defeat and death of the latter in the Parthian War the command devolved upon his quaestor, C. Cassius Longinus, later one of Caesar’s murderers. Cassius led back the remains of the Roman army into Syria and took active measures for the defence of Antioch against the Parthian invasion, which was not long in coming. His plans proved successful; the Arsacid forces, whose strength lay in cavalry and archers, were ill-equipped for blockading a walled city, and retired after a single attack. They were equally unsuccessful in an attempt on the old capital, Antigonia, which seems to have revived in the later Seleucid age. Finding this town surrounded by a thick growth of trees which impeded their horses, they were preparing to clear a road when the arrival of Cassius drove them off in disorder; and soon after they retired across the Euphrates with such booty as they had collected.

The presence of the governor and his staff, as well as of the army under his command, encamped outside the walls, led during these years to the establishment at Antioch of a body of Italian settlers, such as government contractors, agents of the tax­farming companies, who would have their head­quarters there even though the city was exempt from their extortions, money-lenders, slave-dealers, merchants who superintended the despatch to Europe of goods brought in by eastern caravans, and similar speculators. Such a colony existed in all the great towns of the Empire, often organized under officers of its own choosing, with regular meeting-places and a common fund. These men, being familiar with local conditions, were apt to have much influence with the governor, usually a stranger to the place. To this class no doubt belonged the Roman citizens who carried on business there, who are mentioned by Caesar as taking a leading part in inducing the people to desert their old patron in his misfortune. After the fatal field of Pharsalia, Pompey, still undecided whither to flee, arrived at Paphos, where he learned that the Antiochenes had determined to hold their citadel against him and despatched messengers warning fugitives from the battle, who had reached neighbouring towns, to keep away on pain of death. This brisk change of front was rewarded by Caesar when, the next year (47), on his way from Egypt to crush Pharnaces and settle Asia Minor, he spent a few days at Antioch, and published an edict confirming its liberties. In this it is described as “the metropolis, sacred and inviolate, autonomous and sovereign, the capital of the whole East.” Such grandiloquence delighted the Greeks of the decline, and the epithets soon appear on the local coins. The year of Caesar’s great victory was now adopted as an era, only temporarily replaced a few years later by one calculated from the Battle of Actium. Extensive building operations are attributed to Caesar; and though he can have made little progress with them in this short visit, it is likely enough that additions were made to the architectural monuments in the ensuing years of quiet, some perhaps oh Caesar’s suggestion and at his expense. These included a basilica called the Caesareum, near the stream Parmenius and opposite the temple of Ares, containing a bronze statue of the Fortune of Rome in an apse and one of Caesar himself in the open space at the centre. Further, there was a public bath for the inhabitants of the Acropolis Hill supplied with water by an aqueduct through the hills, connected with a spring on the road to Laodicea. In the same neighbourhood was laid out an amphitheatre for exhibition of gladiatorial shows, and this lasted, like the aqueduct, till the reign of Theodosius. The Pantheon, then in ruins, was also rebuilt and its altar replaced.

The years following Caesar’s death were attended by much insecurity and disorder. Antioch was allowed at this time to fall back into the hands of the barbarians, the last occasion till the decline of the Empire in the third century produced a somewhat similar state of affairs. Cassius first claimed the Syrian province, where, in view of his vigorous defence a few years earlier, he was well received. He raised large bodies of troops and much ‘money, in which process the Jews of Antioch apparently suffered. An attack of the Caesarean leader Dolabella was repulsed, and he was forced to take refuge at Laodicea. After the return of Cassius to Europe and his defeat at Philippi, one of Antony’s legates, L. Decidius Saxa, assumed the command, and had to face a formidable invasion of the Parthians instigated by Labienus, an able Roman officer and previously an adherent of the Liberator’s. Saxa was then at Apamea, but Labienus won over his soldiers, who had once also served under Brutus and Cassius. Apamea fell, and when Saxa fled to Antioch Labienus followed and received the submission of the city, which thus became for a year (40-39) tributary to the Arsacid king Orodes I. Nothing seems known of the method of government adopted, but the local coinage was continued with some slight variations. Thus the title ‘autonomous’ was dropped, a palm-branch in honour of the Parthian victory was added beneath the head of Zeus, and the old Seleucid era, which was retained to the end by the Parthians, reappears for the last time.

The victories of Ventidius, another of Antony’s legates, led to the recovery of Antioch, soon followed by the recapture of Jerusalem, where the Asmonean dynasty now definitely comes to an end. Antigonus, the last king of this famous line, was brought to Antioch, and by Antony's orders bound to a stake, scourged, and executed, the first time that the Romans had treated a royal captive with such indignity (38 BC).

Antioch continued to be the headquarters of a succession of Antony’s legates, and after the renewal of the agreement with Octavian Antony himself came to the city in the winter of 37-36, on his way to the Parthian War. Recent discoveries make it probable that, at the time of the cession of certain Syrian districts to the Egyptian queen, a marriage was celebrated between the lovers at Antioch during this winter. As Octavia had not been formally divorced it was not at once published for fear of offending Roman sentiment. A new era was started in Egypt, and Antopy’s head began to appear on the Alexandrine coins. Soon after he acknowledged his children by Cleopatra, and gave to one of them the titular rank of King of Syria. It has been suggested that the queen needed this support against palace intrigues at home, while Antony required subsidies for the Parthian War. A formal marriage would be a proof of their continued unanimity.

The transition to the rule of Augustus, and the establishment shortly after of the full provincial system, were effected smoothly. From 27 BC an imperial legate was in permanent residence at Antioch, with a strong military force stationed in the neighbourhood, having their own Campus Martius for exercising across the Orontes. Augustus himself paid a visit after the Battle of Actium, and again in 20 B. when he received embassies from remote eastern peoples; and tetradrachms bearing his head came to be issued from the city mint. Agrippa was present with his master on the former occasion, and, delighted with the beauty of the site, began the development of a new quarter, the Vicus Agrippae, outside the east gate. A spring was opened to supply the new public Agrippianan bath, lines of houses were built, and in the older city the theatre was heightened by the addition of another Zone. The Jewish king Herod, whose policy it was to conciliate the Romans by gifts to their chief cities, Undertook a still greater work, the paving of a main road 20 stades long, as an eastern continuation of the wide central street of Antioch. Tradition says that numbers of Armenian workpeople were employed for this; the road was paved with polished marble blocks, colonnades adorned the sides, and it extended through a district once marshy and almost impassable, probably as far as the great westerly bend of the Orontes.

Agrippa in a subsequent visit, probably during his eastern command, restored the circus of Marcius Rex, which had become filled with rubbish as a result of various shocks, and witnessed there the performance of a spectacle of great variety and splendour.

The governors, though surrounded by such accompaniments of Hellenic civilization, could not readily forget that they were among a half Oriental population, where constant migrations on a large scale were taking place, vast caravans going and coming, and settlers pouring in from remote parts. Josephus records how a Babylonian Jewish soldier of fortune, Zamaris, with a small army of mounted archers, for some unknown reason left the Parthian dominions, crossed the Euphrates, and applied to the Syrian legate Saturninus for .a place to settle in. He was allotted the village of Ulatha, near Antioch, and later under Herod’s directions established himself in Batanea.

The constitution of Antioch under the early Empire is imperfectly known, and we are even ignorant whether the immunity from taxation still continued. The jurist Paulus, who records the grant of colonial rights by an Antoninus, probably Caracalla, says that the tribute previously payable was still exacted. The immunity conferred by Pompey and Caesar had probably ceased in the early Empire, perhaps at the time of the Augustan census.

At the head of the local officials were two archons, who directed the public spectacles and other liturgies, and were aided by the chief administrative body or senate, which in the early Empire was large and elective, according to the ordinary Greek model. Members wore the toga, they received a new governor on his reaching the city, and escorted away an outgoing one. They also paid him a New Year’s visit, and were saluted by him with the kiss of friendship. This, however, we only hear of in the fourth century, when the numbers had dwindled from 1,200 to 60, or even less. The senate had the disposal of the extensive lands belonging to the city, which were either leased to rich possessores or granted by way of relief to poor citizens or rhetoricians. It was the Roman custom to discourage democratic tendencies in Greek towns by requiring a high property qualification for admission to the local senates; and membership, though apparently vacancies were filled by free election, would thus become a monopoly of richer families. The general body of citizens was divided into eighteen tribes, probably local groups subdivided into ‘neighbourhoods’ or parishes. Each tribe had its president and its public baths; and we are told that each sent boxers to take part in the festival of the old Asiatic goddess, identified with Artemis, in the suburb of Meroe. The presidents of the tribes held preliminary enquiries into public disorders, and set up statues of distinguished persons. Even after the grant of colonial rights this local tribal division lasted on, and it is indeed uncertain into which of the old thirty-five Roman tribes this incongruous body of Quirites was incorporated, Antiochenes appearing as members of the Quirine tribe, and others (especially soldiers) of the Colline.

There are references to meetings of a citizen assembly in the theatre to pass decrees; but there was no real power of debate, and the proposal of the magistrates would ordinarily be carried by acclamation. The grammaieus, or recorder, had under his control a grammatophylacium, where, among other records, were kept lists of State debtors, so that the building was exposed to danger from fire in the event of an outbreak by a reckless faction.

A concilium of the municipalities in the Syrian province met at Antioch, and would, besides celebrating games in connection with the imperial worship, transact business relating to the interests of the province and if necessary order the prosecution at Rome of oppressive officials. Its president was a Syriarch, but it is seldom referred to, and probably the games, which were important enough to attract professional athletes from other provinces, roused more interest than the business transactions.

In the reign of Tiberius extensive architectural additions were made, such as colonnades along the chief streets with ornamental arches and tetrapyles at their intersection; but as Tiberius himself never visited Antioch after his stepfather’s death it is probable that some of the undertakings ascribed to this emperor owed their inception to the popular and ill-fated prince Germanicus, whose mysterious death in the western suburb of Epidaphne in A.D. 19 is one of the most inexplicable of the tragedies of that age of secrecy and suspicion. Piso, the legate of Syria, a member of the old nobility which looked with little favour on princes of the imperial house, had treated the emperor’s nephew, when the latter arrived in Syria on a special mission, with marked discourtesy. He and his wife Plancina encouraged indiscipline in the legions, sought to rouse the soldiers’ ill-will towards Germanicus and Agrippina, and, during the prince’s absence in Egypt, reversed the latter’s arrangements in the cities of Syria as well as in the army. As soon as Germanicus returned to Antioch his health began to fail, but on a temporary improvement, when the populace were offering sacrifices in thanksgiving, Piso rudely broke up the gathering with his lictors, and then went down to Seleucia to await the outcome of a relapse which soon followed. The suspicion of foul play was augmented by the discovery in the house occupied by Germanicus of magical apparatus, such as was then thought capable of producing disease and death—fragments of human bodies buried beneath floors and behind walls, incantations, and leaden tablets inscribed with curses and the prince’s name; further, ashes snatched from funeral pyres and other properties held effective for such purposes. Emissaries of Piso displayed a suspicious eagerness to learn the latest news, while it was known that Plancina had had intimate dealings with a noted Syrian poisoner, Martina. The illness terminated fatally, and a series of prodigies—stones falling from heaven on temples and altars miraculously overthrown—attested the grief of heaven. The belief in poison was strengthened by the presence of dark marks on the body and the foaming at the mouth, and by the fact that, when the remains were cremated in the forum of Antioch, the heart was left when other parts were consumed. Piso’s evil designs, whatever they were, came to nothing through the vigour of Germanicus’ staff. He was obliged to return to Rome, and put on his trial before the senate. Tiberius was unable or unwilling to protect the accused, who, anticipating conviction, committed suicide. At Antioch a cenotaph was erected in the forum where the body had been burned, and in the suburb where the prince died a tribunal, probably a statue elevated on some kind of circular shrine surrounded by pilasters.

Under Caligula there was a destructive earthquake, which also did considerable damage at Daphne, and the emperor sent out a special commission to superintend the construction of fresh buildings. Among these were fine baths, one fed by a special aqueduct carried through the hill from Daphne, and a temple of the Nymphs, adorned with statues, where citizens of the poorer classes held their wedding ceremonies. So far the account of Malalas may be accepted, but he goes on to describe sensational incidents, evidently enormously exaggerated and very likely belonging to quite a different period. After fierce rioting between the Blues and Greens a conflict arose between Jews and Gentiles, in which many of the former were slaughtered and their synagogue burned. The High-priest Phinehas arrived from Tiberias with an army of Jews and Galilaeans, and avenged the massacre. The imperial commissioners, who were still in Antioch, had their property confiscated and were removed in chains for permitting these disorders, and Caligula provided money to rebuild the houses which had been burned during the riot. Josephus ignores this incident entirely, and the part about the militant high-priest is clearly an invention. It is, however, certain that in many towns of Asia feeling against the Jews was already running high.

The war itself, which followed thirty years later, only affected Antioch in so far as it was the legionary headquarters of the province, and the rallying-point for the auxiliary forces under Agrippa, who here awaited Vespasian’s arrival to carry on the campaign. The first outbreak in Palestine had no effect on the position of the Jews of Antioch, who, if we may trust their own historian, had won general respect by their orderly and law-abiding conduct and secured a number of Gentile proselytes. The benefactions of Herod had also no doubt conciliated public opinion. When the great war began, anti-Jewish feeling began to display itself, but received no countenance from the Roman authorities, who saw that the Jews were harmless, and even useful, subjects when held in awe by a large Gentile population. However, Antiochus, son of the Jewish president or archon, soon after the outbreak of the revolt came forward as a renegade, and at a meeting of the citizens in the theatre denounced his own father and other residents, as well as certain newly arrived Jews, as having plotted to fire the whole city in one night. The people, knowing to what lengths Jewish fanaticism had gone in other Syrian cities, had the accused seized and burned alive in the theatre, besides making preparations for punishing the entire community. Antiochus, to prove the thoroughness of his conversion, sacrificed to the heathen gods, and advised that all Jews should be called on to do likewise. Most consented to do this, and any recalcitrants were put to death. The Roman authorities for a time thought it politic to countenance the movement, and granted Antiochus a party of soldiers, with which he kept his countrymen in awe and prevented the observance of the Sabbath. However, Mucianus, the governor, refused to cancel the old privilege, granted to the Jews by one of the Seleucid kings, of receiving a fixed sum from the gymnasiarch to pay for oil prepared by themselves, instead of using that of the Greeks. Mucianus’ successor, the legionary legate Cn. Pompeius Collega, had to deal with an extremely difficult situation on the close of the war. An extensive conflagration broke out in the centre of the city, consuming most of the public buildings round the forum—the basilicae, record offices, and official residences of the magistrates. Antiochus came forward to accuse the Jews, on whom the populace were making a frantic attack, when the deputy governor inter­vened and insisted that the affair should be left to the decision of Titus, who was shortly expected. A preliminary enquiry by Pompeius tended to show that, so far from the Jews being to blame, the fire was due to some desperate debtors, who sought to destroy the records of their liabilities. The Jews, however, remained in suspense till the arrival of Titus after his final victory.

In the previous year Antioch had played a prominent part in the elevation of the Flavian dynasty. The Syrian legate Mucianus was a leading supporter of Vespasian, who then commanded the army in Judaea, and he found ready sympathy from the people of Antioch and the soldiers quartered in the district. These by this time had contracted many ties with the inhabitants, and no doubt included a proportion of native Syrians. Ordinarily a fourth of each maniple would be off duty, and thus be able to mingle freely with the civil population, which, indeed, seems to have had no ill-will to them, and probably profited by the reckless expenditure incidental to garrison towns. The legions were rarely transferred to other provinces, and thus had come to regard the camp as their home. Tacitus records a Greek speech delivered by the governor to the popular assembly in the theatre of Antioch, in which he aggravated the hostility already felt towards the upstart Vitellius by declaring that the latter intended to move the legions from the Rhine front to the ‘wealthy and quiet  service of Syria, and condemn the Syrian forces to the toils and privations of winter quarters in Germany. The whole of Syria readily swore fealty to Vespasian, veterans were recalled, recruits raised, arms factories set up in the chief towns, and the mint of Antioch employed to strike gold and silver for the expenses of the campaign. The victory of the Flavian troops in Italy was closely followed by the triumphant end of the Jewish War, and assured for Titus a splendid reception. The citizens, with the women and children, walked out nearly four miles from the city to meet him, and waved their hands with loud cheers, mingling with these a request that he would expel the Jewish population. This time Titus would give no answer, but proceeded to the Euphrates for an interview with the Parthian envoys. Returning to Antioch he was invited by the senate and people to come into the theatre, where a vast multitude had assembled. On the Jewish question again being raised, he pointed out that, as Jerusalem was destroyed and no other city would receive them, they had nowhere to go; and he even refused to remove the bronze tablets on which were engraved the privileges granted them by the Seleucid kings. However, certain spoils from the campaign were set up beside the western or Daphnetic gate, including the bronze cherubim from Jerusalem. This fact is not recorded by Josephus, but by the late Christian writer Malalas, supplemented by the Alexandrine chronicle; and we also learn from the same not entirely trustworthy authorities that Titus had erected at Antioch four bronze bulls turned in the direction of Jerusalem in honour of the moon, since he had captured the city by moonlight. Further, he founded a theatre at Daphne with an inscription stating that it was from the spoils of the Jews. To insult them he also transformed a synagogue into a theatre and set up therein a statue of himself. It is possible that Josephus purposely suppresses some such incidents as these; but no general restrictions were enforced. Indeed, many of the dispossessed inhabitants of Judaea drifted to the northern towns, especially to Antioch, where certain rabbis were charged with the duty of administering a fund raised for the purpose of redeeming Jewish prisoners taken by , the Romans in Parthian and other frontier wars, and sold into slavery.

For some periods it is possible to quote the impressions left by an individual traveller, but for the early Empire we have little of the kind, except a short passage in the not very reliable Life of Apollonius of Tyana, that neo-Pythagorean ascetic and wonder-worker, who traversed the Empire from Gades to Mesopotamia, and left such a reputation that several magical contrivances at Antioch were afterwards ascribed to his suggestion. The Life apparently represents tolerably faithfully conditions prevailing in the century before Philostratus’ own time (c. 220), and he describes a visit of the sage to the temple of Daphnaean Apollo. Some curious legends are quoted, not only of the transformation of Daphne herself, but of Cyparissus, a Syrian youth metamorphosed into a cypress, and of the peaceful but everflowing fountains in which Apollo himself once bathed. On seeing the vast grove of cypresses, the temple, beautiful but lacking in solemnity, the people half Oriental and deficient in the gifts of the Muses, Apollonius remarked, “Apollo, turn these dumb creatures into cypresses, that they may make a sound if only in that form; the silence here does not permit even the streams to murmur.” Addressing the river called Ladon after Daphne’s father he said, “Not only your daughter has changed but you also; you have taken on the appearance of a barbarian instead of an Arcadian Greek.” He especially disapproved of the delight of the inhabitants in warm baths, the insolence of their ordinary behaviour, and their disregard for Greek customs and pursuits, sarcastically remarking that an emperor (perhaps an anachronistic reference to punishments inflicted by M. Aurelius or Septimius Severus) who had forbidden the use of their baths had added some years to their life. On his return from the Far East, “as the Antiochenes were waxing insolent according to custom and paying no attention to Greek pursuits,” he hastened on to Seleucia and so to Europe, “wanting not a crowd but men to hear his disputations”. This and similar allusions suggest that the important philosophical and rhetorical schools of which we hear so much in the fourth century had hardly yet been formed, and that Antioch was more absorbed in pleasure-seeking than after the spread of Christianity and the earnest debates which it occasioned had instilled into many more thoughtful pagans a genuine love of learning.

The peace and prosperity of the early Empire had a disastrous effect not only on the morale of the inhabitants, but on the efficiency of the soldiers, whom the unwise policy of the government kept mainly in the vicinity of the great Syrian towns instead of on the frontiers. At Antioch, though quartered outside the walls, they could not be kept from the dissipation and vice of the crowded city and the no less demoralizing Daphne, soon becoming so inefficient that no serious war could be carried on without fresh drafts from Europe. Three short descriptions of them may be given, relating to the reigns of Nero, Hadrian, and M. Aurelius respectively, to illustrate the impression made by the Syrian garrison on Roman historians.

Corbulo had greater difficulty in coping with the slackness of the soldiery than the enemies’ treachery. The legions, enervated by long peace, only endured ordinary camp duties in a discontented and mutinous manner; there were veterans who had never been on picket or sentry duty, had hardly seen a rampart or trench, were unprovided with helmet or breast­plate, but sleek and with plenty of money to spend. The energetic measures of Corbulo produced a temporary improvement, and the legions did good service in the Jewish War. Trajan’s army in the East came largely from Europe, and Hadrian’s experiences were very similar to Corbulo’s. The Syrians, says Fronto, were mutinous and obstinate, constantly absent from duty, strolling about from midday onwards, often drunk, and so slothful that by giving up the use of one weapon after another they came to resemble slingers or velites. The first sight of the Parthians made them flee, and they chose to regard the trumpet-note as a signal for retreat. Things were no better a generation later, when a commander very similar to the troops he had to lead arrived in Antioch. Fortunately, however, the worthless Verus had an able lieutenant in the future tyrant Avidius Cassius, who invaded the dominions of the decaying Arsacid dynasty with some success. “An army was handed over to you,” writes Fronto to his disciple Verus, “corrupted by licence, luxury, and long ease. The soldiers at Antioch were constantly accustomed to applaud actors, and were more frequently to be found in the grove of the neighbouring cook-shop [a sarcastic allusion to Daphne, that haunt of Apollo and the Muses] than under their own standards. Their horses were rough with neglect, but the arms and legs of the warriors were plucked clean of hairs; their clothes were far superior to their weapons; their breastplates would tear at a touch, but their horses were saddled with cushions stuffed with feathers. Instead of mounting with a spring they crawled up with the help of knees and shins, while their spears were hurled so feebly that one would think they were of wool. They played dice constantly in the camp, and either slept all night or spent it in drinking.”

Trajan, during his first visit to Antioch in 114, previous to the Parthian War, dedicated to the god of the Casian Mount from the spoils of Dacia two silver goblets and the horn of a wild ox set in gold. The poetical dedication, composed for the offering by one of his generals and destined successor, records how “Trajan, son of Aeneas, king of men, offered the gift to Zeus Casius, King of the Celestials,” and invited the god to bring the conflict with the Achaemenians to a successful issue, so that ill future he might “look with joy on the spoils of Arsacids and Getae alike.” Trajan also completed the theatre beneath the Acropolis, and received gifts and greetings from Abgar, King of Osrhoene, who wished to keep on friendly terms with both parties in the coming struggle. It is uncertain to which visit we are to refer the persecution of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and other Christians, even if Trajan were really present in the city at all.

The great earthquake at the end of 115, one of the most violent on record, occurred while Trajan was wintering at Antioch after the conquest of Mesopotamia. The Casian Mount seemed about to overwhelm the whole city, and the emperor found it desirable to remain for some days in the open circus, as less dangerous than the palace, from which, according to tradition, he was lifted through a window by supernatural agency. This is doubtless the shock to which Juvenal refers when he speaks of the gossiping woman who collects rumours at the gates of Rome—that Niphates has flooded the fields of Armenia, cities totter, and lands are engulfed.

Hadrian was legate of Syria, and as such in residence at Antioch, when Trajan’s death opened the succession to him. The usual omen-mongers duly pointed out that the day before the news came lightning fell harmlessly by him from a clear sky. He left to arrange for the despatch of Trajan’s remains to Rome, but then returned to Antioch for some months to provide for the government of the East and the cession of Trajan’s eastern conquests. He presented several buildings to Antioch and a theatre to Daphne, but like other emperors who made any stay soon incurred the dislike of the citizens. This was more apparent in a subsequent visit, when Hadrian, disgusted with the idleness and inefficiency of the soldiers, took strong measures to enforce discipline. The satirical wit of the inhabitants was shown in the usual way, and in order to punish them Hadrian is said to have entertained the design, put into effect by Septimius Severus, of separating Syria from Phoenice, that, as Spartianus says, “Antioch should not be called the metropolis of so many states.” Indeed, it was clear that a capital situated at one corner of a vast province was not a suitable military centre; revolts in Palestine, where there was serious disaffection at this time, could not easily be checked, while the discipline of the garrison left much to be desired. Hadrian again showed his respect for the solar Baal of Mt. Casius by making a pilgrimage to the top by night in order to see the sun rise. He was preparing to offer a victim in the open-air shrine when a storm broke, and the lightning glanced between the victim and the priest.

Under Antoninus Pius there was a destructive fire, and perhaps as part of the rebuilding scheme the emperor at his own expense had the space between the colonnades of Tiberius, as well as some other streets, paved with Egyptian granite. The record of this benefaction was engraved on a tablet and set up by the gate of the Cherubim (the west or Daphnetic gate), from which side the work began, and this still lasted in the sixth century.

In the reign of M. Aurelius Antioch again became for a time an imperial residence, in consequence of a renewal of the Parthian wars. The emperor’s colleague L. Verus spent four years in the district, ostensibly engaged in raising troops and supplies for the campaigns which the former jurist the Syrian Avidius Cassius ably carried out, enforcing discipline without incurring unpopularity. Many stories were told about Verus’ luxury and frivolity. He frequented venationes and gladiatorial shows; he spent the heat of summer among the groves of Daphne; he invited slaves to his table on festival days; allowed himself to be openly jeered at in the theatre, and when he left was attended by a large train of actors, flute-players, conjurers, etc., “with whose entertainments,” the biographer remarks, “Syria and Alexandria regale themselves.” Even at this date the Orontes flood, which washed down the drainage of this vast city to the sea, had not ceased to contaminate the waters of the Tiber. Aurelius conferred some marks of favour on Antioch, and one of his daughters was married to a native, Claudius Pompeianus. He rebuilt a public bath ruined by the earthquake under Trajan, and founded a museum and temple of the Nymphs. Yet the restlessness of the populace led them to acclaim the ambitious schemes of the successful general Avidius Cassius (175), who, professing that Aurelius was dead, assumed the sovereignty at Antioch. His claims were widely accepted, and the local orators delivered adulatory speeches about him, with corresponding depreciation of Marcus. When the tyrant had fallen as the result of a military mutiny, the philosophic emperor had the difficult task of dealing with this turbulent and untrustworthy capital. On arriving in Syria he at first refused to visit it, issuing a severe edict which forbade the holding of public spectacles and gatherings, even the delivery of public speeches. Finally, he forgave it, and paid a visit before returning to Rome.

Several buildings were attributed to his son Commodus—a bath, the Xystus, or exercising-ground, with a temple of Olympian Zeus near by, and the rebuilding of a temple of Athena. Provision was made for more regular celebrations of the Olympian games, and of the triennial nocturnal festival of Bacchus and Aphrodite called the Maiuma. For the lamps and candles with which the city was illuminated on the latter occasion certain revenues were set aside.

Notwithstanding their ill success with Avidius Cassius the Antiochenes made a second attempt after the fall of the Antonine dynasty to foist a candidate of their own choosing on the Empire, and with still more disastrous results. C. Pescennius Niger, the Syrian legate when Pertinax was murdered, had restored the discipline of the legions and won general favour in the province. His private life was good, but he was naturally indolent, and by providing constant shows and facilities for idleness and amusement had made himself looked on as a kindred spirit by the Antiochenes, who, the historian remarks, celebrate festivals through almost the whole year in the city or suburbs. When the Syrian army decided to shake off its allegiance to the feeble Didius Julianus, it was thus felt that Niger would be a successor acceptable both to soldiers and citizens. His harangues were enthusiastically received, a purple robe was thrown over him, he was led in state to the temples of the city, and with torches waving was escorted to his house, which was now regarded as a palace and adorned with the imperial emblems (A.D. 193). Coins with his portrait and titles appeared from the mint of Antioch, and embassies arrived from many countries. The younger citizens impulsively enlisted in his armies, though their military experience by no means fitted them to face the formidable Pannonian legions which the African Septimius Severus was bringing against them. Niger proved blind to the approaching danger, and wasted his time on feasts and shows, while Severus, in an address to his own soldiers, was able to sneer at the accomplishments of his rival’s citizen ad­herents, which consisted chiefly in elegant and sportive pleasantry. After his first defeat near the Hellespont Niger retired to Antioch to gather fresh troops and money, and also decided to make an end of the opposition of Laodicea, which, with its traditional jealousy of the Syrian capital, had declared for Severus. Laodicea was ravaged with fearful severity by his mercenaries. Niger, when taking the field a second time, had in his ranks almost all the able-bodied youths of Antioch, who had not yet lost confidence in their hero. When the final defeat near the Gulf of Issus was announced the inhabitants, fearing the worst, began to flee, and Niger on his return found the city full of wailing for lost sons and brothers. The unhappy pretender sought shelter in a suburb, was pursued by the horsemen of Severus, arrested, and executed; or according to another account, met a like fate when hastening towards the Euphrates in the hope of reaching Parthia. Severus, finding that the defeated army also contemplated seeking refuge among the barbarians, granted an amnesty, but showed his hostility to Antioch, where he had been openly derided by the citizens, by taking away its autonomy and degrading it to the rank of a village, ruled by the local authorities of the restored Laodicea. Other punishments were inflicted, pro­bably a prohibition of shows and festivals.

After the Parthian War Severus rested at Antioch for a time, and there his eldest son, a Syrian on his mother’s side, assumed the toga virilis and entered on the consulship with his father. On Caracalla’s petition the autonomy of Antioch was restored, but Phoenice was now erected into a separate province with another capital. Some new buildings were constructed, as the public bath Severianum and another, probably beyond the river, called Livianum from a former owner of the site, and established by the magistrates, on Severus’ suggestion, from surplus revenues. Caracalla, who seems after his accession to have granted Antioch the now almost meaningless status of colony, was magnificently received there in the course of his eastern campaigns, and organized gladiatorial shows while collecting troops for the Parthian War. A bad administrator, he yet persuaded himself that he was extremely active, and wrote to reproach the Roman Senate for its indolence. Before leaving Antioch for the expedition from which he was never to return, he had a terrible nightly vision of his dead father brandishing a sword, and crying, “You have killed your brother, and I will kill you!”. This ill-fated brother Geta, whose reign had not extended beyond a year, is said to have formed the plan of moving the seat of empire to Antioch or Alexandria, which he thought not much inferior to Rome in size; so clear had it become that neither foreign attack nor internal seditions could be adequately checked from the banks of the Tiber.

Julia Domna, widow of Septimius and daughter of the Emesene priest Bassianus, held her court at Antioch during the war, and was there warned by an African soothsayer that his countrymen Macrinus and Diadumenian should gain the crown. When the news came that the treacherous prefect had procured the death of his master Caracalla, Domna, little cause though she had to love her son, broke into loud laments at finding herself reduced to a private station. At first she was allowed to keep her rank and attendants, but Macrinus, finding that she used disrespectful language about himself and had not abandoned her claims to sovereignty, ordered her to leave Antioch, whereupon she voluntarily ended her life.

Antioch next became the headquarters of Macrinus, while the representatives of the Severi—Elagabalus, Alexander, and their female relatives —gathered strength at the ancestral city of Emesa. There, by appealing to local sentiment and the superstitions of the eastern legions, they were able to raise sufficient troops to defeat the western supporters of Macrinus in a pitched battle at Immae near Antioch, and raise the young Antoninus, later nicknamed Elagabalus, to the throne. Antioch, on making a donative to the victorious army, escaped any punishment (218). Antioch is again prominent in the first war against the new Persian dynasty of Sassanidae, who had now replaced the decadent Arsacids, and became the chief eastern enemy of the Empire for four centuries. The young emperor Alexander, like his cousin and predecessor of Syrian birth, brought forces from Italy and Illyria to Antioch, and there completed their training. He also received an embassy from the new Persian king Artaxerxes, claiming the cession of all the possessions of his Achaemenid ancestors in Asia and Egypt. The Syrian legions were in their usual corrupt state, spending their time in warm baths and dissipation. The emperor had the more insubordinate arrested and imprisoned, and, when a mutiny broke out in the legions, exposed the prisoners in bonds round his tribunal. The main features of his harangue to the soldiers are probably correctly reported.1 It was the discipline of their ancestors, he said, that held the State together; the laxity of the last reign ought not to be imitated, nor should Roman soldiers love, drink, and bathe like degenerate Greeks. Their provisions, clothes, and pay were all gifts from the emperor, raised from the provincial revenues. When he threatened the offenders with capital punishment indignant shouts were raised, and Alexander, imitating a greater predecessor, addressed the men as civilians—"Depart, Quirites, and lay down your arms.” The malcontents accordingly drifted off to their various houses of call in the city, and their ensigns and arms were collected in the palace. Soon they begged to be reinstated and fought well in the Persian War; but Alexander had the tribunes executed for allowing their soldiers to revel at Daphne and, by their sympathy, encouraging the outbreak. At the end of the campaign Alexander returned to Antioch, sick and dispirited, for, though the Persians had been compelled to abandon their claims, no great success had been gained. The cool and well-watered city refreshed him and his men, exhausted by the burning plains of Mesopotamia; and he proceeded to distribute such booty as had been collected, remaining till the hostile armies had dispersed. On one of these visits Mamaea, the emperor’s mother, is said to have summoned Origen from Egypt to Antioch to converse on religious matters, and Christ was one of the benefactors of the human race whose figures Alexander kept in his private oratory.

Antioch was more seriously threatened by the Persians in 243, early in the reign of the second Sassanian king Sapor (240-271), whose activity was attended by a definite decline in the Roman power in Asia. For a time the menace was averted through the energy of the young emperor Gordian and his able lieutenant Timesitheus, who visited the city with a powerful army. Yet the military changes of the time, while strengthening the frontier, had the effect of leaving Antioch almost ungarrisoned; and during the unhappy reigns of Valerian and Gallienus it twice fell into the hands of the barbarians, and had the ignominious experience of being ruled by a tyrant resting on Persian support. This man, variously named Cyriades and Mariadnus, had fled from Antioch to the Persian court owing to some misdeed at home; whether it be true that he robbed his father, who disapproved of his luxurious mode of life, and so carried off much gold and silver to Persia, or was banished by decree of the senate and people for embezzling money designed for the games. The Empire was at this time so weak and distracted that Sapor was easily induced to attempt an invasion, and encamped a few miles off the city to see if resistance were intended (256). The more cautious citizens fled, but the majority, with their usual love of novelty, some, indeed, sympathizing with the idle and luxurious Cyriades, remained, and accepted this worthless Persian vassal as their ruler. Sapor successively conferred the titles of Caesar arid Augustus on Cyriades, who is reported to have murdered his own father during his brief tenure of office. A rising among his own followers brought about his death, and the Persian garrison was massacred, perhaps the origin of the strange legend quoted on another page.

By the time the aged emperor Valerian arrived in Syria with a powerful army, Antioch had reverted to its allegiance. Valerian, however, was utterly defeated and ended his days in prison, and the Persian monarch took the opportunity of punishing Antioch more severely. The incidents of this second capture (about 260) impressed themselves on the popular mind, and are recorded in some detail by a native of the city, Ammianus Marcellinus. The citizens were crowded in the theatre under the cliff, with their backs to the mountain, silently watching the improvisation of a male and female mime. Suddenly the woman caught sight of a number of armed Persians on the heights above, and cried—"If I am not asleep, here are the Persians!”. The audience turned their heads, a shower of darts fell, and the gathering broke up in wild disorder. No resistance seems to have been attempted, part of the city was burned, many citizens who were walking about as if in peace-time were cut down. After firing the neighbouring villages the Persians retired, loaded with booty, and driving a large crowd of captives before them. When joined by prisoners from other parts of Roman Asia they were harshly treated, kept with insufficient supplies of water, and eventually forced a way into Susiana, and compelled to toil at some great engineering works. In particular a wide dam was raised at Sostar under the direction, we are told by Persian chroniclers, of engineers summoned from his own dominions by the captive Valerian, and used for spreading river water in the higher-lying fields. Centuries later this dam was still called from Valerian Bend-i-Kaiser. There seems no reason to doubt this story, but Persian arrogance chose to represent Valerian himself as having been in command when Antioch fell, and having been carried away with the other captives.

Though Sapor left no garrison, imperial rule was not re-established, and a great part of Syria soon passed under the sway of the ambitious Palmyrene dynasty, which after the death of Odenathus assumed a position of independence. Zenobia had as her representative at Antioch the heretical bishop Paul of Samosata, and apparently coins were issued there in the name of her son Wahbalathus. Seleucia, having direct sea communication with Europe, remained faithful to the Empire; and, when troubles nearer home were sufficiently overcome to enable the emperor Aurelian to pass into Syria (272), he had no great difficulty in dislodging the Palmyrenes from Antioch, where the rule of a barbarian dynasty was unpopular, even though the local government may have been left undisturbed.

Aurelian found the enemy encamped along the Orontes close to Antioch, and by means of a feigned flight drew the queen’s heavy cavalry into a useless pursuit, in the course of which the imperial force turned and slaughtered the exhausted Arabs. The fugitives retreated into Antioch, but their general Zabdas, fearing lest the citizens should revolt on learning the loss of the battle, led an elderly man arrayed as an emperor through the streets, professing to have taken Aurelian prisoner. The next night he stealthily escaped with Zenobia and her army to Emesa. The citizens gladly received Aurelian, who, several years before, had had an omen of his future elevation in the fall of a purple robe hung out as a decoration on to his shoulders while he was being brought wounded into Antioch after a battle. Many citizens had already fled, fearing punishment for their adhesion to Zenobia, and the emperor issued a general amnesty. After settling the affairs of the city he found it necessary, before continuing the pursuit of the queen, to dislodge a hostile detachment which still occupied a hill over­looking Daphne. The Romans locked their shields and forced a way up the slope under a shower of darts and boulders. As they neared the top some of the Arabs leapt off the cliffs, others were pursued and slain, and the rest of the imperial army, waiting below, joined in the destruction. After ending his campaign and capturing Zenobia, Aurelian returned in triumph to Antioch, leading his illustrious captive on a dromedary, and she was for three days exhibited in chains to the populace before continuing her journey to Rome. There were other questions to which Aurelian had to attend, one being a serious revolt of the numerous artisans employed at the imperial mint, who complained of the loss of certain established dues. Probably the emperor had suppressed some profitable frauds, a policy which led to a similar outbreak of the monetarii at Rome. There was also a dispute as to the episcopal succession, which the Church of Antioch condescended to submit to the judgment of the heathen emperor. Aurelian wisely decided in favour of the claimant who was acceptable to the Roman See, and the arrogant and disloyal Paul of Samosata retired in disgrace from the city. Next year (273) we again find Aurelian at Antioch on his way to suppress a second revolt at Palmyra, and his unexpected arrival while the citizens were absorbed in watching their favourite chariot races caused great commotion.

In spite of his successes the East remained in a disturbed state, and there were more attempts to set up local tyrants before the carefully thought-out hierarchy of Diocletian and Constantine brought about internal peace and order. Saturninus, who commanded part of the forces along the eastern limes, had made preparations for adding a new quarter at Antioch; but before the work was completed he attempted to make himself independent, and was put to death at Apamea. Under Diocletian himself came the abortive attempt of Eugenius, the commander of a military detachment which was being employed in deepening the harbour of Seleucia, and succeeded for a short time in occupying Antioch, then apparently entirely ungarrisoned.

Diocletian spent much time at Antioch. It was the base for the wars carried on by him and his colleague Galerius against the Persians, which secured for the Empire a long respite from the attacks of these persistent foes, and here, after an initial failure, Galerius had to follow the chariot of his Augustus on foot as a mark of disgrace.

As a result of the subdivision of the Empire carried out under Diocletian’s direction, Antioch was henceforth the direct capital only of the comparatively, small province of Coele Syria. It continued, however, to be regarded as the metropolis of the whole East, a position also accorded it in the ecclesiastical system of Asia; and as a result of the great increase in the number of officials it became the residence of some of the highest civil dignitaries. Among these was the Comes Orientis, who, from the time of Constantine, supervised the government of the various provinces composing the vast Asian diocese; and frequently also one of the magistri militum, who settled the position of the various frontier garrisons stationed along the Syrian limes, and were responsible for the safekeeping of this bulwark against Persian and Arab aggressions. The consularis of Coele Syria was also in residence, and these, with other officials, would have each his own tribunal with the usual staff of advocates, secretaries, etc. We thus find developing fresh schools of rhetoric and logic. Both sophistical rhetoric, the chief educational instrument of the time, and Aristotelian logic were eagerly studied by prospective pleaders, and the sophists of Antioch won so wide a reputation that disciples crowded in from other parts. The Church organized schools on somewhat similar lines, devoted both to the study and interpretation of the Scriptures and to the art of popular preaching, which reached a high level in the ensuing century. Although garrisons are no longer found, an important manufactory of arms was established by Diocletian, who also rebuilt the mint, ruined by a recent earthquake, and it was one of the most prolific of the Roman mints in the fourth century.

Wars and rumours of wars with Persia in the two next generations caused a succession of emperors to be constantly in residence, often accompanied by large armies. Their policy was very likely a mistaken one; the real threat to the Empire was on the side of the Rhine and Danube, not from any old and unexpansive Oriental despotism. Yet the conditions of the period, and the importance of Antioch as a military and ecclesiastical centre, led to the preservation of many particulars as to the life and manners, the leading men, and literary pursuits of the fourth century, such as are completely lacking for those which preceded. In fact, when we look back on the first three centuries and a half of Roman rule we are struck by the scarcity of detailed or first-hand information about one of the leading cities of the Empire, due partly to the absence of inscriptions, partly to the fewness of native writers. We are thus thrown back upon stray allusions in general historians who treat of the eastern wars on short descriptions in geographers, and on the occasionally minute but confused and often unreliable information, derived from local acta and records, and now embodied in the chronicles of Malalas.

The characteristics which reappear in the better-known fourth century are already visible. The people, even in these earlier centuries, were devoted to shows, chariot-races, and theatrical performances; they had a keen and satirical wit, and considerable material wealth resulting from the possession of landed estates and the profits derived from the caravan traffic with the Far East. They cared little about their membership of the Empire, were ready to acquiesce in separation under a local ruler, and even had no great objection to Persian over­lordship. Emperors in order to gain credit would adorn the city with splendid baths, theatres, and temples, but they were often received with jeers, and their subordinates fared no better.

The population was a floating one, settlers coming from many parts of the Greek world, while Antiochenes frequently sought their fortune in the West. Language and civilization were predominantly Greek; Aramaic was little used in the city, though lasting on in surrounding villages, and reviving later as monasteries of Syrian origin grew up in the district. Yet the presence of a large Semitic element in the population is unmistakable. The constant propitiation of evil powers, the talismans and amulets set up on every side, the solemn processions to worship on hill-tops, the bazaars crowded with throngs of pleasure-seekers, the fierce and objectless riots, the traditions of human sacrifices, probably not entirely unfounded, are enough to suggest that the boasted Athenian ancestry meant very little, and that the received derivation of Orontes from Oriens, even if not acceptable to philologists, embodied a real truth.

 

CHAPTER VI. A SKETCH OF CHURCH HISTORY

 

As the home of the first Gentile Christian Church Antioch could claim in a more real sense even than Jerusalem to be the mother of the Churches of Asia Minor and Europe. It was the Antiochenes who first insisted on discarding the trammels of the Mosaic law, and their position on the high-road to Asia Minor, both by sea and land, made their city the natural starting-point for the various missionary journeys which carried the Gospel message into Pisidia, Galatia, the west coast of Ionia, and eventually to Macedonia and Greece. It was probably a recognition of this fact which procured for the Church of Antioch and its patriarch a primacy throughout the whole East. The readiness with which the earliest missionaries gained adherents is no doubt due not only to the residence in Antioch of Jews of the more liberal type, less bound by the letter of the law than their countrymen in Palestine, but to the large body of Hellenic proselytes whom Josephus mentions as attending the services of the synagogue, and almost regarded as part of the Jewish body.

Seleucus from the first gave Jewish settlers equal rights with the Greeks, and the colony, augmented by voluntary settlers, prisoners, or fugitives, steadily increased through the Seleucid age. A synagogue, probably in the eastern quarter or Ceratium, near the gate afterwards known as St. Paul’s, became richly adorned and filled with fine offerings. It received from Antiochus Eupator a number of sacred objects brought by his father Epiphanes from Jerusalem, as well as the bones of the seven Jewish brethren, called the seven Maccabaeans, who had been put to death at Antioch by Epiphanes with circumstances of great cruelty, and of their mother Asmunit. The Jewish influence on the early Church is evidenced by the cult paid by the Christians to these martyrs, whose festival in August, in origin merely a reflex of the Jewish day of mourning in Ab for the destruction of the Temple, was regularly celebrated at Antioch; and even Chrysostom, a determined opponent of Judaism, delivered a homily on one of these occasions.

Another synagogue existed at Daphne, where a colony of Jews seems to have followed Onias into exile under Epiphanes during the government of the Hellenizing Menelaus, and others were banished to this suburb, which had recently been enlarged, after the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey. There were several resident doctors of the law, and attempts were made to identify Antioch and Daphne with places mentioned in the Old Testament, as Hamath (Epiphaneia) and Riblah. Later it was made the scene of some Ebionite legends, as those relating to conflicts between the Apostles and Simon Magus.

Even when Christianity had been firmly established Jewish rites retained a curious attraction for converts. Christians, especially women, would visit synagogues on the Sabbath or festival days, they observed Jewish rites, often took disputes to Jewish judges, repaired to synagogues, those “temples of idolatry, no better than a theatre,” as Chrysostom describes them, to take oaths of special solemnity. Many would visit the mysterious underground Jewish shrine at Daphne, where nocturnal visions were supposed to be obtainable. The first canon of the Synod of 341 makes special provision for the complete separation of the Easter festival from the Passover.

The effect of this strong Jewish element, united no doubt to other Semitic pre-existing tendencies, is noticeable enough in Antiochene Christianity. One of the most distinctive features of this is the resolute refusal to allow any subdivision in the Godhead. Whether the Arian or the Nestorian explanation of the Incarnation were adopted, members of this school insisted that the Founder of their faith was a true man, not a supernatural phantom, sharing indeed in divine insight and omniscience, but not in such a way as to impair the true unity of God. So, too, it was among the Antiochene Nestorian school that we find a determined opposition to that most marvellous transformation in history, which eventually raised the modest Galilaean peasant woman to the vacant throne of Cybele and Isis. It is dangerous to insist on the influence of earlier faiths on the special school of Christianity adopted, but it is hardly possible to miss here the survival of strict Semitic monotheism; and it is not surprising, in view of the character of earlier Egyptian religion, that its principal opponents should belong to the Alexandrine school.

The tradition that St. Luke was a native of Antioch is not older than the third century, but it we admit the Lucan authorship of the Acts it is largely substantiated by that narrative. It is, however, impossible to say whether the writer had been a Jewish proselyte previous to his acceptance of Christianity. He seems not to have been a member of the Church of Antioch, but possesses much local information. The only deacon whose nationality he records was an Antiochene proselyte; he knows the nationality of the first preachers to the Gentiles there, and the names of the leaders of the Church, though most were not men of note. He carefully distinguishes the pre-existing Church from the prophets who came down from Jerusalem, and shows how the resistance of the converts of Antioch brought to the front the burning question of Gentile circumcision. It has even been stated that the symphonia in the parable of the Prodigal Son was really the name of an Antiochene musical instrument.

From the first this Church presents a marked contrast to that of Jerusalem. The latter was confined to Jews, the Apostles were its religious guides, the missionary spirit was not strongly developed. When about A.D. 40 the persecution following on the death of Stephen drove out the Hellenist or progressive element, many of these, including men of Cyprus and Cyrene, retired to the Syrian capital, leaving the Apostles still at Jerusalem. Thus a Church of laymen came into existence, without direct apostolic sanction, open to believers of every race, and first assuming a distinctive name. A complete religious community was already established before the arrival of Paul and Barnabas, no doubt baptizing and ordaining on its own authority; and the conflict described in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts shows how this type of faith eventually triumphed over the more timid semi-Jewish attitude of the Apostles and elders at Jerusalem.

When Jerusalem had been reduced to a heap of ruins, with no apparent hope of restoration, and the powers of evil were still enthroned on the seven hills by the Tiber, it is not surprising that the thoughts of the exile in Patmos, seeking to encourage his readers by the promise of a better world which should take the place of the selfishness and cruelty of the age, should revert to the finest city in the East, the first home of the Christian name, where the faith had never yet been persecuted, and from which it had been carried to the farthest parts of the known world. From the great and high Silpian Mount he looks down on the vast walled enclosure, the marble colonnades glittering like glass, the pillars with their gilding making the whole city seem as of pure gold. The cherubim which since the time of Titus guarded the Daphnetic gate have become twelve angels; the life-giving waters of the Orontes passing through the midst of the streets—streets which alone in the cities of the Empire were so brilliantly illuminated that there seemed no night there—were overhung on either side by plantations of fruit-trees. At the widely open gates the rich eastern caravans were constantly pouring in the glory and honour of the nations. Yet it was an Antioch purified and sanctified that alone could deserve the title of a new Jerusalem. Its countless heathen shrines have disappeared, the grosser elements in its society, the sorcerers, the fornicators, the murderers and idolaters, have been forced outside its gates. The old Jewish idea of a garden Paradise with which the Scriptures open has, by the time their close is reached, been overborne by that of the splendid Hellenistic city-state.

The respective shares taken by Peter and Paul in the development of the Church are difficult to determine. The latter made a considerable stay, and throughout used the city as a starting-point for his missionary journeys. The confused legends as to the seven years’ episcopate of Peter are hardly worthy of consideration, and the only Biblical reference to his presence in Antioch suggests that his views were not altogether in harmony with those of the local Church. Eusebius calls Euodius the first bishop, other authors make Peter succeeded directly by Ignatius, who was a writer of considerable note, and the first Antiochene martyr of whom we have any record. For some unknown cause, for there was no general persecution at the time, he was condemned by the Roman authorities at Antioch (tradition, not of a trustworthy kind, says by Trajan himself) and sent to Rome. He was there torn to pieces by beasts in the Flavian amphitheatre, but his bones were brought back to Antioch. Ignatius is represented as having been once a hearer of St. John, but raised by St. Peter to the office of bishop. The collection of letters, which he despatched to various churches in the course of his slow journey to the capital under the care of soldiers, is one of the most valuable monuments of the sub-apostolic age. They display an Oriental fervour and excitability, united to a passionate desire for martyrdom. There are allusions to troubles assailing the Church of Antioch from without, but it is not clear whether they were due to popular hostility or direct interference by the Government. He had already, it seems, had to resist Docetic heresies, which denied the reality of Christ’s humanity, an interesting fact in view of the direction in which Antiochene Christianity developed. In his epistle to the Ephesians he has an allusion to one of the pompous heathen processions, with which both Antioch and Daphne were so familiar. His correspondents are here invited all to be fellow-walkers, God-bearers, saint­bearers, in all things bedecked in the command of Jesus Christ.

A martyrium attributed to Ignatius stood in the Christian cemetery outside the Daphnetic gate, and here Chrysostom, who usually preached in the great church of Constantine, delivered a homily celebrating the martyr. In the fifth century, on the suggestion of the Empress Eudocia, the temple of Fortune, in which had been the well-known statue of the Fortune of Antioch by Eutychides, was utilized to receive the relics of Ignatius, which were borne thither on a car with great splendour. The story of the return of these relics from Rome is a very unlikely one, and the bones probably belonged to some unknown Christian of the name whose grave had been observed in this cemetery. What had happened to the Fortune, a familiar feature on the local coinage, is unknown, but the Tychaeum was henceforth known as the Church of St. Ignatius. The anniversary of the translation was kept as a festival with public rejoicings, the patriarch himself delivering an address at the church. At the end of the sixth century fresh dignity was added to the rites, and Ignatius became one of the most widely celebrated saints of the East. His epistles were translated into Oriental languages. Other letters, besides a liturgy, were forged, partly, perhaps, because his views were believed to harmonize with the popular Monophysite teaching of the time.

Theophilus, bishop 170-8, was a prolific writer and took a leading part in opposing the Gnostics. A few years later Serapion helped in resisting the ascetic Montanist sect.

The next well-known name is Babylas (c. 236-50), who perished in the Decian persecution, the first to be felt with much severity at Antioch. Confused legends narrate that he had distinguished himself by excluding from the Church under his care an emperor,—according to some Philip, who had some leanings towards Christianity—in consequence of some crime, possibly the murder of the young emperor Gordian. Babylas died from the effects of torture undergone in prison, and the chains which had bound him were, at his own request, buried with him in an obscure martyrium in the city.

The cult of martyrs was, however, developing, and a century later Gallus transferred the bones to Daphne to counteract heathen influences. By Julian’s orders they were restored to their first resting-place, but soon after a magnificent church was built to receive them outside the walls across the river. The bishop Meletius directed the work, and himself, in the heat of summer, joined in the labour of pulling ropes and carrying stones; and when he died soon after he was buried by the martyr’s side. The church, which was noted for its size and splendour, is still mentioned by Evagrius in the sixth century.

The next prominent name is that of the heretical Paul of Samosata, bishop under Gallienus and Aurelian, an arrogant and ostentatious man, hostile to the imperial connection and a kind of unofficial representative at Antioch of the rebel Palmyrene queen Zenobia. Certain of his own theological views are said to have been acceptable to the Jewish tendencies of the queen, but they are now imperfectly known. He is generally regarded as sharing in the errors of Sabellius, together with the Subordinationist views of certain Alexandrine theologians. To him the Persons of the Father and Son were not distinguished; the latter was only a man miraculously born and penetrated by the Logos, which was an impersonal virtue of God sanctifying the Son and making Him worthy of the divine name. The first Antiochene Church Council of which we have record met in 264-5, under the presidency of Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, to consider complaints; and Paul satisfied the bishops by denying that he held the alleged views. Two other Councils, however, failed to suppress this unpopular bishop, who, in addition to heresy, was charged with extortion, accepting worldly employments, keeping up a great train of servants, sitting on a raised throne in church, having hymns sung in his honour, and letting himself be called an angel from on high. Though in the council of 269-70 Paul was formally deposed and Domninus substituted, he could not be compelled to leave the palace till his protrectress Zenobia had been overthrown by Aurelian. The Council of 269 has an additional interest because it is alleged to have denied the identity of substance of the two Persons, and this was eagerly quoted by semi-Arian controversialists at a later date.

The next prominent theologian of Antioch was Lucian—like Paul, a native of Samosata—who met death with firmness in the persecution of Maximinus in 312. Later he came to be looked on as the originator of the Arian heresy which received such widespread support at Antioch. His chief service to learning was his critical edition of the Septuagint, compiled from a number of earlier MSS., but apparently not based on any study of the Hebrew text. Lucian’s theological views were somewhat indefinite, but there is already a clear trace of Arian tendencies in his belief that the Logos was merely a soul in a human body, and the Son only the first of all created beings. Lucian had a high character for piety and devotion to truth, but his disciples and successors, such as Arius, Leontius, Aetius, and Eunomius, were ambitious and worldly, lacking reverence, and bent on forcing into logical formulae truths transcending human intellect. Whatever may be thought of the tenability of the Arian creed, it may be safely stated that Christianity thus whittled away into a mere moral and philosophical code, would not have been a force for good during sixteen centuries. In spite of court patronage and the merits of a logical and easily intelligible system, this heretical creed soon came to be professed only by barbarian Goths and Vandals, and then died out altogether.

Lucian was the founder of the first theological school of Antioch, and it may be well to say something about the characteristics of this group of scholars and interpreters who continued active till the end of the reign of Valens. Its antecedents are uncertain; Aristotelian dialectic counted for something; perhaps also the example of the Gnostic theologians of Edessa, where Lucian was reared, and their biblical interpretations and commentaries. Paul of Samosata is sometimes regarded as a fore­runner, but he seems to have been isolated in his own day, having certain affinities to the theologians of the next generation, but founding no school himself.

The Antiochenes concerned themselves both with exegesis and dogmatic theology, and mark a definite reaction against the allegorizing of Origen and other Alexandrines, adhering to an historical and grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures. Catechetical teaching was well developed, and helped to stimulate the critical powers, while close attention was paid to history, geography, and national customs, in the hope of elucidating the words of Biblical writers. The school was less definitely organized than that of Alexandria. One prominent teacher would gather disciples, who might in turn become teachers: thus Lucian began, and was succeeded by Diodorus, the teacher of Chrysostom and Theodore, the latter of whom instructed Nestorius and Theodoret.

Though some of Lucian’s pupils were primarily ambitious controversialists, others continued their master’s methods more faithfully, and several were quite untainted by the Arian heresy, such as Eustathius, Meletius, Flavian, and Cyril of Jerusalem. Members of the school rested firmly on the Scriptures, publishing careful commentaries displaying some scientific knowledge, and in a few cases an acquaintance with Hebrew, and continued to resist the Alexandrine metaphysical conception of Christ and to contend for His humanity.

The founder of the second school was Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, a priest of Antioch, who, under the rule of Valens and the heretical patriarch Leontius, when Meletius the orthodox bishop was in exile, helped Flavian in ministering to the persecuted Catholics, held nightly prayer meetings, and visited house after house to give consolation. He had previously studied at Athens, and continued the exegetical methods of Lucian, producing, besides commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, now lost but having wide influence at the time, works on various secular subjects, physics, philosophy, astronomy, and literature. The second school, though it opposed the Arian errors of the first, and included more men of real piety, on the whole followed the same methods. Reality was still preferred to abstraction and allegory, and though Christ’s divinity was fully admitted, these writers strove to bring out the human element in His nature. The Nestorian heresy which resulted from these tendencies, though in form strongly opposed to that of Arius, is really an outcome of a similar attitude. Christ to them was a divine being, but yet a true man, and the divinity was more in the nature of a temporary indwelling than a complete fusion. The Virgin gave birth only to the man, and though she may be called the mother of Christ, was in no sense the mother of God. Thus the later Antiochene theologians approximated, due allowance being made for the miraculous element which was then felt to be a necessary part of all religious belief, to what many of the school usually called modernists are coming to regard as the truth. Diodorus’ own view on this subject was that the Logos had full divinity, but was clearly marked off from the Son of David; there was no absorption of humanity by divinity as the Apollinarians taught.

The greatest thinker among his disciples was Theodore, afterwards Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia, also a native of Antioch, and associated with Diodorus and Flavian during the persecution of Valens. Theodore, who was encouraged by Chrysostom to undertake a close study of the Scriptures, produced a large number of exegetical, dogmatic, and polemical works, displaying an independent critical faculty and a recognition, rare in ancient times, of the progressive character of revelation and of the need of studying prophecies in the light of history. His end was peaceful, and the storm of controversy which arose about his views was some years after his death. His brother, Polychronius of Apamea, also sought to interpret the prophets in the light of history, and was a student of archaeology and of the life and manners of peoples described in the Bible.

John of Antioch, usually known as Chrysostom, though associated with this school, was more of an orator than an original thinker. His copious eloquence, designed primarily to edify, did little towards developing doctrine, and his life of intense activity after his return to Antioch from his residence among the anchorites did not admit of profound study. Having to address large mixed audiences, he is inclined to pass over abstruse problems as insoluble, and even to reintroduce some measure of allegory, however much opposed to the methods of interpretation advocated by his teachers. His information about the Church of Antioch is, however, of great value. He shows how it was already looked on as the natural protector of the distressed, and how the Church which he served not only supported 3,000 poor, but supervised establishments for the care of the sick, of strangers, widows, and Church servants. He even complains that many rich men, mistrusting the charitable disposition of their heirs, had endowed the Church with houses, carriages, mules, and other animals, with their grooms; so that the ecclesiastical officers had to busy themselves with all kinds of worldly cares, collecting rents, wrangling with wine-merchants, corn-chandlers, and so on. He also shows that despite the number of believers, who, in his day, were in a large majority over the heathen, and though many devotees had given up their all to spend their time in prayer and meditation, heathen practices, especially those of a magical kind, still had a strong hold. The New Year was still, as in the days of the Saturnalia, ushered in by “diabolical all-night festivals, jests, abuse, dances by night, and all that ludicrous farce.” The whole city suddenly assumed a cheerful air; expensive clothes and shoes were donned; the forum was decorated; every shopkeeper put out his best goods; unmixed wine was drunk by men and women alike from dawn; gaming went on in the taverns; and such behaviour was thought to form a favourable omen of a cheerful year. Still worse was the hypocrisy of those who, after attending his sermons, “gave themselves up to the Satanic spectacle of horse-racing,” eagerly taking sides with the various factions and drivers, wrangling together and complaining that some horse did not do its best, that another had been tripped up on purpose, applauding the feats of the charioteers more than the preacher’s own sermons, and becoming a mockery to Jews and pagans. Chrysostom’s eloquence, overloaded and exaggerated though it may seem to Western taste, apparently exercised a thoroughly wholesome influence at Antioch, and many able men were induced by his example to give themselves up to the service of the Church. It is thus a matter of regret that his translation to the capital placed him in a position for which his gifts were ill suited, but led to his disgrace and exile.

The next important name among the members of the second school was Theodoret, a native of Antioch who became Bishop of Cyrrus about 423. Numerous works, both exegetic and historical, survive; but the writer, though a disciple of Theodore, was inferior to him in intellectual independence. He still adhered closely to the study of the text of Scripture, and realized the importance of grammatical and philosophical questions. Nestorius, a Syrian like Chrysostom, and like him raised to the patriarchal throne of Byzantium, summed up the tendencies of the school in a particular direction, but was primarily a controversialist. He was chosen as the victim of Alexandrine jealousy which, by procuring his condemnation for heresy, humiliated the rival Churches of Antioch and Constantinople. Later members of the school tended to retire to monasteries, thus losing independence of thought; and before the destruction of the city by the Persians the special tendencies of Antiochene Christianity had been overpowered by the general current of Eastern theology, which was becoming more and more narrow and occupied with externals.

Theological teaching at Antioch was less definitely under official control than at Alexandria, and the numerous monastic schools in and about the city for training monks and clergy had a somewhat limited aim, including little of Greek philosophy or secular learning. Christianity was not, as at Alexandria, a philosophy, and the main object of theological training was to give an insight into the true sense of the Scriptures. Aristotle’s dialectic played a great part in their method, and a sharp line of demarcation was drawn between the natural and supernatural, the divine and human, a tendency which in minds lacking in reverence led to rationalism and error.

The Council of Nicaea confirmed the traditional rights of the See of Antioch over all its provinces, and (as we learn from the canons of the Council of Constantinople) the patriarchate was coextensive with the civil diocese of Oriens, including Syria, Palestine, Cyprus, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. The patriarchs thus had authority over several provinces with their own metropolitans, whom they ordained. Palestine later became directly subject to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, but by the Council of Chalcedon Phoenicia and Arabia, which had also become separated, were restored to the jurisdiction of Antioch.

The heretical tendencies of the Antiochene Church in the fourth century, and the unfortunate schism which led to the existence of rival bishops for many years, weakened the position of the patriarchate, and various rights were allowed to pass to the ambitious bishops of Constantinople. Further, the alienation of the defeated Nestorian and Monophysite sects resulted in the disappearance of Antiochene influence beyond the Euphrates. As the political and economic influence of the city in these parts declined from the establishment of the powerful Sassanian monarchy, so the growth of a Persian Nestorian Church, protected by the Persian kings, and completely separated from that of Antioch in 499, led to the existence of a large body of Christians hostile to the Empire, who no doubt aided in the Persian invasions of Syria in the sixth and seventh centuries.

It is impossible in a work of the present scale to give an account of the numerous sectional Church Councils which met at Antioch in the fourth and fifth centuries, or of the various controversies concerning the validity of the episcopal ordinations. No weighty doctrinal questions were solved, though many creeds were drafted, and the service done by the Church was much more in its literary works than its public conferences, which, like many others of the period, were turbulent and full of ill-regulated partisanship.

The earliest ecclesiastical building, called Palaia, or Apostolic, traditionally ascribed to Theophilus the friend of St. Luke, was believed to stand on the spot where the Apostles first delivered their addresses. This seems to have disappeared in the persecution of Diocletian, and it is doubtful whether the church begun by Constantine and also called Apostolic was on the same site. This cathedral, dedicated to St. Peter, was the scene of Chrysostom’s labours, and, though altered and rebuilt at various times, became the chief religious centre of Antioch for over nine centuries. Its dedication, on being completed in the reign of Constantius (341) after six years of building, was made the occasion of a Church Council, that of the Encaenia, at which ninety-seven bishops attended. It lay at the centre of a vast walled enclosure and was of great height and visible from afar. The ground plan was octagonal, but from the central building stood out various semicircular apses, some below the level of the ground. The high altar stood, unusually, at the west end. The floor was of large flagstones, the walls and columns were covered with precious marbles and marble mosaics, and much gold and bronze were used in the decoration, including statues standing out in relief from the walls. The whole was surmounted by a domical cupola of vast height, covered with gold. The great preachers of Antioch often went out to deliver addresses in churches in the suburbs or adjoining villages; and there was also a custom of holding services in particular martyria, on the day when the martyr was commemorated, at which the patriarch or one of the principal clergy preached. Among ether churches were those of St. Cosmas and St. Damianus; of Cassianus, where the jewelled mantle of Justinian was displayed; of St. Stephen on the west of the city; and the martyrium of St. Leontius. Others stood at Daphne, and the Acts of the Saints mention other suburban churches, not apparently of conspicuous beauty. Among monasteries in the district that of St. Simeon Stylites, among the hills to the north-east, is still a valuable example of fifth-century architecture; and another nearer Antioch between Daphne and the sea, with the same dedication, gave its name to the Port of St. Simeon north of the mouth of the Orontes, which is constantly mentioned in mediaeval chronicles.

 

CHAPTER VII. THE FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES

 

The fourth century was on the whole prosperous; there were no serious earthquakes, no captures by foreign powers, no attempts at secession. The frontiers were well defended, and the consequent commercial activity caused much wealth to flow in. The rapid development of Christianity and the controversies which ensued, both between opposing sects and between believers and heathen sophists or philosophers, helped to strengthen the intellectual faculties of all parties. A regular university system was evolved, with facilities for studying Greek literature, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, theology, and even the long-neglected language and law of the Romans. The “lord of the world”, as the anonymous geographer quoted above calls the emperor, was frequently in residence at Antioch with his civil and military officials; while the decline of Italy and the West raised the relative importance of the eastern provinces, and their capital, as the home of civilization.

Much has been said about the luxury and superstition of the time, and I have not thought it necessary to reproduce the particulars, drawn chiefly from Chrysostom’s homilies, contained in a previous work. A popular preacher necessarily fixes his attention on the vices of a rich and corrupt minority, whose position attracts the notice, often the emulation, of the humbler classes. Other great centres of population at the time were full of such corrupting influences, but generalizations about large masses of men frequently give a false impression. It is clear that intellectual activity and technical skill were by no means lacking at Antioch. The numerous workshops, Libanius says, remained active a great part of the night; building operations seemed ever going on, and every new foundation was laid among the ruins of some earlier edifice. A local art school, where both sculpture and canvas painting were studied, had a wide influence in the fourth century and helped to develop the so-called Byzantine school. The Antiochenes had always excelled in the musical art and the use of stringed instruments; and the churches at this time received trained choirs whose command of antiphonal singing, traditionally referred back to the time of Bishop Ignatius, is specially noted. In the neighbourhood grew up extensive plantations of olives, vines, and other fruits, corn, vegetables, etc., owned in many cases by the richer citizens, and worked in part by free tenants. Though some of these perhaps hardly rose above the condition of serfs, the agricultural class provided an industrious and wholesome element in the population, which may be set off against the swarms of idlers, parasites, and mimes of whom we read so much in the moralists. The carrying trade gave employment to great numbers, and with the decline of Alexandria and southern Syria, as well as the overthrow of Palmyra, the bulk of Far Eastern commerce was apparently concentrated on Antioch and Seleucia.

The first half of the fourth century saw the complete establishment of the Church, which already numbered the majority of the population among its adherents. The great cathedral of Constantine was built, and the religious controversies, chiefly connected with phases of the Arian heresy, absorbed widespread attention, so that Antioch became the scene of several Councils convened to settle them. Church writers also begin to be active, and the various sophistical schools reach their highest development.

From a purely historical point .of view Antioch comes into notice as the ordinary residence of the emperors when Persian wars were threatening, as of Constantius, Julian, Jovian, and Valens. The Caesar Gallus, a nephew of Constantine the Great, also resided here with his wife Constantina during part of the reign of Constantius; and Ammianus the heathen historian, a native of the city and an admirer of Julian, does not spare the defects of that prince’s Christian brother, or of his consort, “that Megaera among mortals, stirrer up of strife, thirsting for human blood.” Spies were employed by them, too insignificant to be recognized, to frequent the aristocratic clubs and collect rumours; they were then let in secretly at the back doors of the palace to report what they heard, exaggerating any evil spoken of the prince while suppressing the good. Gallus himself, with a few attendants armed with daggers, would set out at nightfall, accosting people in shops and at crossroads, asking what they thought of the Caesar, not remembering that in a city where the brightness of the lamps turned night into day, an incognito was hard to maintain. He soon found himself in conflict with the local senate, which, when a dearth was impending, refused to lower prices to an unreasonable extent. Gallus issued an edict ordering the execution of its leaders, who were only saved by the insistence of Honoratus, Count of the East. We learn elsewhere that the daily supplies of the city came in great measure from the estates of these senatorial landowners, who again under Julian resisted artificial tampering with prices. When the famine came, Gallus threw the responsibility on Theophilus, Governor of Syria, and himself left for Hierapolis. The mob thereupon set fire to the house where Theophilus was, and the unfortunate consular was trampled underfoot.

Constantius was known to be on bad terms with Gallus, and, in order to embarrass the former by throwing the guilt on him, the western usurper Magnentius sent a servant to kill Gallus during his stay at Antioch. The emissary, to avoid suspicion, lodged with an old woman in a hut on the bank of the Orontes, and proceeded to win over several soldiers and other followers of Gallus. The plotters were overheard by the woman, and, while they were asleep after a carousal, she slipped out and gave information which resulted in the conspirators’ arrest and execution. This danger was surmounted, but when soon after Domitian, who was sent on a special mission by the emperor, established himself in the governor’s quarters, refusing to visit Gallus in the palace, the Caesar connived at his murder by a mob of soldiers and citizens, who threw Domitian and his quaestor into the Orontes (354). Gallus soon after returned to Europe, and Antioch does not again come to the front till the famous visit of Julian and his army in preparation for the fatal Persian expedition.

Julian had from early days admired the sophist and orator Libanius, head of the dwindling pagan population of Antioch; and before his arrival had shown his solicitude for the heathen cults by ordering his uncle, the Count of the East, to repair the portico of Apollo’s temple at Daphne by transferring marble columns from the palace, and to replace the latter from the spoils of churches recently taken over by the government. He had also conveyed to Antioch a large library which had come into his possession rich in philosophical and historical works, as well as some of the ecclesiastical writings of the ‘Galilaeans.’ This was placed in a temple dedicated to Trajan by his successor, and severe punishment was threatened to anyone who filched from it. This soon after fell a prey to the anti-pagan zeal of Jovian, who, surrounded by his disreputable court, fired the building and all its contents amid loud laughter.

The influx of a large army whose training was to be completed here naturally caused a scarcity of provisions, which was assisted by the recklessness with which Julian sacrificed hundreds of oxen and other victims on the almost deserted altars of the pagan gods, besides causing rare birds to be sought for from remote parts with a like object. The barbarian soldiers, especially Gauls, gorged themselves with the flesh, drank heavily at the various refreshment houses in the city, and frequently had to be carried back to their quarters on the backs of passers-by. Attempts to reduce prices artificially only increased the evil; the retailers and others interested in keeping them up refused to sell at all, and helped to increase the scarcity. Signs of discontent were punished by an order stopping the public spectacles; and after the burning of the temple at Daphne the cathedral itself was despoiled of its valuables, and the Catholics excluded from its use. The citizens could only revenge themselves by their usual lampoons. The beard which Julian wore as a philosopher should, they said, be shaved to make ropes; he did well to impress the figure of Apis on the coins, for he had upset the whole world as a bull tosses its victims. The Misopogon with which Julian tried to retaliate, and which even a Christian writer acknowledges ‘impressed an everlasting stigma upon the city,’ must, though one-sided and overdrawn, take the place for this century of the traveller’s impressions which often help to illustrate various periods in the life of Antioch. Julian was not lacking in nobler feelings; his legal decisions were conspicuously fair, and he could forgive even a personal enemy, like Theodotus of Hierapolis, who had offered to Constantius to put Julian out of the way. But, in the case of Antioch, there was added to his dislike of a city predominantly Christian the resentment of an ascetic of somewhat pedantic tastes against a people who valued pleasure so highly, of a prince with an exaggerated idea of his ability as a ruler against a community traditionally unrestrained in their criticism of those in authority. When the last scene came, and the ill-fated emperor, after setting up a fierce and cruel governor, Alexander of Heliopolis, whom he considered a suitable judge for the greedy and insulting community, was being accompanied to the gate by a crowd, the people, while desiring for him a happy and glorious return, expressed the hope that he would then be milder and more placable. Julian, however, being perhaps not altogether impervious to the sinister omens which had marked his stay, from the wailing of the women for Adonis when he first arrived, to the prophecy of the fair-haired boy seen in the vision at Daphne, declared that they should never see one another again.

Returning to the Misopogon, we find Julian ridiculing the smooth-faced citizens, whose appearance, as well as the softness and luxury of their lives, were like those of their own sons and daughters; he himself did not so greatly appreciate chariot­races, but passed sleepless nights on a pallet bed. In fact, his manner of life was not such as to commend him to a luxurious city devoted to dancers and flute-players, where mimes outnumbered the citizens, where no respect was shown for rulers, and revelry, beginning early in the morning, lasted most of the night. The Phaeacians in the Odyssey were their true prototypes, while their leading men won greater notoriety from their extravagance at festivals than Solon through his acquaintance with Croesus. Though the emperor had enforced law and order, and compelled the rich to be moderate in their legal claims, the authorities had allowed old women to roll about for months together on martyrs’ tombs, praying to be delivered from such a scourge.

He had been punctual in his attendance at the temple rites—those of Zeus, of Fortune, of Demeter, of Zeus Philius and the neglected shrine of Daphne—but was followed by huge and irreverent crowds, who filled the buildings with disorder. Retailers disliked him because they were prevented from selling to inhabitants and visitors at any price they liked, while the landed proprietors, who supplied the wares, were likewise forced to act justly. The local magistrates were interested in both businesses, and were thus doubly injured. Choruses of women were performing every day, birthday feasts were of a gorgeous kind, the very markets were scented with unguents. The city possessed extensive estates, but it failed to maintain even the worship of the historic shrine at Daphne, or to hold any proper enquiry into its wanton destruction.

Jovian, who was elected to take over the com­mand after Julian’s death, though he restored the cathedral to the Catholics and undid most of his predecessor’s work, even in his short stay at Antioch incurred the ill-will of the fickle populace, of whom several more or less witty sarcasms are recorded. When Valens came to the throne more care was needed. A stern and masterful character, he settled in the palace on the island, kept up a military force in the neighbourhood, maintained strict order, and undertook some important additions to the city. A bigoted Arian, he persecuted the Catholics, who were forced to worship in remote parts of the city or away on the hills. Even there, while praying, like the Scottish Covenanters, exposed to rain and snow, they were often dispersed by parties of soldiers. The churches granted to the Catholics by Jovian were transferred to the heretics, while both Jews and pagans began to raise their heads. The festivals of Zeus and Dionysus were openly celebrated, and Bacchic votaries, as in ancient Greece, were again seen hurrying through the Agora. During the exile of the Catholic bishop Meletius, two of his priests, Flavian and Diodorus, ministered to his flock in an obscure meeting-place by the river, and there they were assisted by the Persian anchorite Aphraates. This ascetic, though he had learned some Greek in one of the schools of Antioch, still preached in a half-barbarous tongue. Coming down from his hermitage on a neighbouring hill to the meeting-house in the old Campus Martius beyond the river, he had to pass along the public road which ran between the river and the north face of the palace, here carried across the way to the enclosing wall of the island by a series of arches. Valens, looking down from above the portico, saw the old man hurrying along in a goat’s-hair cloak, and was told that it was Aphraates “on whose lips the whole city hung.” A curious dialogue between emperor and ascetic ensued:

—Where are you going?

—To pray for your empire.

—You might have stopped at home to do it.

—I did, so long as the Saviour’s sheep had peace; now I have to protect them from wild beasts.

Valens uttered some threats, and let him go; but a chamberlain, who had insulted Aphraates, suddenly became mad while preparing a bath for his master, plunged into the boiling water, and met a fearful end. Another of this emperor’s servants showed greater piety. Zeno, who, after being a soldier, amassed a fortune as imperial despatch-bearer, when his master had disappeared in the fatal battle with the Goths at Adrianople, retired from the palace to an empty tomb on the mountain above Antioch. He lived entirely alone, had no bed, light, fire, or cooking utensils; his clothes were old rags, his soleless shoes had to be held on with thongs; he lay on a bundle of hay, and by day sat upon a mat on the stones. Every other day a friend brought him a loaf, while he himself went to fetch water from a distant spring, refusing all aid in the task. This half-century from about 370 was the golden age of monachism. The anchorites were credited with miraculous powers, and received so much popular veneration that the government at times found it prudent to defer to their wishes. In fact, as Theodoret, a native of Antioch, proudly remarks, the mountain was spangled with hermitages like a meadow with flowers. In the fifth century these half-crazed fanatics, of whom Simeon Stylites was the most prominent, were giving place to regular monasteries, which did not despise literary and theological study like the cave-dwellers; and Eastern theology—for the Syrian element here prevailed over the Greek—was correspondingly strengthened.

During the reigns of Valens and Theodosius there is perceptible at Antioch a nervous excitement mingled with vague forebodings of evil, and a desire to find out the future by any means, lawful or unlawful. The old religion was sinking to the level of a magical or necromantic system, the new, embittered by controversy, had not brought all the peace of mind which had been hoped for. The same feeling that ancient civilization was falling, which caused hermits to renounce the world, led others to plunge in frantic dissipation. Amulets and talismans abounded; supernatural figures, the djinns of Eastern imagination, were felt to be passing through the streets. A detailed account is preserved of the magical processes by which a party of citizens sought to learn the name of Valens’ destined successor, a curiosity punished with terrible severity by that gloomy prince. Other evil omens followed. Wolves were heard to howl, night-birds shrieked dismally, the morning sun was mysteriously darkened. When the customary disorders in the streets broke out angry cries were heard of “Let Valens burn alive.” Even the shout of the crier, “Bring wood for heating the baths of Valens,” was felt to foreshadow some evil. Phantoms of the emperor’s victims, a murdered King of Armenia, and those who had been executed for their share in the affair of the magic tripod, were heard in the night hissing forth terrible prophecies in verse. So later, on the eve of the fierce outbreak of 387, a female demon of vast size and weird aspect was seen running high over the streets, flogging the air with a terrible-sounding scourge, as men flogged beasts at the venationes, which were among the amusements due to Roman influence at Antioch. As far as the city itself was concerned these forebodings had no immediate sequel; the Empire was not yet doomed. Yet from the end of the fourth century we are conscious of a changed outlook, a gathering of clouds which darkened both the mental vision and material prosperity. Wealth begins to lessen; the rich become grasping and arrogant; the municipal system, despite the exaggerated praises of Libanius, is overshadowed by oppressive imperial officials; the schools decline, and secular learning is neglected; horrible tortures for guilty and innocent alike are an ordinary part of judicial procedure. The fink with ancient Greece was almost broken, and Byzantinism, as it is customary to call that carefully organized but soulless system of administration, was already apparent.

The architectural and engineering undertakings of Valens were of considerable magnitude, and the east central part of the city near the ravine traversed by the Parmenius torrent was largely remodelled. New baths, were built, a second forum farther east than the old was laid out and carried by arches across the stream. The area was of marble, with a statue of the emperor’s brother Valentinian at the centre; and it was surrounded with basilicae richly adorned with mosaics, paintings, and marbles from Salonae in Illyria. An official residence for the Count of the East was provided, extending as far as the Plethrium. Part of the old Caesareum was demolished, but the apsidal end or concha was retained as a Senate-house.

The outbreak of 387 under Theodosius, of which we have descriptions from several different hands, is one of the incidents which stand out with startling clearness in the history of Antioch. It was caused by the imposition of a new tax designed to meet the expenses of foreign and civil wars, the celebration of the fifth year of Arcadius’ association with his father, and of the emperor’s own tenth year, occasions when large donations were required for the army. The tax chrysargyron, collected quinquennially since Constantine, already pressed heavily on the artisans and craftsmen; thousands of persons were already dependent on the charity of the Church; the land tax was impoverishing the senatorial and landowning classes. Many rich families had likewise been ruined by luxury and the craze for building. Thus all classes and ages joined in complaints against the new imposition. Leading citizens gathered in the praetorium and expressed their grief before the governor, with appeals to heaven, while the crowd outside joined with cries and supplications. Failing to find the archbishop Flavian the crowd, learning that the governor had no authority to make any concession, uttered mutinous language against the imperial family and curses upon the tax. It surged through the pillared hall of the praetorium to one of the neighbouring baths, while many took off their upper clothes, cut the ropes by which the street lamps were suspended, and destroyed everything they met. An attempt to storm the governor’s dwelling failed, but stones were thrown at the statues of the emperor displayed outside, and the mob turned to bronze figures of Theodosius in the neighbourhood. An equestrian statue of himself, a statue of the lately deceased empress Flaccilla, and others of his father and sons were overthrown; they were dragged through the roads with ropes fastened round their necks, and made sport of by street boys. Firebrands were thrown into the house of an unpopular official, and threats were heard of burning the imperial palace. The archers who fulfilled police functions, and had hitherto remained passive, at last bestirred themselves. A volley of arrows dispersed the incendiaries, and the governor, probably the Count of the East, collected some soldiers (the garrison seems to have been a mere guard), and arrested all who had caused fires or overthrown statues. The riot was looked on as a grave offence against the emperor, for though emeutes were common enough the mob were usually satisfied with wrecking workshops and factories. Couriers were despatched to Byzantium to inform Theodosius, and meantime the governor, after a short trial, caused to be beheaded, burned, or thrown to the beasts those who had been caught taking a leading part in the disturbance. Even children who had insulted the statues were slaughtered, and their mothers compelled to look on without a sign of grief. The upper classes, though they had joined in the original protest, had slunk off when the trouble began, or looked helplessly upon the rioters, who consisted largely of foreigners, accustomed to haunt the circus, theatre, and amphitheatre, and to tyrannize over public opinion by their venal applause or hisses. These were the men who, as Chrysostom says, sold their salvation for three obols, attached themselves to some powerful patron, and were always in evidence when citizens or soldiers were pillaging some shop or inn.

Many of the richer inhabitants began to flee as rumours spread that Theodosius intended to raze Antioch to the ground, to give it up to be plundered by soldiers, or to execute the whole senate, designs not entirely inconsistent with the character of an emperor who three years later was capable of such cruelty to Thessalonica. Whole families crowded to the gates with slaves and waggons, and retired to neighbouring towns or villages, where provisions rapidly gave out. Others sheltered in caves, or were torn by wild beasts. Articles of value were buried in the city, artisans lost their employment, markets were empty, theatres and schools closed, even the musical instruments were at last silent. Though the philosophers in their long cloaks went to hide in caves, Libanius their chief, now an old man, played a more honourable part, uniting with the imperial officials to try and check the exodus. The cathedral was crowded, mournful songs were chanted, and prayers offered to God to appease the emperor’s wrath.

It was the Lenten season, when suitable addresses were regularly made to congregations of penitents, and Chrysostom was able to notice a striking improvement in public morals; there was no drunkenness, no improper songs or ribald laughter could be heard, but only psalms and hymns. The tax was accepted without complaint, the statues were replaced, or fresh made; but the senate was so much scattered that no envoy could be sent on behalf of the city till the aged archbishop Flavian himself undertook the toilsome journey to Constantinople, meeting on the way two imperial commissioners, Ctesarius and Hellebichus, a Christian and a heathen respectively. As these officials approached a rumour spread that an army was marching on Antioch, and a general exodus was only averted by the governor, a pagan, Chrysostom regretfully remarks, coming into the cathedral, as the place where the largest numbers were assembled, in order to restore confidence. The envoys had full powers of enquiry and punishment, and at once published an imperial edict closing the circus, theatres, amphitheatre, and baths. As under Severus, Antioch was made subject to the jurisdiction of Laodicea, to which its public land passed, and corn doles for the poor were abolished. All officials who had been remiss in their duties, and persons who by inflammatory speeches or otherwise had been in any way responsible for the outbreak, were summoned to make their defence. Criminal cases were usually tried at night, the lamplight enhancing the gloom of the proceedings, but on this occasion, the trial only began at dawn, the lights being kept burning for form’s sake. In court were present the relations of the accused, shabbily dressed, and in tears; armed soldiers kept order; outside an anxious crowd waited, listening to the sound of the scourge used to extort confessions. On the advice of the leading men the commissioners postponed death sentences till the emperor’s will were known. The guilty were led away chained through the forum and lodged in the Senate-house, where they could walk in an adjoining portico and be visited by their friends. Preparations were made for confiscating their property, their houses were sealed up, and several rich families had to seek the hospitality of strangers.

At this point a phenomenon occurred which struck the imagination of contemporaries. On the invitation of the clergy the “monks from the mountain”, clothed in coarse hair robes or filthy rags, were seen in numbers in the gorgeous colonnaded streets, come to intercede in their rude Semitic speech for their fellow-Christians. One of the more conspicuous of these ‘ athletes of virtue a was Macedonius, a hermit who had eaten nothing but barley for forty years and lived in caves, till advancing age induced him to retire to a hut and indulge himself with bread. He was an uneducated country­man, ignorant of Greek, unable to read, but spending night and day alike in prayer. In the middle of the city he stopped the commissioners, seized one by his cloak, and compelled him to dismount. When told of the sanctity of the old man covered with miserable rags, Caesarius clasped his knees, and asked for pardon. Speaking through an interpreter, Macedonius bade them remind the emperor that bronze statues could be replaced, but to kill men was to destroy the image of God. If the worst befell, the monks were ready to die with the rest. Caesarius accordingly left for the capital to report, and convey petitions, including one from the monks, and these were reinforced by the intercession of Flavian and of the Byzantine senate. Much discomfort had resulted, especially to the weakly and invalids, from the closing of baths, and as confidence returned disorderly mixed bathing parties along the banks of the Orontes again roused the grief of Chrysostom. The news that the emperor had pardoned the prisoners and restored Antioch to its old privileges reached Hellebichus late at night, and early next day' he read the message in the judgment hall; whereupon the forum was covered with garlands and open-air banquets were set out among the colonnades.

A few years later Theodosius, acting on the advice of Antiochus Chuzon, a praetorian prefect and native of the city, undertook a considerable extension of the fortified area, in order to enclose a large number of houses on the west which lay outside the walls. This is not so much a proof of recent growth of population as of the increasing insecurity of frontier defences, which before long exposed the district to Isaurian and Hunnish forays. A new wall was accordingly carried from the Philonauta gate on the north-west to enclose the western suburb, carried across the watercourse which intersected the lower slope of the hills, and rejoined the old wall in the south-western quarter known as Rhodion. Stones for the work were brought from the old amphitheatre on the Acropolis, and the aqueduct which fed the baths founded by Caesar in the same quarter was demolished. The existing bridge over the river seems to have been rebuilt about the same time. Theodosius also beautified Daphne, constructed a palace there, and conferred other favours.

Before passing on to later reigns it may be well to see if any information of importance can be gleaned from the voluminous orations of Libanius, who was not only a professional teacher of rhetoric, but a letter-writer, statesman, and friend of the leading men of the age. A large proportion of these are mere rhetorical exercises on mythological or fictitious themes; but as a champion of the weak and oppressed Libanius has left many particulars of the conditions of his time which contrast strangely with his glowing description of the amenities of the city in his panegyric on Antioch. The pathetic De Vinctis, in the form of an open letter to Theodosius of about 386, calls attention to the custom of imprisoning persons accused but not convicted of minor offences, even when sureties were forthcoming, often as the result of some petty quarrel. Thus the poor, artisans, or slaves suffered, and especially serfs working for rich landholders. If the workers showed any dissatisfaction with their grasping masters a few words caused a soldier to appear, chains were kept ready on the estate, and the gaol received fresh inmates. If wayfarers were attacked by a few bandits, those at whose houses the latter were alleged to have fed or lodged were haled off to prison, though quite ignorant of the crimes; while the accusers amused themselves at Daphne, drove to their estates, and visited other cities, forgetful of the prisoners. The judges, too, displayed little desire to forfeit the goodwill of the rich. Thus the gaol became crowded, prisoners slept standing; the cauldrons of pea-soup and the few vegetables were insufficient to support them, and their wives or sisters had to beg in order to procure food for them. The turnkeys charged large sums for oil for the one lamp allowed, and prisoners were beaten if they refused to pay. Yet the time of the law-courts was wasted with pretentious speeches on trifling subjects, as disputes about the ownership of an ass or a cloak.

Another address to Theodosius, De Angariis, deals with the exactions to which neighbouring villagers were subject through having to supply mules or camels for removing the rubbish from sites where buildings were being demolished and fresh ones erected. Farmers arriving at Antioch might have their cattle requisitioned for a whole day, and receive no payment. The city had lands given by men of old, and received the revenues therefrom. Surely the animals used on them might be utilized when public buildings were in question; and the cost of removing rubbish outside the city should be met from the same fund as the building work itself, instead of allowing private persons to requisition the beasts as they passed through the city gates, sending their slaves to beat the drivers.

A more humorous speech, though even there Libanius tends to imitate the indignant toile of his model Demosthenes, is that On the Carpet. He here denounces the disorderly habits of the students of the time, who resembled the eversores of Augustine’s younger days at Carthage. Some of these had tossed in a carpet the pedagogues who were supposed to look after their behaviour when the lessons ended at midday. One or two of the victims had fallen off and broken their legs, others had run away and remained in hiding. Even assaults on artisans were to be deprecated; but students might surely be content with reviling a goldsmith, bullying a cobbler, beating a carpenter, kicking a weaver, dragging about a huckster, threatening an olive-seller, or fighting one another with fists or gloves. They might well refrain from assaults on men who should be honoured next to the teachers themselves, guardians who, like barking dogs, kept off wolves that sought to lead them astray, and took the place of fathers, who were often too much absorbed by public affairs, and the care of estates or slaves, properly to supervise their sons. Before the end of the speech it appears that all this indignation was inspired by the report that the tossing was instigated by Libanius’ bête noire, the professor of Latin, that “leader in an alien tongue,” who had been established by a governor soon after 387 to spare students the long journey to Rome in order to acquire a language needed for law and administration. Libanius chose to regard the appointment of this rival as a personal affront, and insinuates that the professor had some dark designs of his own, which made him desirous of removing the pedagogues to a distance. This was not the way to repel assaults on the Greek tongue. The speech Pro Rhetoribus is an appeal to the city to make better provision for the teachers of Greek eloquence, who since the spread of Christianity, and as impoverishment increased, had fallen on evil days. Four of Libanius’ colleagues had not even a house of their own, but dwelt among strangers as if they were cobblers; one who had bought a house with borrowed money was still in debt. They could only keep two or three slaves, and these were frequently intoxicated, or insolent from being almost alone. Formerly such teachers gave their orders at the silversmith’s in a lordly way; now they had trouble with the baker about unpaid bills, and had to sell their wives’ earrings and bracelets. The public liabilities made a regular dole in kind inadvisable, but some of the smaller estates belonging to the city might be allotted for the support of the rhetors. Their teaching would thereby be improved and they would be spared the humiliation, already familiar to Roman teachers in Juvenal’s day of having to fawn on officials, cashiers, and underlings. Students came to Antioch from Egypt, Cyprus, Arabia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia, and should not be obliged to follow the teachers to some other city. Caesarea had already enticed away a sophist by the promise of better pay. “Let not such things happen, by Apollo, Leader of the Muses, who looks on all from near at hand, and who did not choose the place because he was balked of Daphne, as children’s stories say, but because he found the old inhabitants more favourable to the Muses than those of other parts.” How different in the days of Zenobius, the speaker’s old master, who had a fine estate, covered With vines, between the Daphne road and the river!

Other speeches tell a good deal about the studies of the time, and it is interesting to see how much the curriculum corresponded to that of an honours course in Greek at a modern university, including few authors not now extant. Calliope, who had a temple at Antioch, was the special patroness of the rhetorical school, which was held in the Senate­house or one of the temples, such as that of Fortune. The students sat on benches and their books were carried by slaves. The teachers wore the philosopher’s beard; they were exempt from city taxes and liturgies, but at this time received little in the nature of a public endowment, depending mainly on the irregularly paid fees. They were divided into small groups or choruses under a coryphaeus, dividing the curriculum among themselves. There was some recruiting to obtain pupils, and occasionally party fights took place between followers of different rhetors. In the summer and autumn months, which were too much interrupted by festivals for regular teaching, oratorical displays were given by local or foreign rhetoricians, sometimes in the presence of governors or court dignitaries. Students often spent several years at Antioch, and men trained in its schools seem to have been sought for elsewhere, despite the manifold temptations to idleness and dissipation, to wagering with the money provided by their fathers at circus races, and to risking grave injury in the fierce riots which were of constant occurrence. The local Senate, Libanius remarks, resembled a chorus of sophists; all, even the youngest, members spoke freely and received every encouragement. The popular assembly followed their decisions like children. Though legally entitled to exemption from taxation, the senators more than made up for it by the liberality with which they supported the multitudes in time of distress, and exhibited chariot races or gymnastic contests, each ckoregns striving to outdo the last. Even the law-courts were like temples of the Muses, whither lovers of rhetoric repaired to listen to extempore legal harangues.

Early in the reign of Arcadius Antioch was the scene of the arrest and execution under circumstances of horrible cruelty of Lucian, the virtuous Count of the East, by Rufinus, the worthless minister of that weak emperor, an incident described in vigorous language by Gibbon. The tyrannical prefect soothed the offended citizens by ordering the construction of an imperial Stoa, finer than any building of its kind in Antioch. In the same reign the Huns penetrated to the south through the Caspian gates and Mesopotamia, and, during the absence of the Roman army for civil wars in Italy, entered Syria and blockaded Antioch for a time. Numerous captives were carried away from all parts of the province, and the northern districts were also exposed to the inroads of freebooters from the highlands of Isauria.

In the reign of Theodosius II the Empress Eudocia paid a visit to Antioch on her way to Jerusalem (444), and in the Senate-house addressed her fellow-countrymen, for she was the daughter of an Athenian sophist. Seated on a golden throne adorned with jewels she delivered a panegyric on the city, apparently in the form of a Homeric cento, like other extant poems in which the empress had a small share. The climax was reached when, amidst loud applause, she adapted the address of Glaucus to Diomede, “From your race and blood do I claim descent.” A gold statue of Eudocia was later set up in the Senate-house, and a bronze in the museum, and the imperial family conferred several marks of favour. Some hot baths were restored, and a basilica, called that of Anatolius, constructed, large and beautiful, well lighted, and having a gold mosaic containing the letters “The work of Theodosius the Emperor.” The doors of the Daphnetic gate were also gilt over, a design which greatly impressed foreign travellers; and at the same time another Antiochus Chuzon, a grandson of the first, provided money for the maintenance of horse races, the Olympian and Maiuma festivals.

Under Leo (458) came a destructive earthquake, and the emperor helped to repair the damage, besides giving a church in memory of Simeon Stylites, who had been buried in Antioch with great pomp a few years before. In the reign of Zeno (483) Antioch was for a short time the headquarters of the rebel Emperor Leontius, whom Verina, the widow of Leo, had stirred up to oppose the reigning prince. He, with his partisans Illus, Pamprepius, and others, sought the favour of the citizens by new buildings and distributions of money. Thus, for the first time since Valens, Antioch became the seat of a court with its state and household officers.

The same reign saw other signs of growing feebleness on the part of the central government. The circus factions were so uncontrollable that the governor had to flee from the city, ferocious attacks were made on the Jews, inspired by a fanatical monk, and the synagogue was burned; but Zeno refused to hold an enquiry. The theological school was now extinct, and Antioch was relapsing into a half-barbarous state, where authority was lax, passions strong and unrestrained.

 

CHAPTER VIII. THE COMING OF THE MIDDLE AGES, A.D. 500-950.

 

The record of the sixth century is almost entirely one of disaster—fires, earthquakes, and invasions—as a result of which Antioch ceases to be a place of much importance, only reviving when the Crusades again raise it to the rank of a capital city. For the first part of it we are mainly dependent on the trivial and rambling Malalas, who, however, as we approach his own time, gives perceptibly less of the marvellous.

In the sixteenth year of Anastasius, Emperor of the Romans, when Cobades was King of the Persians, Symmachus Bishop of Rome, and Flavian Bishop of Antioch, as we are solemnly told by the chroniclers, an alchemist named John appeared in Antioch. He went round to the workshops of the silversmiths, showing gold hands and feet of statues and other small figures, and professing to have discovered a treasure. Large sums were required to exploit this, and at Antioch his professions were readily accepted. On trying the same trick in the capital, John failed to convince the cautious old guardsman Anastasius, in spite of his offering of a gold bridle set with pearls; but was exiled to Petra. His title at Antioch—Bagulas, “the swell impostor”—is interesting as pointing to a popular use of Aramaic at the time. In the seventh year of Justinus and the third of Euphrasius, Bishop of Antioch, a Cilician giantess, a cubit taller than a man of ordinary height, and broad in proportion, was on show in the city, and went the round of the workshops, receiving at each one of the large copper folles.

This period was one of grave internal seditions, faction fights in the Circus, and anti-Jewish disorders. Their motives are now impossible to discover, but the importance they assumed is a token of the weakening of authority and the feebleness of imperial officials. Calliopas, a driver of the Green faction, arrived from Byzantium, and, finding one of the Green stables at Antioch vacant, received the charge of it, and won a victory at the races. When the Olympia were soon after being held at Daphne before a vast assemblage, a disorderly crowd of horsemen employed in the procession, under Calliopas’ leadership, made an attack on the synagogue at Daphne. They pillaged and burned it, killed many Jews, and set up a cross, declaring that the place was to be henceforth the martyrium of the soldier-saint Leontius.

Not long after the Greens openly defied the imperial emissaries Procopius, Count of the East, and Menas, Captain of the Watch. The latter tried to arrest some rioters, who fled to the Church of St. John beyond the river, and Menas with a guard of Goths hastened thither, transfixed the ringleader Eleutherius, who was hiding beneath the altar, cut off his head, and threw it from the bridge into the Orontes. When the Greens followed, carrying the headless body on a litter, Menas and his guards attacked them. In spite of the aid of the Blues he was overpowered beside the Basilica of Rufinus in a street fight, and the Greens seized and fired a number of public buildings. Menas was caught and beheaded, his head hung on a bronze statue in the forum; the Count fled, and his palace also was destroyed; and Anastasius had to send a fresh count, with sufficient support to punish the rioters. In most large cities of the Empire these factions seem to have regarded themselves as champions of municipal independence against the interference of bureaucratic officials, but their existence was clearly a menace to law and order of any kind. It is not therefore surprising that in 522 Justinus found it desirable to put an end to the Olympian games, a frequent source of disorder, which had thus outlasted their Peloponnesian prototype more than a century.

The short reign of Justin became celebrated for the most disastrous earthquake in the whole history of Antioch, one which is said to have claimed no less than a quarter of a million victims, the city being unusually full owing to the Ascensiontide festival (May, 526) It was preceded by a series of disastrous fires, and Justin had already, at the instance of the future patriarch Ephraim, despatched a large sum to repair the damage caused by them. The earthquake itself was accompanied, according to the report of distracted eyewitnesses, by fire shooting- forth from the ground, and consuming many who had been imprisoned beneath the ruins of their houses. Showers of fiery rain also fell from the sky, and swept the faces of those who sought to flee from the scene of desolation. Outside the mountain area hardly a house was left standing, no church or monastery was without grave injury. Constantine’s church, which withstood the first shock, caught fire two days later and was levelled with the ground. Many persons who were dug out alive died soon after from injuries or exposure, and fugitives who got clear of the city were in many cases robbed or murdered by half-savage villagers, whose civilization, as the Empire declined, was approximating to that of the desert Bedouin. Several robbers, however, came to miserable ends, such as the monastery servant Thomas the Silentiary. This villain left the city after the first disaster, set himself up in the neighbourhood of St. Julian’s Gate, and employed servants to plunder other fugitives; but in three days he died suddenly— “so all thanked God.” There were the usual stories of miraculous escapes, and mothers with newborn children came safe out of the ruins three or four weeks after the disaster. Lesser shocks were repeated for the space of eighteen months, and both Daphne and Seleucia were greatly injured. The Patriarch Euphrasius perished in one of these, and Ephraim, Count of the East, who rebuilt the cathedral with timber from the hallowed grove of Daphne, had won so much respect by his humane administration that, much against his will, he was with the emperor’s approval elected to the vacant see. Justin, who had himself resided at Antioch during the Persian wars, as a sign of grief laid aside his diadem and purple robe, and on a festal day entered the Cathedral of Byzantium with his whole court, weeping and in mourning garb. Officials were at once despatched to complete the task of rescue, and protect from plunderers the property uncovered. Others followed with large sums to start the rebuilding. This work had not gone far when the aged and estimable Justin died, and his nephew Justinian had to continue the work of restoration, which was, however, soon interrupted. Aqueducts and bridges had been partly restored before Justin’s death. With the co-operation of the remaining inhabitants, for in the presence of the common danger even Blues and Greens laid aside their hostility, the Church of St. Mary was built opposite the Basilica of Rufinus, another church was dedicated to SS. Cosmas and Damianus, baths, reservoirs, and a hostel for receiving strangers were added. The Empress Theodora undertook the building of the fine Church of St. Michael, and the Basilica of Asterius, despatching marble columns for the purpose from Constantinople. The emperor, when appointing Zacharias of Tyre as Count of the East in place of Ephraim, gave instructions that old usages should be restored, probably a difficult task with a population so much diminished.

In Justinian’s second year, 528, a fresh theomenia, or manifestation of God’s wrath, the sixth in the usual reckoning, though only lasting an hour, destroyed many of the rebuilt edifices, as well as others which had escaped the previous disaster; but the number of victims did not exceed 5,000. The grinding noise was so terrible as to be heard in neighbouring cities, to which many citizens fled for refuge, while others camped out in huts on the mountains. The anger of God was only stayed when a pious man, wrought on by the spectacle of frantic barefooted processions flinging themselves into the snow with wild cries of ‘Kyrie eleeson,’ received in a vision the advice to bid all survivors write on their lintels, “Christ with us, cease.”

It was now felt that the old name of the city brought ill-luck, and on the advice of Simeon Thaumaturgus the title Theupolis was adopted, and reinforced by the discovery of a halting hexameter. The choice was perhaps suggested by the great number of churches in and around it, and the name of Antioch thus disappears from the coinage and official documents till the Saracen conquest. Naturally, however, it remained in ordinary usage, and was adopted by the Arab overlords. Justinian remitted the tribute for three years, granted large sums for restoration, and consoled the upper classes with the title of Illustres. He also presented his own toga richly decked with jewels, which was exhibited unfolded in the Church of St. Cassianus. Owing, however, to some disorders in the theatre the shows which had been so famous for centuries were at last prohibited. At this point we take leave of the discursive but often instructive narrative of Malalas, and have to depend on the scattered but more trustworthy allusions in general historians.

Certain incidents in the history of Antioch which impressed themselves on the imagination of con­temporaries are recorded with remarkable vividness, only to be followed by long periods of obscurity. One such, which aroused the interest of the greatest historian of his age so much that he seems to have made minute enquiries from eyewitnesses, is the siege and destruction by the Persian king Chosroes Nushirvan in 540. In another treatise Procopius also includes a careful description of the rebuilding as carried out with the aid of contributions from Justinian and his consort, and of the changes in the size and contour of Antioch which accompanied it. Some additional information from Persian sources is preserved by Tabari.

Procopius, whose main subject is the successful imperialist policy of Justinian, which led to the reconquest of much lost territory in the west, is by no means blind to the degeneracy and the defective administrative system observable in many cities of the time. His views about Antioch he puts into the mouth of an Arab chief who is described as having a few years earlier advised Cobades, the father of Chosroes, to make a sudden inroad into Syria, which could easily accomplish its object before the Roman garrisons massed in Mesopotamia heard that the Persians were on the move. “Antioch,” he continued, “the first in wealth and population of all the Roman cities in the East, was unguarded and devoid of soldiers; for the inhabitants cared for nothing but festivals and luxury, constantly quarrelling with one another at the spectacles.” This time no move was made, but not long after an omen was believed to have foretold the coming doom. A small detachment of soldiers who, despite the generally unguarded state of the city, had been for some time stationed at Antioch, found their standards, which previously faced the west, spontaneously turned to the east; and they again returned to their original position. This indicated that the sovereignty of Syria was about to pass to an Oriental ruler, as was indeed the case, though Procopius did not live to see it. Even before this, another omen was afterwards thought to have pointed to the same catastrophe, the uprooting of the tall cypresses at Daphne, so strictly guarded by law, in a sudden storm.

When the Persian army actually invaded Syria, and the bulk of the Roman forces was far away, Justinian’s nephew Germanus visited Antioch to examine its capacity for defence. The general result was encouraging. A large part of the wall along the river bank was difficult of approach, and Epiphanes’ ambitious extension of the fortifications across the steep slopes to the south was not less so, except where a broad rock at one point rose outside almost to the height of the battlements. An enemy who held this could erect a tower on it for purposes of attack, or shower missiles into the city. Germanus proposed to cut part of this away and carry a deep trench between the rock and the wall; but his engineers declared that the work could not be completed in time, and the enemy’s attention would be drawn to the weakest point. The citizens resolved to send an envoy to Chosroes, to learn what terms he intended to impose, and despatched Megas, Bishop of Beroea, to the king’s camp near Hierapolis. Among the king’s followers was a renegade, the interpreter Paulus, who had once been a student under a grammarian of Antioch. Chosroes offered Megas to retire from Syria altogether in return for ten centenaria of gold; but, before his answer reached Antioch, two officials sent by Justinian to negotiate with the Persians had arrived. These strongly opposed buying off the enemy, and complained to Germanus of the willingness of the patriarch Ephraim to surrender. Thus, Megas effected nothing, and both Germanus and the patriarch, realizing the hopelessness of resistance, left for Cilicia. As the Persian army approached, many citizens fled, carrying their property with them; and others were about to do the same, when two Roman officers arrived bringing 6,000 soldiers from the Lebanon district; and this encouraged the citizens to resist. The Persians encamped along the Orontes bank, and sent Paulus to make the same offers as before. Ambassadors from the city also visited the king without reaching any conclusion. Next day the inhabitants, crowded on the battlements facing the Persian camp, used insulting language about the king in the hearing of his army, and almost killed Paulus with missiles when he advised them to buy safety.

Chosroes, boiling with rage, determined to attack the walls, and next day, while detailing some of his forces to assail different points on the river front, himself led the largest and best part round to the southern heights. Here at one point the ramparts had been found too narrow to hold a sufficient number of defenders, and the besieged, fastening long beams together, attached them to adjoining towers, thus making a wide platform. The Persians came on, sending clouds of arrows, but the soldiers and the more courageous of the younger citizens made a stout resistance. The enemy, by occupying the fatal rock where the defenders had foolishly neglected to post any garrison, were almost on a level with the battlements, and while a dense crowd fought from the platform the ropes which supported it suddenly broke. Those in adjoining towers, thinking that the wall had collapsed, abandoned their posts and fled down the hill. Lower down, a party of youths, accustomed to the riots which attended the Circensian games, stood their ground; but the soldiers, perceiving that all was lost, and having horses ready waiting, made for the gates, shouting, quite untruly, that a relieving force was at hand, and they must go to meet it. Most of the citizens, with the women and children, also hastened to the gates; but many were trampled under the hoofs of the soldiers’ horses in the narrow streets, which had no doubt been hastily rebuilt after the recent fires and earthquakes. Others were crushed to death at the gates, but the enemy gave little trouble. In fact, Chosroes was anxious to let the defenders go, and purposely left the Daphnetic Gate unguarded, the Persians making signs to the fugitives to take courage. Thus the leading men and soldiers got clear off.

On the mountain side the Persians scaled the walls without opposition, but for a time remained on the battlements, fearing an ambush on the rough ground within, covered with rocks and precipices. When it was found that all organized resistance was over, they came down into the centre of the city, but still had to face a band of high-spirited youths, of whom some had regular arms, but most only wielded stones. Such was their ferocity that at first they repelled the invaders, and, as Procopius somewhat pedantically expresses it, raised a paean, saluting Justinian as Basileus Callinicus. The Persians soon rallied, and in their rage spared none of their opponents, while Chosroes, indignant at this useless defiance, ordered his men to seize and enslave surviving citizens and to pillage the city. The heroism of two Antiochene women is specially recorded. Being pursued by the barbarian soldiery they rushed to the bank of the Orontes, covered their faces with their veils and, plunging in, were drowned.

The king himself came down from the mountain to the cathedral, and caused to be removed and carried away to his own dominions the gold and silver ornaments with the magnificent marbles. This, however, was regarded as a sufficient ransom for the building, and Chosroes, on the appeal of the ambassadors who were still with him, consented to leave the church standing; but the city as a whole was fired. A few houses in the isolated quarter Cerateion survived, the Church of St. Julian and some adjoining houses in another quarter, and the walls, which had proved such an inadequate defence, were left, probably because their destruction would have been too laborious. After a visit to Seleucia, Chosroes went up to Daphne, where he admired the groves and fountains, offering sacrifice to the nymphs. The only damage done there was the destruction of the Church of St. Michael through a misunderstanding. On the day of the fall of Antioch a Persian nobleman was pursuing a young butcher in the vicinity of another St. Michael’s in the Tretus quarter. The youth, being overtaken by the horseman, threw a stone at him, and hitting him on the temple brought him down. The fugitive, appropriately named Aeimachus, drew the Persian’s scimitar, killed him, took his arms and money, mounted his horse and, being familiar with the district, made good his escape. Chosroes in revenge ordered his men to bum this St. Michael’s, but they supposed the better known church at Daphne to be intended.

Though the king soon left for Apamea, and before long quitted Syria altogether, having no intention of making a permanent conquest, he had been sufficiently impressed with the splendours of Antioch to desire to reproduce them in his own dominions. The captives were carried into Assyria and planted in a new town two days’ journey from his own capital, Modain or Ctesiphon. Here they were given baths, a circus, and other places of entertainment, and Chosroes even brought charioteers and musicians together from Antioch and other Syrian towns. The settlers were to be supported at the public expense, to be called the king’s men, and to be under no jurisdiction but his own. If any fugitive of Roman origin were to be acknowledged as kinsman by these citizens he could not be brought back into slavery, even if his master were a Persian noble. Their city was called Antioch of Chosroes. Oriental authorities add that Chosroes had a plan of Syrian Antioch prepared, with a careful statement of the dimensions, number of houses, streets, etc. He then had a city built on the plain called Rumiya (city of the Romans), and when the captives entered the gates they easily found their respective dwellings. Villages on and near the Nai, a tributary of the Tigris, were also settled with Christian captives. A definite tribute was imposed, and the administration of the district was given to a Christian named Alwaz, who had previously superintended the erection of the city. The title given by Procopius apparently represents the official name: Rumiya (an Arabic form of the Persian Rumahan), would only be a popular nick­name. Probably the citizens soon became absorbed in the surrounding population or drifted back to Syria.

No time was lost in starting the rebuilding on the old site. The fugitives who had eluded their pursuers returned; workmen were despatched from other parts to aid them, and a city was soon completed, smaller than of old, but more defensible. We can, however, hardly credit the statement of Procopius that it surpassed its predecessor in beauty. He points out that the ancient plan uselessly enclosed extensive plains and precipitous crags, exposing it to surprise attacks. The gentle plain to the north-east had a vast extension of the walls which was difficult to guard, and this was now abandoned. The new wall was drawn back a considerable distance from the Orontes, so that Antioch henceforth only touched the water by the Bridge Gate on the north-west. In order not to lose the security of a river front a canal was conveyed from the Orontes and carried along under the new wall. Bridges were thrown across this, but the area outside was in times of neglect allowed to become a swamp, which much impeded the Crusaders in their siege. The island quarter was abandoned, together with all suburbs across the river. In Epiphaneia, according to Procopius, the enclosure was also much drawn in. The mountainous district within the walls was barren and hard of access, covered with watercourses and tall masses of rock, so that many paths had no outlets. The new wall enclosed only hills accessible to horses and carts, and Justinian had a well constructed in each tower, thus obviating the danger of drought troubling the defenders. He also took steps to deal with the remarkable gulley on the south-east, which divided the hills and carried down the waters of the mountain torrent Onopnictes. This was apt when in flood to dash over the containing wall and, pouring into the alleys of the city, to do irreparable damage. Accordingly, outside the wall which now crossed the ravine a viaduct was thrown, the Iron Gate of mediaeval travellers, extending up both slopes and causing the stream to spread out into a lake. The water was then gradually carried away through gratings and canals, through which it could flow down to the Orontes without causing damage.

This account is not free from difficulties, which may be cleared up by future excavations. The chief is that the walls still visible and those described in the history of subsequent sieges do enclose large precipitous areas. The citadel, for example, rebuilt just inside the walls in the tenth century on the site of one of Justinian’s buildings, was only approachable by one narrow path. Probably Procopius, desiring to exalt his sovereign’s magnificence, exaggerated the extent of the alterations. As the walls were left intact by the Persians it is unlikely that the emperor would go to the needless expense of destroying and building afresh along the whole mountain area. More likely some dangerous angles were drawn in, but parts of the original enclosure were maintained, though successive repairs and rebuildings have obliterated earlier work.

Within the city only ruins and heaps of ashes were left; individual houses, even the slots and peristyles, were unrecognizable. Builders and artificers were assembled, the rubbish was carried outside the walls, and the level area laid with flagstones. Then the colonnades and squares were marked out, with the cross roads, conduits, wells, baths, and necessary public buildings; while private citizens were helped in the erection of their own houses. The chief church continued to be that begun by Constantine, which the Persians had spared; but Justinian added a large circular church dedicated to the Virgin, with extensive revenues attached, and another of great size called St. Michael’s. He also rebuilt the ruined church at Daphne, constructed hospitals for the sick poor, both men and women, and places of entertainment for visitors and pilgrims; and the mint was again set going. The access to the city on the north-west through the suburb of the Plane-trees was improved by cutting away a projecting shoulder of hill which encroached on the road, making it easily passable for vehicles. To the same period, though perhaps later than Justinian’s time, we may attribute the famous Iron Bridge, crossing the Orontes about four miles above Antioch near its great western bend. It derived its name from two towers, built partly of iron, one at either end, which, if properly garrisoned, make it almost impossible for an army coming from Asia Minor or Aleppo to approach Antioch on the level side.

The various churches and places of martyrdom were soon restocked with relics; about 570 the records of the Italian traveller St. Antoninus of Piacenza, who passed Antioch on his way from Jerusalem, show that the shrines of St. Babylas, St. Justina, and St. Julianus were on view, as well as those of the seven Maccabsean brethren, above whose tombs hung the instruments of their martyrdom. Notwithstanding this, heathenism and its sister magic were slow in disappearing, and a story, of which the main features are probably true, may be quoted relating to one of the last examples of the worship in Syria of the gods of ancient Greece. About 579, in the reign of Tiberius II, a heathen revival began to show itself, most prominently at that ancient centre of Baal worship Heliopolis, or Baalbek, where Christians were few and persecuted. Theophilus, an imperial emissary, was sent to make enquiries, and effected many arrests there and in Palestine. Information reached him that the great Theupolis itself was not exempt from such backsliders; and he despatched an officer to the city to arrest a certain Rufinus who had been denounced as the chief priest of these hateful rites. The latter was found to have left Antioch on a visit to Anatolius, Procurator of Edessa; and, accompanied by a bishop and a magistrate, the officer set out for Mesopotamia. They waited for nightfall, surrounded the house of Anatolius with men, and on breaking in found a festival of Zeus being held and sacrifices being offered. Most of the idolaters escaped, Rufinus stabbed himself, but an old man and woman, who were surprised with all the accessories of sacrifice round them, were forced to give the names of all implicated, among others of Anatolius himself. The latter, with his secretary Theodorus and other accused persons, were sent as prisoners to Antioch, but at first no confession could be extorted, even under torture. At last Theodorus, on being scourged with severity, con­fessed, perhaps with the object of embarrassing his persecutors, that Gregory, Patriarch of Antioch, Eulogius, afterwards Patriarch of Alexandria, and others, had been present at the nocturnal sacrifice of a boy at Daphne, which had scarcely been performed when the whole city shook and trembled. On this fearful intelligence, which recalls an incident in the life of one of Gregory’s predecessors when a law student at Berytus, becoming generally known, the city was filled with dismay. The cathedral was closed, Gregory did not dare to leave his palace, the liturgy could not be performed, nor the chrism consecrated as was customary in Passion Week. Anatolius, in the hope of establishing his innocence, set up a picture of Christ on the wall of his house, but three times it miraculously turned its face inwards, and it was then found that a portrait of Apollo had been inserted in the back. Eventually he was executed, Theodorus died in prison, and an imperial commission put down the remains of paganism. Gregory himself, so the Monophysite chronicler relates, bought the imperial favour and was discharged. The accusation in his case seems to have been a trumped-up one, but that a defeated and decaying creed becomes identified with secret magical rites is a commonplace in the history of religions.

In the same reign of Tiberius (581) an earthquake occurred at midday, shaking many public and private buildings to their foundations and doing much damage at Daphne. Seven years later there followed another only less destructive than that of 526. It came about the third hour after sunset, when the whole city was en fête. At first there was an undulating tremor, foundations of houses were heaved up, and all buildings round the cathedral were overthrown. Of the latter edifice only the apse survived, and the curious fact is recorded that whereas a previous shock had tilted it over on one side so that it had to be propped up with beams, the apse was now left upright. Of Justinian’s Church of the Virgin only the central colonnade remained, and a large part of the districts of Ostracine and Brysia, the latter unknown, was also laid waste. The towers of the Pedion, apparently a building on the site of the old Campus Martius, also fell in, besides churches and other public buildings, among which is mentioned a bath divided into two parts to suit the separate seasons. The number of victims was estimated at 60,000 from the diminished number of persons who appeared to receive bread at the public distributions. These doles are not mentioned in the Codes as a charge on the State, and were probably administered locally. The house where the patriarch was at the time fell in also, but he and the persons standing by him were uninjured, and he was safely let down with a rope. The Emperor Maurice came to the relief of the sufferers, but henceforth we hear of few fresh buildings, and both public and private wealth were clearly lessening.

In the time of Phocas, an incompetent ruler who greatly neglected the eastern defences, the Jews again displayed their turbulence and ferocity. In the course of an outbreak against the Christians they murdered the patriarch Anastasius, dragged his body through the streets of Antioch, with those of several of the leading men, and burned them in the middle of the city. Imperial emissaries were only able to suppress the outbreak by introducing a strong military force, and as a result many Jews were killed, mutilated, or banished. The bigoted persecution of Nestorian and Monophysite heretics had also continued, and it is clear that a large proportion of the population of Syria were indifferent, if not hostile, to imperial rule, and quite ready to welcome a change. In 611, the year after the fall of Phocas, before the more vigorous Heraclius had been able to restore the military administration, the forces of the Persian king Chosroes Purviz swept over Northern Syria, and apparently occupied Antioch without resistance. Our principal authority merely says, ‘In May the Persians invaded Syria and took Apamea and Edessa, and came as far as Antioch, and the Romans met them in battle and were worsted; and the whole people of the Romans perished, so that very few escaped; but the next year he refers to the whole of Asia being conquered, and its cities enslaved. This occupation may not have been absolutely continuous, and some numismatists refer to Antioch a bronze coin with the busts of Heraclius and his son; but it was not till about 627 or 628 that as a result of the emperor’s victories in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia the Sassanian forces definitely evacuated the cities of Syria.

Nothing is known of the condition of Antioch in the interval. Chosroes, in order to annoy the emperor, is said to have tried to force Syrian Christians to embrace Nestorianism. Some of the curious solar and sidereal temples mentioned by Arab geographers as existing at Antioch, and of Persian construction, may belong to this period. For some years Antioch had been but loosely attached to the Empire, and it was probably left under the control of its local magistrates, but subject to tribute and the presence of a Persian garrison.

Within six years of the restoration of Syria to the Empire the Arab conquest of the province had begun. The weak and divided Christian population, full of mutually hostile sects, offered a very slight resistance, leaving most of the fighting to mercenaries from elsewhere. The Syrians indeed felt no particular enthusiasm for Islam, but lacked cohesion and a central rallying-point. Antioch, never in a real sense the national capital, was thus isolated. It fell almost unresistingly to a vigorous and enthusiastic enemy who had the strength of mind to despise material enjoyments and was as yet free from sectarian quarrels. There are legends that even before the Arab invasion attempts had been made to preach the new faith in its streets, but without success. This is likely enough, even if we place no great confidence in the story of Mohammed’s follower Habib-a-Najjar, whose tomb on the hill remained an object of reverence for many centuries. His missionary zeal resulted in his being arrested and executed, but, if we may rely on the Arab geographer Dimashki, he took up the severed head in his hand and continued to walk through the streets, telling of the judgment in store for the unbelieving city.

In 636, when the Roman armies had undergone heavy defeats in the field, and Damascus, Emesa, and Beroea had fallen into the hands of the enemy, Abu Obeida, the Saracen leader, advanced westwards to Antioch, where the shattered forces of the Empire had begun to rally. Probably the defences of the city had suffered during the recent Persian occupation, and when, after a hotly contested battle on the wooded plain outside, the enemy forced the garrison back within the walls, Antioch was surrounded, and soon forced to capitulate. Two years later, when the Romans were withdrawing from the whole East into Asia Minor, the Christian tribes of Mesopotamia made a last appeal to Heraclius to save them from the infidels. A joint expedition was planned, the Bedouin tribes undertaking to assail the Moslems in Syria from the Euphrates side, while the Romans despatched an expedition from Egypt. This, apparently under the command of the emperor’s son Constantine, landed at Caesarea, which had not been lost. Most of the cities of Northern Syria, including Antioch, welcomed their fellow-Christians, but the co-operation between the allies was defective. The Moslems held out at Emesa, the Christian Arabs were forced to retire by a diversion in Mesopotamia, reinforcements were sent up from Arabia by the caliph Omar, and before the end of 638 the Romans had been expelled from all Syria.

The conditions imposed by the victorious Arabs on surrendered towns were very similar, and went under the name of the Ordinance of Omar, though they were added to at different times and enforced with varying degrees of severity. At first Christians did little besides pay tribute in two forms, both adapted from the Roman system, the gizja, or poll-tax (4 dinars, or rather less than £2, annually for adults of the richer classes, half the amount for the middle, a quarter for the poorer classes), and the charaj, or land-tax. Yearly supplies of oil and certain foods were raised, and Christians could be required to entertain Moslem travellers for three days. When the seat of government was transferred to Syria the Arabs thought it desirable to mark off their own people more definitely from the subject-races. Christians, whether bond or free, had to wear a broad yellow stripe on their garments; they were forbidden to ride on horseback, but might only use mules or asses with wooden stirrups and saddles partly of wood. A special mark was to be affixed to the lintels of their doors. Such churches as the Moslems required for use as mosques were to be surrendered, no new ones were to be built, no crosses to be visible externally, no religious procession to pass through the streets. No Christian grave might rise above the level of the ground, no bells be rung. No high office or trust was, in theory at any rate, attainable by Christians; and, what was perhaps the harshest enactment, though only intermittently enforced, only Moslem masters might teach in the schools. Arab kadis were set up in the chief towns, but Christians often preferred to resort to their own bishops for legal questions only concerning themselves, and their decisions were generally respected by the Government. The principal centres also received Arab governors, and there were financial superintendents for the various provinces. The Arabs made few regular settlements in Syria, finding the country less congenial than the plains of Mesopotamia, where important Arab centres, such as Bussorah and Kufa, grew up. The rural population of Syria, among whom Christianity had never been firmly rooted, and who seem to have been out of harmony with the Greek-speaking towns, mostly embraced Islam, and in course of time the kindred Arabian dialect superseded Aramaic in the greater part of Syria. The townspeople usually remained faithful to the Cross, and the Arabs apparently made no great efforts to proselytize them, contenting themselves with stationing among them governors and officials, with garrisons at important points.

Thus, after nine hundred years, Syria had reverted to native rule, with its capital at the old royal city of Damascus, and we must now touch briefly on the little known of the history of the fallen Antioch during its three centuries of eclipse.

Till the middle of the eighth century it remained subject to the Omayyad caliphs at Damascus, and in the organization of Syria by the second caliph Othman formed part of the jund or military province of Hims (Emesa), which comprised all Syria north of Damascus. When this large area was subdivided by the caliph Yazid, Antioch, with Aleppo (once Beroea) and Membij (Hierapolis), was placed in the new jund named from its capital, Kinnasrin (Chalcis). The annual tribute of this province is said to have amounted to 400,000 dinars, together with 1,000 loads of olive-oil. In 750 the second ruling dynasty, the Abbassides, moved the seat of government to Bagdad, and their conquests to the north of Syria so greatly extended this jund that a new frontier strip was cut off on the north­west, including these three cities of Aleppo, Membij, and Antakiya, and named El Awasim, or The Strong­holds, from the line of frontier stations built to keep back Roman attacks on the north. Membij was the capital at first, but Antakiya apparently succeeded it before the end of the Arab dominion. This province received a complete military organization under Harun-al-Raschid, with permanent garrisons in the chief towns, new frontier forts and block-houses. The soldiers received plots to cultivate for the support of their families, as well as pay and grants of natural produce. Later caliphs brought whole tribes to settle in and defend North Syria, but before the end of the ninth century the power of the caliphate was already declining, and the advance of the Empire, strengthened by the vigorous administration of the iconoclastic emperors, was only checked by the growth of the almost independent Hamdanide dynasty at Aleppo.

Fifteen Abbasside caliphs were acknowledged in Syria, and their successors remained the spiritual sovereigns of the Moslems even when the decay of the Arabian Empire led to the growth of minor dynasties. In 878 Ahmad-ibn-Tulun, Governor of Egypt, annexed Syria to his dominions, and it remained in the power of the Tulunides till 904. Soon afterwards the greater part of Syria became exposed to the ravages of the fanatical sect of Carmathians, who were in open rebellion against the Abbassides. From 944 the Arab dynasty of Aleppo and Mosul had brought a great part of northern Syria under their control, maintaining a governor at Antioch. It was from these Hamdanides that the brilliant campaigns of Nicephorus Phocas and his lieutenants at last wrested the city, and restored it for more than a century to imperial rule.

Throughout these three centuries of Arab supremacy the intervals of peace between the two Empires were few, and communications difficult. In fact in the earlier period a broad band of devastated and unoccupied territory ran between Arabian Syria and the land of Rum, or Asia Minor. Byzantine ships put in at certain agreed ports along the coast of the Sea of the Romans, and restored Arab captives taken in border raids at the fixed rate of 100 dinars for three. These frontier conflicts were of almost annual occurrence during the earlier years of the Abbasside caliphs, who found the country north from Antioch towards the Cilician mountains so much depopulated that they introduced settlers from other parts—Arabs, Slavs, Persians, and Mardaites. An apparently Turkish tribe, the Sayakidja, were given homes in the territory of Antioch itself and in the Cilician passes; while in order to keep down the lions which infested this desolate region the caliph Walid settled there a number of Zutt (Djatt) herdsmen with their buffaloes. These his predecessor, Muhammad-el-Kasim, had brought from India after his victorious campaigns, and thus for the first time the buffalo was seen around Antioch.

The subordinate position of the town during these centuries makes impossible any connected narrative. Historians seldom mention it, and most of our information comes from Arab geographers and travellers, who describe the natural features of the district, its trade and products, and some of the principal buildings. Commerce was fairly active, and a few fresh industries came in. The sugar-cane was brought from Persia and grown on the coast, and in the tenth century oranges from India followed, and groves were planted round Antioch and other towns; but the fruit was regarded as inferior to the Indian both in colour and perfume. Textile industries were active throughout, and the Arabic name Antakiya came to signify a cover or carpet. The art of weaving silk and other rich stuffs was already well developed; cotton paper (charta Damascena) was manufactured, and a factory of arms, first mentioned under Diocletian, continued to exist.

The principal account of Antioch under the Arabs is that of Istakhri (951), author of a geographical description of the Moslem world, with some additions made by another geographer soon after its reconquest by the Empire. It is stated to be the pleasantest place in Syria after Damascus; its stone walls, a day’s journey round, enclosed the over­hanging mountains. Fields, gardens, mills, pasture lands, and pleasure grounds were all included in the area. Running water was supplied to all the markets, streets, houses, and the Jami mosque. One quarter was occupied by armourers and lance­makers. Several of the churches are briefly characterized. Some great festival is described as held in the Church of Al Kusiyan (the Cathedral of St. Peter), in which rich and poor Christians met before the patriarch amidst great rejoicings and illuminations. There is also a reference to St. Paul’s Church by the Bab-al-Faris (Knight’s Gate), and to the transformed synagogue dedicated to Ashmunit and the Seven Maccabees, where another festival held in high honour was celebrated. Further, we hear of a Church of St. Barbara and the Kanisah Maryam, or round Church of St. Mary, which the writer considered one of the wonders of the world for its height and the beauty of its construction. Several of the marble and alabaster columns of great size had been carried off by the caliph Walid to adorn the mosque at Damascus. On the hill a building, believed to have been once a heathen temple (perhaps of Zeus Olympius) but dismantled by Constantine, had been transformed into a watch-tower from which persons approaching from the Empire, whether by land or sea, could be observed at a distance.

During most of the seventh century Moslem bigotry prevented the election of any Patriarch of Antioch, and the title was held by absentees quite unconnected with the city, such as the Macarius who played a prominent part in the Monothelite controversy at Constantinople. The caliph Isam, early in the eighth century, was on friendly terms with the Syrian monk Stephen, a man of rustic manners but good character, and allowed the Eastern Christians to elect him to the vacant throne. Henceforward the once widowed Church retained its official chief, and he was regarded as an intermediary between his congregation and the Arab government, to which he usually remained faithful. The Catholics were not, however, allowed a monopoly; and in 721 we hear of the Monophysite patriarch Elias making a solemn entry into the city from which he took his title, ‘cum monachis, clericis ac magnifico apparatu.’ Elias consecrated a church which he had built in the city and another in a neighbouring village, some two centuries after the expulsion of his predecessor Severus. During this interval the Jacobite patriarchs, in spite of  the strength of their following, had been excluded from Antioch; and the hostility of the Byzantine government to a sect so powerful among native Christians no doubt facilitated the Arab conquest of Syria.

In 821 a disputed succession at Constantinople brings Antioch into momentary prominence. Michael the Amorian, surnamed the Stammerer, was regularly elected at the capital, but Thomas of Gaziura, a man of Slav descent, who had previously lived on friendly terms with the Arabs, came forward as a rival. From Leo the Armenian he had received a military command in Asia Minor, and put forward a claim to be a son of the late empress Irene, who had really died in prison, assuming the title of Constantine VI. He gained much support in Asia Minor, where the persecuting policy of the Empire had roused great resentment.

He also marched an army into Syria, where the caliph Mamun, a son of Harun-al-Raschid, found it politic to come to terms. In return for certain districts to be ceded by the Empire, and perhaps a promise of tribute, the commander of the faithful recognized Thomas as lawful Emperor of the Romans, and undertook to aid him in securing the throne. As a sign of their alliance Thomas was formally crowned with the imperial diadem by Job, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Cathedral of St. Peter. The bishop’s status as a subject of the Arabs would attest the fact that Thomas was only a vassal of the caliph. This is the first example of a coronation at Antioch since the abortive attempt of Leontius in the fifth century. Thomas failed to establish himself, and the next time we hear of Antioch, twenty years later, a Byzantine fleet was pillaging its port, an expedition soon followed by the occupation of part of Cilicia.

The imperial power now slowly revived. The Romans had withstood the first and most dangerous shock. The Arabs had failed to establish any permanent hold on Asia Minor, while, as the Abbasside dynasty declined, their tenure even of Northern Syria became insecure. The unity of the nation was of recent growth, and when the first religious enthusiasm had cooled there was a widespread tendency to split up not only into hostile religious sects, but into rival states. The Empire, with its eight centuries of unbroken tradition, its wonderful official hierarchy and organizing power, was able to survive a series of shocks which would have annihilated any state of more recent growth. Fighting its battles with motley armies of Armenians, Isaurians, Bulgarians, and Slavs, constantly hampered by a corrupt court, incapable rulers, and religious dissensions, it yet proved itself not altogether unworthy of its title of Roman; and when men of real ability came to the front it was still a force to be reckoned with. The tenth century was not over when the kadis and sheikhs of Antakiya had disappeared before the Patrician Duke and the Patriarch of Antioch, the great city of God.

 

CHAPTER IX. FROM NICEPHORUS PHOCAS TO THE FIRST CRUSADE

 

The internal troubles affecting the Arab Empire in the tenth century had only an indirect bearing upon the position of Antioch. The condition of the citizens as tributaries to foreign masters was similar whether their governor were appointed by the caliph, now a nominal sovereign controlled by the Bouide Sultans, by the rebel dynasty in Egypt, or by the powerful Hamdanides. This Mesopotamian family, whose chief seats were Aleppo and Mosul, became independent emirs of Northern Syria about 944. Their head, Saif-ed-Daula (Sword of Faith) was one of the ablest and most persevering warriors of his age, and from Aleppo waged war with some success against the Egyptians on the south and the imperial leader Bardas Phocas. The Arabs thus made frequent incursions into Asia Minor; but when Bardas was succeeded by his sons Leo and the future emperor Nicephorus the tide turned. The arms of the Republic were seen in parts to which they had been strangers for three centuries; Marasch (Germanicia), Aintab (Doliche, home of the old war-god Jupiter Dolichenus), Membij (Hierapolis), and much of Northern Syria were temporarily recovered. The Arabs were expelled from Cilicia; Crete and Cyprus were also regained. During his Cilician expedition Nicephorus learned of his elevation to the throne, and hastened to conclude the campaign. The submission of Tarsus was secured, and the Moslem population were permitted to proceed to Antioch by sea or land (965). A truce was arrived at with the emir of Aleppo; prisoners were exchanged; and Nicephorus returned to the capital, leaving a Roman army stationed in Cilicia.

The people of Antioch, though comprising a large Moslem element, retained enough of their old nature to feel an active dislike for their rulers for the time being, and the supremacy of the Aleppan dynasty was extremely unpopular. In the absence of the emir from Aleppo the Antiochenes expelled his Mameluke governor, and appointed as their chief one of the recent refugees, Rashik, the ambitious and unscrupulous emir of Tarsus. Aiming at independence, this man is said to have initiated an intrigue with the emperor, offering to pay 600,000 dirhems, and probably agreeing to become tributary in return for the recognition of his own position as governor. A former financial officer of the Aleppans, El Hassan-el-Aluazz, became his vizier, and a proclamation was read that Saif’s possessions were ceded to Rashik. The treasury was seized, contributions raised, and the new governor's name included in the official prayers. Favoured by the citizens the usurper had no difficulty in equipping an army of 5,000 men. The only opposition came from the Greek patriarch Christopher, who favoured the Aleppan ascendancy, and finding his advice unheeded retired to the monastery of St. Simeon. Rashik now decided on a bold stroke. Reinforced by refugees from the garrison of Aleppo, from which the emir was still absent, he marched upon that city and easily got possession of it. The castle, however, which had given trouble to the victorious Arabs three centuries earlier, opposed a stout resistance. In the course of a sally Rashik himself fell, and his men, returning to Antioch, proclaimed as their leader the Deilimite chief Dizbar, who retained El Hassan as his lieutenant (966). Dizbar proved a general of some ability; he repelled an Aleppan army and again occupied Aleppo. Soon after Saif-ed-Daula returned from repressing another revolt; the rebels retired from Aleppo, and on the defeat of their army Antioch was obliged to submit. Another Mameluke, Taky-ed-Din, was established as governor. Many of the sheikhs and chief citizens were imprisoned, beaten, and fined; but some were forgiven on the intercession of the patriarch Christopher, who augmented his unpopularity by welcoming the restoration of Aleppan rule.

The next year the old Saif-ed-Daula died, and, as usual in Oriental monarchies, there ensued a period of confusion and civil war. Hostilities with the Empire had already broken out afresh, and in 968 Nicephorus was able to make a victorious progress through Northern Syria, capturing or burning towns as far as the Phoenician coast. At last he appeared before Antioch with 10,000 Moslem prisoners, of whom many consented to embrace Christianity in order to secure their release. The Arab garrison was, however, prepared for a vigorous defence, the season was far advanced, provisions were falling short, and the rains had turned the plain country into a swamp. Nicephorus decided to postpone the reduction of the city till the next year, when naval forces might co-operate. He also, we are told, was influenced by a prophecy soon unfortunately fulfilled, that when Antioch reverted to the Romans their emperor would perish. A strong force was left in the neighbourhood to harass the garrison, operating mainly from the castle of Bagras (formerly Pagras) on the steep slopes of Mons Maurus, facing Antioch from the north, and commanding the pass leading from Asia Minor into Syria by the Gulf of Issus. Subsidiary fortresses were set up in other points of vantage; for Nicephorus had collected numerous artificers and tilers from the conquered towns of Syria. It thus became difficult to revictual Antioch from the sea.

The command at Bagras was given to the enterprising Michael Bourtzes, with a small force of 1,500 horse and 1,000 foot, and he was instructed to isolate Antioch without making a direct attack. The emperor’s nephew, Peter Phocas, was placed as stratopedarch in supreme command in Cilicia. Nicephorus further concluded a treaty with the rising Fatimite power in Egypt. This, being threatened by the Sultan, welcomed his alliance, and thus preserved him from attack on the south, and facilitated the maintenance of a clear sea­route to Antioch. On his return journey to Constantinople the emperor persuaded the Christian inhabitants of a village called Bouqua, or Louqua, to retire into Antioch, under the pretext of fearing the imperial army, but really to act as spies and intrigue with the Christian inhabitants.

At the funeral of the old emir at Mayyafariku one of the directors was the Aleppan governor of Antioch, on whose departure the restless city again revolted, and chose as leader a greedy adventurer, the Kurd Alouch. The latter sought to put Antioch in a state of defence against both Romans and Aleppans, but an attempt to strengthen the garrison by taking into his service a body of 5,000 Chorassian adventurers was unsuccessful. Quarrelling with the citizens, they had to be dismissed, and falling in with an imperial detachment were cut to pieces. Next a Moor, Ez Zaghily, with a small force from Egypt, gained the confidence of Alouch and murdered him.

These disorders were reported to the Roman generals, who learned that street fights were of constant occurrence, the influx of refugees from neighbouring towns and the constant ravagings by the imperialist garrisons were producing starvation, the garrison was careless, and the walls badly guarded. A Saracen partisan of Bourtzes whom he had succeeded in corrupting gave him the measurements of one of the western towers, and ladders were constructed to match. The decisive moment came when Peter Phocas and his forces were absent from headquarters, being engaged on a march against Aleppo, which a treacherous chamberlain of the new emir offered to place in his hands. Bourtzes, perhaps wishing for the whole credit of the capture, disregarding his sovereign’s orders, chose this time to set off from Bagras with a small force. Carrying scaling ladders on horseback they arrived before Antioch on a wintry night, at a point which he knew had been left to traitors from Louqua to guard.

Three hundred Romans descended the Silpian Hill, and apparently applied themselves to the weak point in the mountain wall from which Antioch was usually taken. The guards in the nearest tower were slaughtered, from the next a few were spared in order to cry out the Arab watchword and so postpone discovery. Yet the assailants, whose numbers were clearly inadequate for the task, were soon noticed and forced against the walls by the defenders. Several expresses were sent off to Phocas for aid, and this officer, in whose army was the future Emperor Joannes Tzimisces, though unwilling to disobey his uncle’s commands, realized the disgrace that would befall the Roman name if Bourtzes and his small force were annihilated. Giving up the hope of occupying Aleppo, he marched to its relief, and found it hard pressed. The two towers in which the invaders had already held out for three days were everywhere assailed by arrows and burning darts. When the reinforcements crossed the ramparts and occupied other towers the Arabs drew back. The assailants rushed down into the lower quarters, Bourtzes with his own sword cutting the bolt of the Sea Gate (Bab-el-Bahr). The main Roman army entered and took possession of the open parts, burning and slaughtering. The Moslems tried to escape by the Garden Gate, but most were cut off, crushed against the walls, or trampled to death. A few, by firing isolated blocks of houses, delayed the enemy, and escaped by the Sea Gate. One misfortune clouded the joy at this great deliverance. An Arab chief, falling in with the patriarch Christopher, thrust a lance through his breast and killed him; so one of the first duties of the imperial government was to refill the widowed see. The city was pillaged, but the massacre was stopped by Phocas. The best­looking captives were sent away to be sold into slavery, other Moslems were expelled, and the Christian population recruited from neighbouring towns (969).

The Arabs, though surprised and disunited, were unlikely to acquiesce in the loss of this fortress city held by them for over 300 years. It was felt that the Roman army, which numbered but 40,000, would have to exercise constant vigilance. A new citadel was at once raised on the Silpian Hill, probably on the site of a ruined building of Justinian’s time. It lay in a position of enormous strength, just within the walls, but, except for one narrow path, surrounded on the side of the city by precipices; and it was garrisoned by a strong force of infantry and cavalry. The chief mosque was at first utilized as a pig-sty, but a few years later the first duke razed it to the ground to provide space for the gardens of the patriarch’s palace.

Peter Phocas was now able to resume his expedition to Aleppo, but as usual the castle offered a successful resistance. At last an agreement was come to fixing a definite line of demarcation for the respective spheres of influence. The Byzantine territory was bounded by the Orontes as far down as its great westward bend, thence by a line northward to the Euphrates. Though the Aleppans undertook to pay tribute their submission was merely nominal, and the city, with its subject district, proved a constant menace to the imperial representatives at Antioch, and later to the Latin princes.

We have thus again to deal with Antioch as a Roman provincial capital (969-1081); and, whatever views may be held as to the respective merits of Arab and Byzantine civilization, it can hardly be doubted that its status was improved by the substitution of a stable government for the series of adventurers of divers races who had seized on the city during the previous years. In view, however, of the nature of the population—a mongrel collection of Levantines, having a superficial knowledge of Greek, but more familiar with Arabic, professing Christianity, but sunk in gross superstition and relic-worship—it would be vain to look for any revival of the old intellectual superiority, or even of the former external splendour or architectural activity. Antioch was a frontier fortress, the capital of a small outlying province on the marches between the Empire and its infidel enemies; and the administration of the city and its subordinate towns was strictly military. The dukes, or katepano, with the rank of patrician and magister, possessed the chief civil as well as military power, and were often men of high rank at court, playing a leading part in the politics of the time. By their side was the patriarch, the other chief representative of the central authority, and chosen subject to the emperor’s approval. The divine chosen to fill the vacancy left by the murder of Christopher was Theodore of Colonea, who, according to our authority, Leo the Deacon, had “embraced the eremitic and inactive life from the finger-tips, and brought the flesh into subjection by many ascetic labours.” He wore a hair robe, covering therewith the heavy iron girdle with which he macerated the body, and never discarded it till it was actually falling in pieces. Though not profoundly versed in secular learning, he had a great reputation for holiness, enhanced by foretelling the successive elevation of Nicephorus and John to the imperial throne. When, after the murder of the former as a result of a conspiracy, the new emperor had Theodore anointed patriarch by Polyeuctes of Constantinople, the appointment met with general approval. Theodore induced Tzimisces to remove those dangerous heretics the Paulicians, or Manichaeans, “who were misleading many by their loathsome heresy,” from the borders of Syria and Asia Minor, and they were transferred to Bulgaria. Despite all lessons from past disasters the Byzantine government had not yet learned toleration.

The year following the capture the garrison had to withstand a five months’ siege by an Egyptian army. The Fatimites had now installed themselves at Cairo, and their emir Djafar invaded Syria, directing his arms equally against Christians and Abbassides. Damascus fell, but the invaders were eventually obliged to retire from Antioch by a force of Carmathians who were in alliance both with the Abbassides and the Empire. Soon after an earthquake caused much of the wall to collapse, and Tzimisces sent out the original captor, Michael Bourtzes, who had been disgraced by Nicephorus. Assisted by 2,000 workmen and masons he repaired the damage and completed the citadel.

The Aleppan dynasty was before long reconciled with the Fatimites, and constant wars with the Empire ensued, further complicated by the intrigues of ambitious Byzantine generals. Such was Bar das Scleros, who was supported by Bourtzes, the governor of Antioch, perhaps the son of the conqueror of 969. When Bardas rebelled against the home government the city and fortress were delivered to him, and his son Leo was installed as lieutenant. The patriarch Agapius, who supported the imperial authority, was expelled, and even after the death of his father Leo refused to submit. Holding this impregnable fort, which he further strengthened by additional works, he was joined by numerous Arab and Armenian adventurers, and even sought the aid of the Egyptian power before he was finally forced to surrender. The second governor of whom we have any record, Damianus, was killed at the head of his troops by the revolted emirs of Tripolis and Damascus. Michael Spondyles, dux about 1025, appointed by Constantine VIII on his accession, proved a bad administrator and, being disgracefully beaten by the Arabs, was replaced by the emperor’s brother-in-law, Constantine Caranterius. Soon after the new emperor Romanus Argyropulus prepared to take the field against the emir of Aleppo, who was making constant inroads into the territory of Antioch. The Aleppan offer of accepting Byzantine overlordship and paying arrears of tribute, was rejected by Romanus, who, however, met with no success in the campaign, and soon returned home (1030).

The fortunes of the Empire were now rapidly sinking, and continued to decline till the able family of the Comneni towards the end of the century effected a brief revival. In the reigns of the weaker princes corrupt chamberlains, frequently eunuchs, monopolized the power, oppressive taxation caused revolts, constant warnings had to be addressed by the court to governors to avoid oppressing provincials, to spare rural districts in marches, and to keep away from vineyards. The provincial troops were generally undisciplined, and in Syria pillaged the countrypeople, who were already impoverished by official requisitions. We have an example of this in the reign of Michael IV (1034-1041), when Nicetas, a kinsman of the emperor, was appointed dux of Antioch. The people, having recently killed a tax-gatherer whom they considered oppressive, and fearing punishment, refused to admit him. Nicetas at first promised an amnesty, but on securing an entry had several persons arrested and sent some of the principal citizens in chains to Byzantium. There his brother John, who held a leading position at court, utilized the outbreak to discredit a rival of his own.

The Antioch district became from the middle of the century in great measure isolated from the rest of the Empire as the power of the Seljuk Turks, to whom the Arabs of Aleppo had by now become subject, extended in Asia Minor. The dux was a semi-independent chief with retainers supported by grants of private estates. Regular troops were few and badly trained, as seen, for example, in the Turkish inroad of about 1065, when Nicephorus Botaniates, the dux of the time, found that his army, ill-paid and lacking provisions, refused to meet the enemy.1 The Turks, however, lacked a fleet, so that merchant ships could still sail up the Orontes and introduce troops and provisions. Thus Antioch remained in the possession of the Empire for several years after the fatal Battle of Manzikert (1071) placed the greater part of Asia Minor in the hands of the Turkish sultan.

Two of the later governors were Armenians, and the population evidently included an Armenian element at the time. The last was Philaretus, who had risen by his courage and ability to the rank of domesticus under Romanus; and, when the latter was blinded and deposed, he planned to hand over Antioch to the Turks and himself to embrace Islam. Rejecting the advice of his son, who wished to remain faithful to the Empire, he despatched this young man to the Seljuk headquarters at Nicaea, and invited the sultan’s son, Suleiman, to besiege the city. In eight days the message reached the Turkish chief, and in a few weeks Antioch had passed for the last time out of the power of the Roman Empire (1081).

The first part of Suleiman’s journey was by sea, but the coast of Syria was still held by imperialist garrisons. He accordingly landed his small force, which included 300 cavalry, in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Issus, climbed the stony ridges of the Amanus, and advanced by night marches. By day he retired into the lonely ravines of that wild district, and slaughtered the inhabitants of one town that he passed to prevent his approach becoming known. He reached Antioch at night, and some Turks, fastening ropes to the pinnacle of the walls with their lances, effected an entry in the thinly populated eastern quarter near St. Paul’s Gate, which they opened to their comrades. Their presence only became generally known the next morning, when the Turkish war-cry was heard. The citizens began to flee in terror, some flinging themselves from the walls into the Orontes and trying to conceal themselves under its banks. The conquerors behaved with unexpected lenity: a general amnesty was proclaimed; the plunder seized after the first irruption was restored. When, some days later, the citadel surrendered the garrison was spared.

We are fortunate in possessing the description of this capture by an eyewitness, the monk Michael. He tells how the enemy approached from the mountains on the east, and overran the whole city in three days. He himself, after hiding for some time in a dark corner, crept up to the gate of the citadel, which still held out. A party of townsmen on horseback were just sallying, accompanied by a troop of mercenary Turkish cavalry, who had been hired to fight against their countrymen.

These charged down the hill, but were soon forced back. Suleiman following drove all wanderers and fugitives, together with camels and horses, on to the flat ground at the foot of the castle hill. The monk’s reflections were most edifying. “I thought of the joys and dissipations of the Antiochenes which I had witnessed, their excess of pleasure and amusements, their splendid robes, the crowds riding on gorgeously caparisoned mules and camels at the annual festival of St. Barbara, with the governor and leading men. Then I prayed for pardon as I descended the hill.” On the plain two heralds came forward and proclaimed that all prisoners were to be freed and return home, so all thanked God.

The history of Antioch during this short period of Seljuk rule (1081-98) is little known. A Turkish governor with a strong garrison held the citadel, but the Christian population remained, and was still numerous when the Cross again triumphed. The great round Church of the Virgin built by Justinian was left to them for worship, but other churches were closed or used as mosques.

The record of constant wars would suggest that Antioch enjoyed no great commercial activity, but there is evidence that it remained during the Arab and Byzantine periods a mart of some importance. The wars were mostly waged with mercenaries from afar; the inhabitants still carried on their textile and other industries, which already made Northern Syria a resort for European merchants. The enterprising Campanian republic of Amalfi in the eleventh century, through the wealthy family of Mauro, had connections at Constantinople, and kept up a hospice at Antioch, probably both to entertain western pilgrims on their way to the sacred sites of Palestine and to shelter Amalfitan traders. Indeed, even before the reconquest under Nicephorus one of the Mauri is referred to as a dux Antiochenus, probably as president of a society1 of merchants trading there. As soon as the city reverted to the Empire the importance of an understanding with Aleppo, through which passed most of the inland trade to Antioch and the coast, was realized alike by Greeks and Arabs. The governor of Antioch was empowered to conclude a treaty providing that subjects of the Empire coming into Aleppo for trade should not be molested; their caravans were to have safe conduct, and only fixed tolls were to be exacted, in particular for gold, silver, Greek silks, unworked silk, jewels, brocades, clothing, linen, cattle, etc. This implies the previous passage of caravans between the cities under Arab rule; and after the reconquest the Greeks received at Antioch the goods brought by eastern merchants, sent them down by baggage animals to the port of St. Simeon, which had grown up to the south of the silted-up harbour of Seleucia, and so despatched them to Europe. In 1070 a number of Venetian merchants were at Antioch, and succeeded in ransoming from the state prison the son of the Serbian king Constantine Bodinus. In 1086, soon after the advent of the Turks, we hear of a fleet from the Italian town of Bari visiting Antioch; and on its return, laden with fruit and other wares, it had the extraordinary luck to secure the real or supposed relics of St. Nicholas from the Cilician coast, and carried them off in triumph. The great stores of eastern produce found soon after by the Crusaders, such as pepper and pigments, evidently from India, suggest that Antioch was then a great entrepot; and we realize that the important aid given by the commercial republics of Pisa and Genoa to the early Crusaders was not inspired solely by religious zeal.

A few quotations have been given from Arab travellers to illustrate conditions in Antioch while subject to the caliphs; and the impressions of Ibn Butlan, whose visit belongs to 1051, may give an idea of its state in the later years of Byzantine rule. The writer was a physician of Bagdad, who, after extensive travels, settled down as a monk at Antioch and died there. A letter to a friend at Bagdad was fortunately incorporated in the geographical dictionary of Yakut, and shows that the writer was a man of sense, his narrative being refreshingly free from the supernatural. As he approached from the side of Aleppo he passed through a populous country, not disfigured by ruins, but rich in wheat and barley growing under olive-trees. The villages ran in almost continuous lines, their gardens full of flowers and well provided with streams. Coming within sight of Antioch he, like many travellers, was impressed by the way the wall climbed steep slopes and enclosed not only mountains but mills, orchards, and gardens within its semicircular area of twelve miles. This wall was further guarded by a second—he does not say over how much of its extent—and had five gates on the plain. It was strengthened by 360 towers, and patrolled in turn by 4,000 guards sent annually from Byzantium. This last detail, though probably not literally correct, is interesting as indicating the great importance attached by the imperial government to the safeguarding of this outpost. The citadel looked quite small from the city below, and the mountain on which it stood shaded the lower quarters from the sun, which only began to shine on it two hours after its rising. In the centre of the city was the cathedral, once (and here we revert to the realm of legend) the palace of a king Kusiyan whose son St. Peter raised to life. This is evidently the Church of St. Peter, afterwards used as the burial-place of the Latin princes, and, according to our present authority, it consisted of a chapel 100 paces in length, 80 in breadth, and, above, a church on columns, in which the judges gave judgment and teachers of grammar and logic held their classes. Other churches past counting were ornamented with gold, silver, coloured glass, and paved in squares. The gardens, plantations, and mills along the banks of the Orontes delighted the traveller, and in the higher parts terraces with baths and gardens commanded beautiful views, murmuring streams flowing down the slopes in the whole vicinity. A hospital existed, where the Patriarch cared for the sick poor and every year bathed a number of lepers with his own hands, no doubt in memory of the washing of the apostles’ feet; and the ‘king’ (the imperial dux) with other leading men did a like service to a number of poor. The luxurious hot baths were still a feature of Antioch, their furnaces were heated with myrtle wood, and a rapid flow of water was maintained. A large staff of servants and clerks was attached to the cathedral, which was richly endowed and administered extensive charities. The writer describes its interior fittings in connection with a disaster which had happened the previous year. A thunder-bolt struck a mother-of-pearl screen before the altar and did some damage. It threw down the iron cross above, and was carried along a silver chain which supported a censer and reached to the altar. Beyond the altar stood three wooden stools on which were three large crosses, silver-gilt and studded with precious stones. Two of these had the night before been deposited in the treasury, and the lightning, while destroying the empty stools, left the middle one with its cross unharmed. Four marble columns enveloped with brocade supported the silver dome which covered the altar, and near the latter a rope held a silver tray on which rested a silver lamp.

The bazaars Ibn Butlan found thronged and well stocked with all necessaries, as well as resplendent with rich stuffs. He specially notices a striking clock, or clepsydra, working day. and night, which stood by one of the gates, and remarks on the way in which streams were carried through the streets and bazaars, and even into the castle.

It is possible at the close of some of the periods to add a section on our most permanent record of each, the coinage. No coins appear to have been struck at Antioch between the beginning of the seventh century and the reign of the first Bohemond; so it may be well to allude instead to the collection of Byzantine seals, which attest the dignity and importance of the tenth and eleventh century dukes and patriarchs of Antioch. In an age when so many even of the upper classes were unable to write seals were more important than in the early Empire. The obverse is usually occupied by the figures of one or more saints, as Michael winged, Peter, and Paul, or one of the military saints, as Theodore with shield and lance. The much-abbreviated Greek legends are such as “Lord, help thy duke Nicetas the Patrician, Katepano in Antioch,” “Nicephorus the Sebastophorus, duke of Antioch, the great Theupolis, the man of our mighty and sacred sovereign.” One of the patriarchs has figures of the Virgin and Child with the legend, “The mother of God, guide to the way” (Hodigetria), and the sounding title on the reverse, “Theodore, by the mercy of God patriarch of Theupolis, the great Antioch, and all Anatolia” (ascribed by Schlumberger to the Crusading era); another has Peter and Paul facing, with their names; a third the Virgin with a medallion of Christ on her breast.

We have now to pass to the last nation which essayed the task of governing and protecting this rich but disturbed and constantly threatened capital, and to trace briefly the causes of the rapid growth and hardly less rapid decline of the Frankish power. The aspiring Norman race, which, at the date now reached, had elevated its members to the remote thrones of Westminster and Palermo, was fated to provide the first line of independent sovereigns to reign on the banks of the Orontes since Pompey deposed Antiochus Asiaticus.

 

CHAPTER X. THE FRANKISH PRINCIPALITY

 

The Seljuk power was, like its Arab predecessor, showing a tendency to split up into semi-independent principalities at the time of the victorious march of the first Crusading army across Asia Minor into Northern Syria. A large part of the country was in the hands of the Egyptian Fatimites, who at first welcomed the Franks, hoping that they would be content with the northern districts and serve as a counterpoise to the Turks.

The governor of Antioch for some years previous to the arrival of the Crusaders at the end of 1097 had been Baghi Sian, a grandson of the famous Seljuk chief Alp Arslan, having thirty cities under his control, of which the four chief were governed by the four leading members of his council. His palace was probably on the site of the old imperial palace on the plain between the river and the castle, towards the south-east corner of the present inhabited town.

At this time Baghi Sian was engaged in a feud with Ridhwan, lord of Aleppo, the Moslem chief from whom help might most easily have been obtained, and indeed had only returned a few days from an expedition against him when the Franks reached the Iron Bridge. The Christian population round Antioch were bitterly hostile to the Turks, and in many villages rose and massacred the infidels as the invaders came in sight. Thus a crowd of flying Moslems pressed into Antioch as the Franks approached, and soon helped to produce a scarcity there. In fact, the governor, distrusting the numerous Christian population, and also desiring to save provisions, resorted to a trick by which a number of these were excluded altogether, having been set to work at fortifications outside the city.

The Franks, as they came in sight of the city, were struck with the richness and fertility of the district, the loaded vineyards, the pits full of stores of corn, and the fruitful orchards; while they could also draw provisions from the recently conquered Edessa district, and from the Italian fleets, which established themselves at the mouth of the Orontes.

It is unnecessary here to describe the famous Crusading leaders, Godfrey de Bouillon, soon to be the first Christian king of Jerusalem, who gave his name to the Duke’s Gate on the north side of Antioch, where he encamped; Raymond of Provence; Baldwin of Flanders; Robert of Normandy, brother of the reigning king William Rufus; and their brother-in-law Stephen of Blois, father of the English king of that name. We are more immediately concerned with Bohemond, prince of Tarentum, a son of that Robert Guiscard who, setting out from his paternal estate of Hauteville, near Coutances, had carved out for himself a new dominion in the south of Italy. Bohemond had, first under his father’s command and then on his own authority, carried on a long struggle in Europe with the emperor Alexius Comnenus, who hoped to rid himself of a troublesome antagonist by encouraging him to conquer a fresh empire at the expense of the infidels. A small Greek force under Taticius also accompanied the army, but during the famine which followed the fall of Antioch it retired to Cyprus; while the emperor, who had promised to reinforce the Christians, also failed to give any further help at that time, regarding their position as desperate.

As the Latins, their numbers already somewhat lessened by a toilsome and vigorously opposed march through Asia Minor, advanced into the plain of Antioch, they found that the two towers at the ends of the Iron Bridge across the Orontes were strongly held against them. The vanguard under Robert of Normandy was sent on to guard against an ambush, and a detachment of horse and foot proceeded to attack the towers, from which showers of arrows fell upon them. Seven hundred Turkish cavalry issued from Antioch to hold the adjoining fords, and both sides lined the opposite banks of the Orontes, plying each other with arrows. At last the Christians forced the bridge, others swam over on horseback or forded the stream, and when the rest of the army came up a strong detachment, locking their shields in the old Roman way, drove the Turks from the banks back into the city.

The chronicler Albert of Aix, who embodies more picturesque descriptions, clearly derived from eye­witnesses, than any other writer, tells how the Latins rode on from the bridge to the plain outside the city, followed by the baggage in carts drawn by mules or asses. Their shields gleamed bright with gilding or green or red colouring; their richly embroidered gold and purple banners waved in the breeze; their cuirasses and helmets shone; their steeds were fine and richly caparisoned. When they set up their tents in the plain and hewed down trees and orchards to clear a space, a sullen silence prevailed in the city. The Christians, indeed, who still formed a considerable part of the population of Antioch, did not conceal their sympathy, and another chronicler tells how the Christian women “would come to the loopholes of the walls watching the miserable fates of the Turks, and secretly applauding with their hands.”

Though this hostile element in the city had been tolerated, the governor proved himself a bitter enemy of the Christian religion. The Greek patriarch, who survived all the ill-treatment, was several times hung out by ropes over the walls with his feet in chains. St. Peter’s Cathedral, from which the Christians were excluded during the whole period of Turkish rule, had its altars overthrown, and the statues of Christ and the saints were plastered over or their eyes pierced with nails. The governor had brought in provisions enough to last for some months, and his troops succeeded in keeping a hold on the Bridge Gate and the adjoining stone bridge, by which parties of Turks could sally, destroy siege-works in course of erection, or interfere with the conveyance of provisions from the harbour to the besiegers. The latter were unable to invest the whole vast area, many posterns on the hillside were left unguarded, and, even along the level northern front, the river and the marshes interfered with a direct attack on the fortifications, especially as the invaders were badly provided with siege-engines.

Month after month the siege dragged on; a bridge of boats was attempted, covered with hurdles, half a mile above the stone bridge; huge stones were rolled up to block the gates and prevent sorties; forts were erected on neighbouring hills. As discipline declined, and cheating, robbery, or immorality, which were believed to be alienating the favour of heaven and so causing the numerous failures, became rife, severe measures were taken against offenders, who were flogged, put in chains, tonsured, or branded. Provisions also began to fail, and when, after more than seven months’ siege (October, 1097, to May, 1098), news came that a powerful relieving force, despatched by the Seljuk sultan Barkiarok, under the command of Kerboga, emir of Mosul, was on its way to Antioch, the situation seemed desperate. Fortunately the Turks wasted time on a vain attempt to recover Edessa, and the crafty Bohemond had the opportunity of carrying out the surprise attack for which he had been preparing. He had opened communications with an officer in the governor’s service, Phiruz, according to some accounts a Christian renegade, who commanded the garrison of three towers on the mountain side. The other princes, owing to the desperate condition to which their army was reduced, were obliged, in spite of the protests of Raymond of Provence, to promise Bohemond the sovereignty of the city if his plan succeeded. A surprise attack was made by night on the mountain side, where a tower was surrendered, according to agreement, to Bohemond’s party, and 700 Frankish knights were thereupon admitted by a neighbouring postern. A horn gave warning to the other princes, who made an effort to force the gate near the citadel. The Turks repelled them with stones, and prevented the invaders who had already entered from approaching the gate from within. The Frankish engineers, however, had sufficient tools to make a breach in a part of the wall where defenders were few, and the main army entered before the bulk of the garrison were aware of the danger. The Turks on the hill and in the citadel vainly blew their horns, but the native Christians, who during the last part of the siege had been greatly ill-used, and whose massacre, it is said, had been already decided on, opened other gates in the lower city. The blood-red flag of the Prince of Tarentum was now floating on the walls in the upper part of the city, and a huge and disorderly mass of Franks rushed through the streets, shouting and waving banners. Little organized resistance was met with, many Turks were asleep, others were unable to arm, others were isolated in the numerous towers along the walls. The narrow streets were the scenes of promiscuous slaughter, in the course of which many native Christians were struck down in the darkness, while not a few Turks, by imitating the cries of the Christians, effected their escape. A large party of Moslems by mistake retired on to a precipitous hill from which there was no outlet, and finding themselves hemmed in hurled themselves to certain death, along with their horses and mules, over the precipice. A strong detachment, however, still held the citadel, which the Franks were quite incapable of reducing; and it was left in possession of the enemy till the subsequent rout of Kerboga’s army convinced the garrison of the uselessness of resistance. Baghi Sian, riding a mule, escaped alone in the confusion, but next morning he was recognized some way from Antioch by a few native Christians, and shortly after the princes received the welcome gift of a bag containing the head and long, thick beard of their principal enemy (June 3, 1098). Yet their situation was very critical. The garrison had almost exhausted the food in the city, though carpets, spices, silks, rich garments, tents, and games of chance were found in abundance. Only 400 horses were found, and of those brought by the Franks only 150 remained. Some provisions were brought up from the port, but the whole country round had by this time been stripped, and the Christians were forced to prepare for the conflict with Kerboga while tortured by the most terrible famine in the history of Antioch, during which hides were seasoned with pepper to make it possible to swallow them, shoe-leather and boiled thistle roots were eagerly sought for, and the head of an ass, horse, or camel was a luxury costing a gold besant. Thus, when the huge Turkish host at length arrived, many Franks who had sold their arms to buy food were using unfamiliar Turkish weapons, and several even of the leading knights rode out to battle on asses or mules. In this time of general despondency the leaders resorted to the curious device of burying an old rusty lance in the Cathedral, and then, adducing the evidence of various visions, having it solemnly excavated as the Holy Lance of the Crucifixion. This relic produced a remarkable revival in the spirits of the ignorant and superstitious army. It was carried out to battle, and the excited imagination of the half-starved soldiers saw the hillsides opening and a heavenly host, riding on white horses and waving white banners, issuing forth to do battle with the infidels, after bowing to the sacred lance. The leaders were believed to be the soldier-saints George, Mercurius, and Demetrius. Similar incidents had happened before at Dorylaeum, and also marked the fall of Jerusalem the next year, and impressed themselves on the imagination of many men who returned to the West. One record in our own country is the Norman tympanum at Fordington Church, Dorset, a place of which the lord of the manor took part in this Crusade. St. George, with nimbus and long spear having a flag marked with a cross on its handle, is dealing destruction among the Turkish ranks; while behind his horse two figures in the pointed helmets of the time are kneeling with their leather water-bottles resting on the ground behind them.

Little is known of the details of the battle. Kerboga crossed the Iron Bridge, his huge army, under twenty-eight separate emirs, spread over the plain and invested the whole southern side of the city from the western to the eastern gates. However, he found this mountain area lacking in forage, and soon returned to the lowlands by the river. Several fresh forts were erected by the Franks, deep trenches were cut within the walls, and an attempt made to protect the Bridge Gate by a fortress on the other side of the river, which, however, had to be burned and evacuated. The Italian fleets, which were co-operating, were at the same time forced to leave the mouth of the Orontes. The decisive battle began on June 28, when the Franks marched out in twelve corps, with Bohemond’s detachment placed last to help any who were hard pressed. The Turkish army was apparently badly handled and attempted to occupy too large an area, and its rout was complete. Thirty days were spent in bringing in the spoils to Antioch, and a proportion of the gold and silver was set aside to refurnish the churches, all of which, except the round Church of St. Mary, had been stripped and used as stables, markets, etc. Candles, crosses, and chalices were at once provided, gospel-books, ornaments, vest­ments, and altar covers introduced, and the rich silks which fell into the hands of the victors used partly for sacred purposes. The Greek patriarch John was solemnly reinstated, but two years later, finding himself out of harmony with the government and the Latin clergy, he retired to Constantinople, and the first Latin patriarch was installed, Bernard of Valence, chaplain to the warlike bishop Adhemar of Puy.

The sudden change from famine to comparative plenty led to the outbreak of a severe pestilence, aided no doubt by the numbers of unburied bodies in the neighbourhood. The princes therefore, to escape the contagion, separated to make further conquests in the district, and only set out for Jerusalem the following May. Bohemond made some additions to his principality in Cilicia, and, after a violent quarrel with Raymond of Provence, was left in undisputed possession of the whole of Antioch, accompanying the host as far as Laodicea on the way to Jerusalem.

Antioch was thus left under the rule of a Norman-Italian prince, supported by an army drawn from all the states of Western Europe, while the mass of his new subjects were of the Greek faith, spoke Greek or Arabic, and were quite unfamiliar with feudal usages or the Frankish military system. If the civilization of Syria was hybrid under the Seleucids and Romans, the contrasts presented by the ensuing centuries are still more startling.

The principality thus formed was still predominantly Byzantine in habits and feelings. It had been separated from the Empire less than twenty years, and the emperors tried more than once to enforce their claim to its possession. They could argue that their rights had been admitted by Bohemond himself, who alone of the Crusading princes swore fealty to Alexius for any conquests he might make in Asia. They also constantly urged the appointment of a Greek patriarch which the princes, having to keep on good terms with the Latin patriarch and his powerful protectors in Europe, often resisted. The princes, however, treated the Graeco-Syrian population with considerable indulgence, admitted them to their armies, adopted Byzantine types on their coins, and Oriental features both in costumes and architecture. The court was warlike, brilliant, and showed some elegance of manners, on the model of that of Jerusalem. It was established in the fortified palace with Oriental decoration formerly occupied by the Byzantine dukes and Turkish governors. The feudal seigneurs, the Soundvals, le Jaunes, des Monts, Tirels, Mamendons, etc., who held the great fiefs, helped to form a circle round the princes not unworthy of that of one of the minor courts of Europe; though the constant losses through war had frequently to be filled by promotion of some of the richer bourgeois to the ranks of the noblesse.

The kings of Jerusalem were the princes immediate superiors, and showed a striking loyalty in aiding their weaker vassals to protect their constantly harassed state, without any attempt to absorb Antioch in their own dominions. When a prince fell in battle or was captured by the enemy, leaving no heir capable of taking over the defence, the king received the government as bailee, either appointing a temporary governor or, if the prince were dead, sometimes finding a husband for his widow or daughter, who should receive the charge and office of prince, saving the rights of any male heir still an infant.

In the earlier years the principality extended rapidly, owing to Moslem divisions. In 1106 Tancred secured much of Cilicia, besides additions in the Apamea district. By 1109 much of the territory north and west of Aleppo had fallen into his hands, so that this city was forced to come to terms, and pay an annual tribute. Laodicea on the coast was conquered from the Empire, and the state in its most prosperous time extended into Cilicia on the north-west, to the borders of the sister state of Edessa on the north-east; it included a line of frontier towns along the east bank of the Orontes, and on the south was bordered by the spurs of the Ansaries Mountains, inhabited by the independent tribe of Assassins, and nearer the coast by the Provencal colony of Tripoli. After the fall of Edessa in 1145 the fortunes of the principality declined. Several north-eastern fiefs were then lost, and Cilicia fell into the hands of Byzantines or Armenians. Towards the end of the century the territory was further diminished as a result of Saladin’s conquests, when the protecting kingdom of Jerusalem lost its capital and became little but a name. The Antiochene seigneurs were in many cases too weak to guard their fiefs, to protect which the princes were obliged to place them in the hands of semi-independent Templar or Hospitaller societies. The mutual animosity of these orders not only weakened the state, but gave an excuse to ambitious Armenian kings, who, on the collapse of the Byzantine Empire at the beginning of the thirteenth century, occupied most of Cilicia, to interfere in the principality. In the later years Antioch and Tripoli formed one state, and, as so many of the northern possessions were lost, the princes mostly resided at Tripoli, the chief seat of learning and culture in Syria; and this city, owing to its maritime position, outlasted Antioch by several years.

The winter following the capture of Antioch by the Crusaders was spent in reducing neighbouring towns and forts, but they failed at Aleppo, and Bohemond was soon after taken prisoner by an Arab chief at Melitene and kept three years. His nephew Tancred was chosen as their governor by the Franks of Antioch, but the Greeks, whose claims to the fief had been rejected owing to Alexius’ failure to help in the campaign, began to recover their position in Cilicia. The emir, however, refused to surrender Bohemond to the emperor, and, when a sufficient ransom had been raised in Syria and in Europe, the prince was released. After helping to repel an Arab attack on Edessa he left for Europe to obtain fresh forces, and never returned. At Chartres he married Constance, a daughter of the French king Louis VI, and their son Bohemond II was the ancestor of most of the subsequent princes, to the end of the dynasty. He enrolled many followers, but instead of returning to Antioch continued his old hostilities with the emperor in Illyria, with such success that Alexius acknowledged Bohemond’s right to Antioch and its territory, subject to his own suzerainty, together with Larissa, Germanicia, and any rights the emperor had in the district of Aleppo and beyond the Euphrates. Bohemond, who received the title Sebastos, promised to establish a Greek patriarch nominated by Alexius, and to acknowledge imperial rights in Cilicia and Laodicea. He returned to Italy to raise fresh troops there, and soon died. Constance, with her son, then only three years old, retired to Bari, and the young prince only went out to take up the fief his father had won fifteen years later.

Tancred thus ruled Antioch as deputy first of the elder then of the younger Bohemond till his own death in 1112. He proved an able and enterprising chief, skilfully utilizing the dissensions among the Arabs to extend his power; he encouraged Italian trading settlements, occupied Apamea and Laodicea, helped in defending the weak border state of Edessa, and in capturing Tripoli, which became the capital of the fourth of the Crusading principalities. A quarrel with Baldwin of Edessa led to a short war between these states, each supported by Arab auxiliaries, an exception to the loyalty usually shown by the Crusading princes to one another. On the mediation of other Latin chiefs Tancred withdrew the claim he had put forward to the country.

By Tancred’s will the office of prince passed on his death to his nephew Roger, who was to perform the duties till the young Bohemond came of age. Roger was also a good soldier and continued to exact the Aleppan tribute, but he is accused of avarice, and, like his Sicilian kinsmen, of an Oriental laxity of manners, and of maintaining at Antioch something in the nature of a harem.

In 1114 came a destructive earthquake, which not only did great damage at Antioch but caused widespread devastation over the state, so that fears were entertained of an invasion from Alp Arslan, Prince of Aleppo, and the Atabek of Damascus.

Again Arab dissensions saved the city, and in 1115 Roger won a great victory at Rugia, securing immense booty. He was thus able to help the Latins in Palestine, his alliance was sought by a new Prince of Aleppo, and grants of land were made to the Hospitallers to help in safeguarding the state.

When, however, a great Arab invasion under Il Ghazy, Prince of Mardin, beyond the Euphrates, took place, Roger was unable to cope with it. His vassals found their fiefs at the mercy of the invaders, and the prince, without awaiting Baldwin of Jerusalem and Pons, Count of Tripoli, who were marching to reinforce him, joined battle with only 8,000 men, in four corps, of which one only consisted of Turcoples and Armenians (1119). The Franks were utterly defeated, Roger and most of his knights were killed, and the duty of defending Antioch devolved on the patriarch Bernard de Valence. The Latin clergy, as we are told by one of their own number, Galterius, were more afraid of internal treachery than of the Moslem invaders. The native citizens had suffered by the trickery or violence of the Franks, and were quite capable of taking revenge in a time of distress. The patriarch took precautions against this; the remaining Franks and the clergy were convened; men of all other nations were disarmed and forbidden to be abroad at night without a light; guard-houses were set up on the less defensible sides, monks and clergy manned the walls where other defenders were lacking; and the patriarch constantly went the rounds with soldier refugees from the battle and armed clergy (many of whom had no doubt crowded in from other towns), to visit and encourage the sentinels on the towers. The King of Jerusalem was now approaching, and, after cutting to pieces an Arab army which attempted to oppose him, entered Antioch to the joy of clergy and people. He convened a meeting of the notables of the state, both Latin and Oriental, as well as some from the county of Edessa, and there young Bohemond’s rights to the crown were formally acknowledged. Baldwin promised the prince his daughter’s hand, and himself undertook to provide for the administration pending Bohemond’s arrival. Fresh troops were raised from the district and from Cilicia, others came from Edessa and Tripoli, so that Baldwin, when he again marched out to relieve the castle of Zerdana, which was being besieged by the Arabs, led almost the whole resources of Latin Syria. A solemn mourning procession accompanied the king as he left St. Peter’s after the divine office had been performed. In front relics were borne in shrines or on an altar; crosses and banners were carried; the clergy walked in their robes, the laity followed chanting litanies, barefooted and clothed in wool as a sign of mourning. The patriarch then, uplifting the Cross, solemnly blessed the army.

The expedition was successful; 3,000 Arabs fell and only 800 Franks. Baldwin, on returning to Antioch, was received with great pomp, and took active measures for the reorganization of the state, showing, says William of Tyre, more zeal even than for his own realm. New seigneurs were chosen to fill the vacant fiefs, mostly from the same families as the dead vassals; castles were put into a state of defence, and several forts were recovered. Further privileges were, subject to the approval of the citizens, granted to the Venetians, who received at Antioch a church, a whole street, baths, an oven free from tax, the use of Venetian measures, and the right to have cases only concerning themselves tried in a separate court. The struggle with the Arabs still continued, and the king was obliged to return more than once to help in the defence. When in 1123 he fell into the hands of the enemy, Joscelin of Edessa assumed the chief command until Baldwin’s release.

In 1126 the young Bohemond at last arrived at Port St. Simeon, and next year celebrated his marriage with Princess Alice of Jerusalem. He is described as handsome, conciliatory, and generous to excess; but soon quarrelled with Joscelin of Edessa, who, with Turkish allies, ravaged the principality, until a reconciliation was brought about by the king and the patriarch Bernard.

Bohemond confirmed his father’s grants to Italian traders, and gave help to the royal forces against Damascus, but unfortunately fell in battle with the Arabs in Cilicia in 1131, leaving only an infant daughter Constance. The Dowager Princess Alice, an ambitious and unscrupulous woman, now aimed at securing Antioch for herself. She intrigued with Arab chiefs, perhaps also with the Byzantine court, and attempted to exclude her father when Baldwin came to arrange for the govern­ment of his distressed vassals. However, St. Paul’s Gate was opened by a monk of the adjoining monastery to the king’s son-in-law, Fulk of Anjou, and Joscelin of Edessa, who accompanied Baldwin, secured an entry at the Duke’s Gate. Alice retired to the citadel, and, on receiving a grant of the cities of Laodicea and Zibal, consented to abandon Antioch. The officers of the court swore allegiance to the young Constance, but when Baldwin died the next year Alice renewed her intrigues, supported by the worthless patriarch Raoul de Domfront, who had recently succeeded the estimable Bernard, and by the Counts of Edessa and Tripoli.

The new King Fulk, maintaining his father-in­law’s policy of upholding the Norman dynasty, came by sea from Beyrut to Port St. Simeon, again forced Alice to retire to Laodicea, and entrusted the administration of the city to Rainaid Mansoer, lord of Margat, the constable of Antioch, undertaking himself the care of the state till Constance was of marriageable age. The prince chosen by him to take over the laborious task of defending Antioch was Raymond of Poitiers, a son of William IX of Guyenne, and at that time at the English court, where he had received knighthood at the hands of Henry I. Owing to the hostility of Roger of Apulia, who claimed the principality now that the direct male line had failed, Raymond travelled in disguise through Europe, and reached Antioch in 1136 after many adventures, and there again found the party of Alice and Raoul in the ascendant. After the death of Bernard this prelate, whose connection with the lords of Domfront in Normandy commended him to the Norman aristocracy of Antioch, disregarded the votes of the Synod which met to fill the see, and, as soon as the bishops dispersed, occupied the cathedral and palace, and assumed the patriarchal robe which had been laid upon the altar of St. Peter’s. As he was accounted generous, a warrior, and lived in a magnificent style, the popular voice acclaimed this usurpation, which soon proved a curse to the diocese. Ray­mond, however, having little backing, found it necessary to conciliate the ambitious churchman, who was easily induced to desert the party of Alice, and that princess for a third time retired to Laodicea. Raymond was one of the best of the Crusading princes; generous, a good warrior, a protector of letters though unlearned himself, temperate, and of great personal strength. Thus it is said that he could bend a stirrup with his hand, and when passing under an archway where a ring hung, clung to this and held the horse on which he was riding fast between his knees. Yet he was unlucky and subject to fits of passion; and during his reign the Antiochene territories suffered the first serious loss by the reconquest by the Empire of the fertile Cilician plain which had been held for forty years.

Raymond’s marriage with Constance, who was still a child, was celebrated soon after his arrival, and the troublous reign began. At home we hear much of the misdoings of Raoul, who banished some of his clergy, imprisoned others, and confined an archdeacon named Lambert in a dungeon full of quicklime. Several of his opponents, with Raymond’s approval, carried an appeal to Rome, but the patriarch followed them and succeeded in winning a favourable decision. On his return he was refused admission at Antioch, retired to a monastery, and, remaining contumacious, was by the prince’s orders sent in chains to Port St. Simeon, whence he retired to Rome to return no more.

We now begin to hear of Armenian troubles, which continue with short intervals for another century. In 1135 Leon of Armenia had taken the fortress of Servantikar in the Amanus, belonging to the principality. Raymond proceeded against him, took him prisoner, and only released him in return for the cession of three towns and a ransom. The next difficulty arose with the Empire, which under the able emperor John Comnenus had recovered something of its old position. John, regarding Raymond as an interloper, claimed Antioch, marched an army into Cilicia, and expelled the prince’s garrisons from Tarsus, Adana, Antitarsus, and other towns.

At this time Raymond was helping the King of Jerusalem to expel Turkish marauders from the territory of Tripoli, when he received news that the Roman army had crossed into Syria and that Antioch was closely invested. Not only were lines drawn round the city, but heavy siege-engines were planted at several points, which threw massive stones into the midst of the defenders, while archers and slingers made it difficult to man the walls. Raymond entered by a postern near the citadel, but found that, as neighbouring Arab princes were also threatening, the wisest policy was to come to some agreement with the emperor. He did homage to John for his principality, the imperial flag was hoisted on the citadel, and a bargain was struck by which, if the emperor succeeded in capturing Aleppo, Scheizar (Larissa), and Emesa from the Arabs, they were to be exchanged for Antioch. Next year a joint expedition of im­perialist, Antiochene, and Edessene troops marched into Arab territory: one city was captured, but, partly owing to the disunion of the ill-assorted allies, attempts on Scheizar and Aleppo failed. John returned to Antioch, and was escorted first to the castle, then to the prince’s palace by the patriarch, clergy, and people, singing hymns and playing musical instruments. He distributed rich presents, but would not abandon his claims to suzerainty, asking to be granted the citadel in which to deposit his treasure, and free right of ingress and egress from the city as a base for warring against Aleppo. The Count of Edessa stirred up the populace with the cry that the city was being sold to the Greeks. Imperialist soldiers were pulled off their horses and beaten, and the emperor, feeling that nothing was to be gained, withdrew to his camp outside the city, and soon left Syria, retaining his Cilician conquests. A second invasion led to no better result; it was urged that whatever promises Raymond had made he had no right to dispose of his wife’s principality, and through the intervention of the clergy and the King of Jerusalem, the emperor was induced to retire, and soon after died. His son Manuel conducted a third invasion, and Raymond was obliged to go to Constantinople to do homage, and to receive for a time a Byzantine dux at Antioch. It was at this period, and partly through the failure of Raymond to help a personal opponent, that the first of the four Crusading states was engulfed, through the conquest of Edessa by the troops of Zenghi, first Atabec of Aleppo. This prince was succeeded by his son Noureddin (1146-73), a fierce enemy of the Christians, but a great protector of letters and patron of architecture. He not only overran the whole of the county of Edessa, but held all Moslem Syria, with Apamea, Damascus, Emesa, and advanced to the Mediterranean. Raymond naturally viewed this gathering power with apprehension, and in 1147-48 hoped that he had secured a powerful ally. Louis VII of France arrived in Antioch with a Crusading army, accompanied by his consort Eleanor of Guyenne, Ray­mond’s niece and afterwards mother of the English kings Richard I and John. The hostility of Roger of Apulia had poisoned the mind of the French king against Raymond; Louis refused to proceed against the Aleppans, and undertook a useless expedition to Damascus; while Raymond, finding a formidable Arab army gathered at Emesa, would give no help, in which attitude he was joined by the Count of Tripoli. William of Tyre fixes this date as the beginning of the definite decline of the Crusading principalities and of renewed confidence among the Turks and Arabs, whose depredations became more incessant.

In 1149 Raymond fell in battle with some Aleppan troops between Apamea and Rugia, and was buried in the vestibule of St. Peter’s at Antioch. He left his young wife, Constance, twenty-two years of age, with her four children, of whom the eldest became eventually Prince Bohemond III, while his sister Marie was raised to the throne of the East by her marriage with the Emperor Manuel. The regency for the time reverted to Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem, who, finding the principality constantly ravaged by Aleppan horse, twice visited Antioch, and advised Constance to remarry. The princess, unwilling to surrender her independence, though placing her dominions under the protection of the Emperor Manuel, refused two Greek princes; but at last, inspired by something warmer than solicitude for the welfare of Antioch alone, added another to the list of ill-fated warriors who were called on to fill its uneasy throne (1153).

One of the knights in the train of Louis VII was Renaud, a son of Geoffroi, count of Gien, and a native of Chatillon-sur-Loing (Loiret), afterwards the birthplace of Admiral Coligny. He had received a fief from Raymond, and perhaps took part in the battle where that prince fell. His lord being thus dead, he passed into the service of King Baldwin, and held a command in the army maintained for the defence of Antioch. He served under Baldwin at the siege of Ascalon, and there received permission from the king, who was glad to be relieved of his responsibility as bailee, to accept the hand of the young widow, who had already looked on him with affection. The marriage took place in 1153, and Renaud had for the seven years of his reign to cany on a ceaseless war with the infidel. After he became Prince of Antioch, says the chronicler Emoul, he never clothed himself in silk or colours, he always wore a coat of mail and a leathern jerkin. It was a time of constant alarms, when bonfire signals on neighbouring watch-towers or hills would warn the sentinels on the Silpian Mountain that marauding Arabs were burning the villages and carrying off the Christian peasants into slavery; and then from St. Paul’s Gate a party of armed knights would be seen sallying forth, their helmets sheltered from the sun by an Arab turban, followed by their light native cavalry or Turcoples, and a line of camels carrying the baggage and provisions.

Renaud succeeded to a distracted principate, and sought to conciliate the Italian traders by remission or abatement of dues on silks and other stuffs. He confirmed the privileges of the Venetians, and granted to the archbishop and commune of Pisa land at Laodicea and a house at Antioch. He, however, like his contemporary Henry II, came into conflict with the Church, and finding himself opposed by the patriarch Amaury had the latter arrested and tortured in the castle. It was only on the intervention of Baldwin III that the bishop was allowed to retire to Jerusalem, and his wealth was confiscated and used for an expedition against the Greeks of Cyprus.

Thoros, King of Armenia, had succeeded, at the head of his hill tribes, in driving the imperialists from Tarsus and the rest of the Cilician plain, from which the Byzantine general Andronicus Comnenus was expelled; and at last the emperor invited Renaud to aid in repelling the Armenian advance. The prince had offended Manuel by his marriage with Constance, and desiring to conciliate him undertook to carry on the war if the emperor defrayed the cost. Thoros had also taken a castle belonging to Templar vassals of Antioch, and this was recovered, but no great results followed from the campaign. Manuel refused to pay the sum agreed on, and the impatient Renaud, who was noted for his faithlessness even in that age of rapid changes of front, allied himself with Thoros, landed an army in Cyprus, pillaged it, and carried off bishops and dignitaries as hostages (1155). War between Antioch and Aleppo soon broke out again, and Manuel avenged the outrage in Cyprus by an invasion of Armenia. Thoros retired to the hills with his court and treasure, but the towns, including Tarsus, surrendered; and Thoros found it desirable to come to terms with the emperor and abandon his claim to the plain. Renaud was thus left alone; the King of Jerusalem had already been alienated by the ill-treatment of Amaury, and also desired the emperor’s help against the Arabs. Accordingly Baldwin married Theodora, the emperor’s niece, and Renaud sent offers of submission, proposing to surrender the citadel of Antioch to the imperial troops. As this was refused, he undertook a journey across the Amanus with several lords, and repaired to the Byzantine camp at Mopsuestia. Knowing that the Greeks were easily satisfied by externals, he entered barefoot, having a halter round his neck, and the point of a drawn sword in his hand. He bound the principality to provide the emperor with cavalry and men at arms when required, and to receive a Greek patriarch on an equality with the Latin. Manuel then advanced into Syria, and outside Antioch, surrounded by the famous Varangian guard, received not only the prince, accompanied by a splendid procession of the city notables, but the King of Jerusalem with many of his nobles. A joint expedition against Noureddin of Aleppo was agreed on, and the ill-assorted allies, accompanied by a force of Templars, and a large imperial siege-train armed with catapults, set out for the Arab capital.

Noureddin, however, by making magnificent presents and surrendering the Christian prisoners taken in various raids, induced the princes to raise the siege, the more easily that conspiracies at home made Manuel desirous of returning to his capital. Thus, more than twelve hundred years after the standards of the senate and people had reached the banks of the Orontes under Pompey’s command, the Roman armies retired for the last time from the territory of Antioch (1159).

Next year Renaud was captured while trying to raid the flocks of Christian tributaries of the Turks in the former county of Edessa. He was retreating with his spoils when Aleppan troops set upon his little army and took the prince prisoner. For sixteen years he remained in durance, and when he was released, on the payment of an enormous ransom in 1176, his wife Constance was lying in the Church of St. Cassianus; the throne of Antioch was occupied by his stepson Bohemond III. Finding himself a stranger, he re-entered the service of the kings of Jerusalem,, and was appointed prince of Kerak and Montreal. There he had to safeguard the approaches of the declining kingdom from the desert east of the Dead Sea, and preyed on the Arab trade between Damascus and Egypt. Eventually Renaud, a prisoner after the fatal Battle of Hittim in 1187, was murdered by the Kurdish chief Saladin.

After Renaud’s capture Baldwin III had again to provide for the government of Antioch, and entrusted it to Amaury, the patriarch, while the marriage of Manuel with the young princess Marie of Antioch secured the friendship of the Empire. When Constance died in 1163 her son Bohemond III succeeded without opposition. He was soon involved in a war with Noureddin of Aleppo, who, during the absence of King Amaury of Jerusalem in Egypt, laid siege to the important border town of Harrenc, and captured it, after defeating a relieving army of Greeks and Latins, and capturing Bohemond himself. Manuel, however, soon ransomed his brother-in-law, who, on visiting the Byzantine court, undertook to restore the Greek patriarch Athanasius. This resulted in Antioch being placed under an interdict by his Latin rival Amaury, and it only ended in 1171, when the Greek was killed in St. Peter’s by one of the numerous destructive earthquakes of the period. In this reign the practice of entrusting more remote fiefs to knights of the semi-independent military orders extended; thus in 1186 the fortress of Margat, commanding the coast route from Antioch to Tripoli, was transferred to the knights of the Hospital.

In 1177 an attempt was made to recover Harrenc by Bohemond, aided by the counts of Tripoli and Flanders. Barracks were set up, the camp surrounded by a foss to keep off floods, and a blockade begun; but, like their Roman predecessors, the Frank soldiers spent their time in feasting and gaming, with frequent journeys to Antioch for amusement; and finding that no progress was made the princes next year raised the siege.

Only a small Antiochene contingent took part in the Battle of Hittim, which involved the destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem; but Saladin in the next year seized several towns and castles belonging to the principality, as Zibel, Laodicea, Schioum, and Bagras. Though the Moslem chief received Bohemond in a friendly way at Beyrut and concluded a treaty with Antioch, it was now becoming clear, with all Southern Syria lost, that either the Armenians or the Moslems would before very long absorb both Antioch and Tripoli.

Leon II of Armenia succeeded in entrapping Bohemond in 1194, and the measures taken to avert the occupation of Antioch by the king are interesting as illustrating the wide extension of the ideas of municipal liberty at the time. In England charters were being granted by the Angevin kings to London, Winchester, Nottingham, Northampton, etc., and we have now the strange spectacle of a mayor and corporation in the Syrian cities, Antioch taking the lead. This commune was not due to any direct act of the prince, but to the instinct for self-preservation in a community whose natural leaders were dying out, and which had little in common with the knightly monks who guarded most of the frontier castles. Though this organization was designed to meet a special emergency it lasted till the fall of the city, and Antioch during the remaining reigns, in which the princes were often absentees, approximated to the same position of municipal independence as during the decline of the Seleucid dynasty.

The Patriarch Amaury assembled the citizens in the court-house of St. Peter’s, where a mayor, was appointed to administer the city, aided by a body of Jurats. He had authority to summon with the bell of the commune all citizens for the defence of the city, and his office seems to have been primarily a military one, sometimes held in conjunction with one of the court appointments, as those of seneschal, or constable. Probably the commune was under the protection of the Cathedral, and the patriarch continues to take a leading part in resisting assaults on popular liberty.

The treacherous Princess Sibyl, a divorced wife of Bohemond, who had already been suspected of acting as a spy for Saladin, was thought to be implicated in a plot to deliver Antioch to the Armenians, and it was decided that some external help was necessary. The prince’s younger son, Bohemond, count of Tripoli, invited the intervention of Malak-ed-Daher, emir of Aleppo, whose army repelled the Armenians. Next year Henri de Champagne, bailee of what remained of the kingdom of Jerusalem, went to Armenia and procured the liberation of Bohemond, whose eldest son Raymond married a niece of King Leon and swore fealty to him. Bohemond soon after ceded to Armenia the area bordering on the Gulf of Alexandretta, and when he died in 1201 his lawful heir was the posthumous son of the lately deceased  Raymond, who added to his father’s name the Armenian name of Rupin. Notwithstanding the protests of Leon, the count of Tripoli, Bohemond IV, surnamed Le Borgne, entered Antioch immediately on his father’s death, had the tocsin of the commune sounded, and was acknowledged as prince by the knights and citizens.

In revenge Leon seized the Templar estates in Armenia, and made a sudden attack on Antioch, where the Templars held the citadel and took a leading part in the defence. The advance of an Aleppan army raised the siege, but the reign was a troubled one. The Hospital, being on bad terms with the Temple, supported the Armenian claims, and received some countenance from Pope Innocent III, who desired to restore a Greek patriarch at Antioch, and so advance the reunion of the churches. Bohemond yielded to this demand, and incurred the hostility of the Latin clergy, whose patriarch, Pierre Angoulême, pronounced a sentence of excommunication on the prince. When the Armenian candidate, Raymond Rupin, effected an entry in 1216 he was welcomed by the patriarch and many of the Latin nobility; and the castle, which held out for Bohemond, who was then absent, had to surrender in a few days. Raymond was consecrated in St. Peter’s and, as in the days of Tigranes, Antioch became subject to an Armenian prince.

In spite of the support of the Latin clergy and the Knights of St. John, Raymond soon became unpopular. He was an incapable ruler, and the exactions of his Armenian officers roused hostility. Bohemond returned from Tripoli, and a general rising took place in his favour. The gates were opened, Raymond retired to the castle, and thence escaped to Armenia. His Hospitaller followers surrendered the fortress, and were punished by the sequestration of their estates in the principality. The quarrel between the prince and this order dragged on wearily. In 1227 we hear of a concession to the rival order of Teutonic knights at Antioch. In 1230 Pope Gregory IV excommunicated the prince as a despoiler of the Hospitallers; and it was not till 1233 that an agreement was finally reached, the knights ceding possessions granted by Raymond in return for a grant from the revenues of Antioch and Tripoli.

Armenia also, which had professed adhesion to the Roman communion, received Papal support, and the quarrel was not finally settled till 1251, when, on the mediation of St. Louis, the young Bohemond VI married the Armenian princess Sybil.

From early in the thirteenth century the princes resided chiefly at Tripoli, and Bohemond V (1233­51) left Antioch to be governed by a bailiff and the commune. The Latin influence in the district correspondingly waned, and the Greek patriarch David, on professing obedience to the Latin Church, was, with the Pope’s approval, installed at Antioch, where he soon overshadowed his Latin rival.

In this reign (1243) Abulfaragius, or Gregory Barhebraeus, a young man of Jewish descent, arrived in Antioch with ’his father the physician Aaron, and for some time lived, like the monks of old, in a cave near the city. After studying for a time at Tripoli he returned to Antioch, and was raised to be bishop in the Jacobite Church, eventu­ally becoming maphrianus, an office next in dignity to the Monophysite patriarch himself. Gregory was the most learned man in Syria in his age, both as theologian and historian, and to his Syriac chronicles many of the particulars mentioned in this chapter are due.

Bohemond VI, the last of his line to hold sway at Antioch (1251-68), was related to Pope Innocent III through his mother Lucy, daughter of Count St. Paul of Rome. Being still a minor he had at his accession the French king St. Louis as his guardian. In 1252 he went from Tripoli to visit the king at Jaffa, and a report of their interview is preserved by Joinville, an eyewitness. “To him the king did great honour, and knighted him very honourably. His age was not more than sixteen, but never so prudent a child was seen.” He addressed the king in his mother’s presence. “Sire, it is very true that my mother has the right to keep me four years longer under her ward; but it is not on that account proper that she should let my realm be lost or decay. I say this because the city of Antioch is being lost in her hands, and beg you, sire, to call upon her to entrust me with men and money to go and succour my people there.”

Louis interceded for him, and granted the prince the right of quartering the fleur-de-lis with the red flag of Antioch. Bohemond then proceeded to his northern capital, which he succeeded in putting into a state of defence.

The city was now the scene of constant quarrelling between Greeks and Latins. The commune, being under the control of the Latin patriarch, was disliked by the natives, and the bishop, disgusted at the presence of a Greek rival acknowledged by Rome, retired to Europe, leaving a vicar to represent him.

The Mameluke power in Egypt was now becoming so formidable that the remaining Christian states began to draw together. As already mentioned, the quarrels with Armenia and the Hospitallers were settled, and the Antiochene and Armenian sovereigns did not disdain to enlist the aid of wandering tribes of Tartars. In 1260 a joint expedition of the two Christian princes and the Tartar khan captured Damascus and inflicted gross insults on the Moslem sacred places. The Egyptian general, Baybars-al-Bundukdari, commonly known as Bibars, inflicted a severe defeat on the Tartars near Tiberias, and was afterwards proclaimed Sultan of Egypt. In 1262 he made his first move against Antioch, but the city was for the time saved by the arrival of Armenian and Tartar reinforcements. The Egyptians, a few years later, in a series of inroads, ravaged the Tripolitan country and successfully invaded Armenia, thus preventing effective help being sent from either quarter to Antioch.

In May, 1268, the sultan’s forces advanced in three divisions: one seized the port-town of St. Simeon, for some time past the only naval outlet of the principality; one occupied Bagras in the north; another, under Bibars himself, advanced from Apamea along the Orontes Valley. The outlying castles were already abandoned by the Templars and offered no resistance. Bohemond was still at Tripoli, and had recently infuriated the sultan by surrendering to the Tartars for execution some Georgian envoys to Bibars who were wrecked on the Tripolitan coast.

The constable of Antioch, Simon Mansel, on the arrival of the enemy, attempted a sortie, but was captured, and instructed by the sultan to return and advise immediate surrender. Three days were spent in negotiations, and then the Egyptians scaled the wall on the mountain side near the castle and rushed into the upper part of the city from all sides. For three days Antioch was pillaged; 17,000 persons were killed and 100,000 taken prisoners. Eight thousand took refuge in the castle, but soon sur­rendered at discretion. Bibars had this fortress burned; the Monastery of St. Paul, the famous Cathedral of St. Peter, and the other churches were demolished or were left ruins. Yet at Venice is a white marble seat said to have been the patriarchal throne of Antioch brought from Syria at the end of the thirteenth century. Many clergy perished, including several Dominican friars, but the vicar of the patriarch and the constable were allowed to depart in safety. Vast quantities of bronze, lead, and iron were obtained, of coined money, horses and camels, male and female slaves. In addition, most of the Christian prisoners were sold into slavery, many of the boys becoming Mamelukes in Egypt, where some rose to high positions. Indeed, no sutler in the Egyptian army, an Arab chronicler remarks, lacked a slave from among the captives.

The fate of one of the most flourishing cities in Christendom roused some attention even in the preoccupied minds of European princes; but no attempt was made to recover or rebuild Antioch, which lasted on little more than a village in one corner of its vast enclosure by the Bridge Gate, at first subject to the Egyptian sultans, and, after Sultan Selim’s great victory, to the Ottoman Turks (1517)

 

CHAPTER XI. LIFE AND MANNERS UNDER THE FRANKS

 

A brief chronicle of the reigns of the Latin princes having now been given, it may be possible to gather up a few facts as to the conditions under which their subjects lived, the laws, commercial activities, the foreign settlers among them, coinage, and the external appearance of the city as it presented itself to numerous pilgrims and travellers.

One of the most interesting of mediaeval travellers’ records is that of the German clerical pilgrim Wilbrand of Oldenburg, who journeyed through Northern Syria in 1211. Before reaching Antioch he passed not far from Seleucia a cave, probably a dried-up reservoir, from which proceeded exhalations so noisome that it was commonly reported that St. Peter had thrust the devil into it, bound in chains. Antioch,  “a good and strong city, in sanctity scarcely inferior to Rome itself,” was on one side protected by a double line of walls. It could no longer be reached by ships as at the time of the First Crusade. Wilbrand observed the abundance of water, and the line of water-mills along the Orontes bank, quoting the words of the Psalmist, “the rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God.” Like others he was impressed by the turreted wall running along the cliff and enclosing three mountains, tall and rugged, of which the central was so lofty that it seemed to rest upon the clouds, so that one might think it obstructed the course of the planets. From them flowed down numerous streams, which watered innumerable orchards and gardens, and were conveyed by the citizens through channels and pipes into their own dwellings. The palace and other houses looked from outside as if made of clay, but inside were enjoyable and richly adorned. The inhabitants spent much time in their gardens, which bore abundant fruits and were cooled by many running streams. There was much wealth, and the citizens, though all subjects of the Franks, were of divers nationalities—Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Armenians, and Arabs. At the centre of the city was the richly adorned cathedral where St. Peter once presided, containing the chain of the saint, the prison where he was bound, and the remains of the Western emperor Frederick. The Latin patriarch ruled over all Asia, and over his palace an elegiac couplet proclaimed in letters of gold that his jurisdiction extended over a third part of the world. Near the cathedral was the round Church of the Virgin, with a statue of the mother of God so sacred as to cause rain to fall when it was moved. The Monastery of St. Paul on the hill had a small crypt with designs wrought in gold. This was on the site of a villa where St. Paul had been accustomed to rest after preaching, and to write his epistles. Before its gates were shown the graves of several Frankish nobles. At the foot of the mountain was a church on the site of St. Luke’s house, another on that of St. Chrysostom’s; a chapel whence St. Margaret was drawn out to martyrdom was also shown (this dragon-slaying virgin really belonged to Antioch in Pisidia), and other sacred spots. Most of the ecclesiastical edifices had no doubt been built or rebuilt since the Frankish conquest.

The Greek monk from Crete, Joannes Phocas, sees more clearly that Antioch, in spite of some material prosperity and a few showy buildings, had greatly fallen from its ancient splendour. He recalls how it had once overshadowed almost every city in the East through its vast population and wealth, its temples, theatres, and porticoes; and, though time and the hand of the barbarians had robbed it of this pre-eminence, it was still conspicuous for its towers, the strength of its battlements, and the flowery meadows bordering its numerous streams. After describing the Orontes, he turns to the Castalian stream of Daphne, which had a large portico at its source where it gushed out between two hills. It soon divided into two, that on the right carried into the city after falling in a cataract, and thus supplying a large area, the other arm watering the fields of Daphne, which, under the Latins, seems to have been almost uninhabited. Phocas then passes to the Black Mountain on the north, where holy men of old sought God, and pious hermits might still be found dwelling among the woods. The learned Spanish Jew Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Antioch about 1160, found only a few of his countrymen there, mostly engaged in glass manufacture, and gives little space to it. “Antioch,” he says, “stands on the bank of the Makloub, and is overlooked by a very high mountain; a vale surrounds this height, which has a well on the summit. The inspector of the well distributes the water by subterranean aqueducts and supplies the houses of the principal inhabitants.”

Another set of memoirs is of great value, the Bella Antiochena of Galterius Cancellarius, a clerk, probably Italian, who came to Antioch about 1113, when Adelaide, widow of Roger of Sicily, arrived in the East in order to marry Baldwin of Jerusalem. He rose to be chancellor of the principality in the reign of Roger (1119), and disappears from history by 1127. The nook is chiefly devoted to minor wars with Turks and Arabs, but incidentally shows how the society and constitution of Antioch impressed an eyewitness at a time when the state was still fairly prosperous and united.

Walter is far from flattering his countrymen or representing their rule as a blessing to Syria; indeed, it was more unpopular than either that of the Arabs or the Empire. Though less than twenty years had elapsed since the conquest, society seemed to his ascetic mind desperately corrupt. Many, leaving the bounds of modesty, added crimes to crimes; they disliked fastings, were addicted to gluttony, and used bad language in public. The wealthy spent ill-gotten gains on richly ornamented vessels; women were tricked out in gold of Arabia, jewels, and necklaces; while their low dresses shocked this Western churchman, little accustomed to the open-air life of a half-Oriental city. Carousals by night and day were frequent, and the women often took part in them. Already in the previous year the wrath of heaven at this dissolute life had manifested itself in a swarm of locusts, which had robbed the country people round about of their sustenance. At last the guilty city itself was assailed (November, 1114), in a way with which we are by now familiar, but which filled the Frankish stranger with wonder and terror. At midnight the noise of falling walls, towers, and houses, wakened the inhabitants; many were killed in their beds; others leapt from the walls or from lofty houses. Many rushed frenzied through the streets, holding up their hands and crying in various languages, ‘Parce, Domine, parce populo tuo.’ In the morning crowds of persons, even those habitually indifferent, trooped into St. Peter’s, which had not been seriously injured, to confess their sins and renounce the pursuit of pleasure. They promised the patriarch Bernard to amend their lives, and a sermon was preached on the subject. Soon after a throng of fugitives, including the bishop and clergy, poured into Antioch from a neighbouring town, which had also suffered severely. Prince Roger, who was then in camp, after providing for the repairing of the camp buildings and the feeding of his army, at once returned to Antioch to discuss the proper methods of restoration with the dux, who took the advice not only of the officials of the principality, but of the whole assembly of majores and minores, at which it was resolved that landowners should undertake a share in the repairs proportionate to their revenues.

As a contrast to this scene of terror we may take a later description of the triumphant return of Prince Roger to his capital after a victory over the infidel. He was received with hymns and chants in neighbouring villages, and as he entered Antioch a vast cry rose throughout the city and a procession gathered to meet him. In front were carried sacred relics, followed by the patriarch and clergy in robes, and then the laity in crowds. The author closes this part of his narrative on a lyrical note, describing the hangings of silk which decorated the streets, the fragrant spices scattered about, and the thanksgivings in the Cathedral, where the flag of the principality—red with a serpent at the centre, as we learn elsewhere—was offered at the high altar.

Vicos sternunt et plateas

Ornamentis sericis;

Auro gemmis adornantur

Ob adventum principis.

Diversarum specierum

Tantus odor funditur.

Quod terrestris paradisus

Possit dici penitus.

Sic ad templum Sancti Petri

Pervenere pariter,

Ubi laudes Deo Patri

Persolvunt alacriter.

Ergo princeps ad altare

Fert vexillum triumphale.'

To a somewhat later date belongs the valuable code of legal rules for the guidance of the high court, which dealt with cases affecting feudal seigneurs and their vassals, and of the court of burgesses. It is probably anterior to the better known Code of Jerusalem, and is known as the Assises d'Antioche. Its existence is a token that the settlers included many men, clergy for the most part, familiar with the feudal courts of the West, who aided the princes and their vassals in establishing feudalism amidst somewhat unfavourable surroundings. The Code had a curious history. Compiled in French early in the thirteenth century, probably under Bohemond IV, who had some legal knowledge, it was soon after translated into Armenian and enforced in Cilicia, where the inhabitants had for some time grown accustomed to feudal usages. This translation was certified as correct by the court of Antioch. When the city fell the original disappeared, but the translation continued in use till the Armenian kingdom lost its independence towards the end of the fourteenth century. The existing MS., dating from 1330, was rediscovered at Constantinople, and a modern French translation of it published in 1876.

In the Assises de la haute cour the relations of the seigneur and the liegemen are carefully laid down. The latter are bound to their lord for life or death; penalties are prescribed for injuring him by word or deed. The lord must accept him, the liege, with perfect equity and faith; he is the natural guardian of the liege’s son when a minor, ad­ministering his estate, but being bound to give possession and admit to knighthood on the boy reaching his majority, fifteen years. A liege’s widow has half of his movables, and the other half for her life, being bound to the lord for the latter only. After a wife’s death dowries were only returnable to her family if there were no children. For disputes between lieges the procedure was that the accused person unfurled his banner before the court and asked for two councillors to act as judges and to examine the witnesses. If the accused denied the testimony of witnesses he might be called upon to fight one of the latter, supposing that any witness accepted the ordeal of battle. If the objects in dispute were worth as much as a mark of silver judgment would be given against the party which refused battle. For striking another liege and denying it, if the assault were attested by witnesses ready to fight, 1,000 pieces of gold of Antioch were payable to the court, and to the complainant an Arab horse with knight’s equipment of cuirass, helmet, etc. If no witness were forthcoming, but the wounds were apparent, the court might require the accused to swear his innocence on the Cross and Gospels, failing which he had to pay as before. An alleged homicide might be required to fight a witness, or failing this to swear to his innocence as before. The loser in the battle was to be hanged—if the accused, alone; if the witness, together with the accuser; and similarly with other grave charges. Regulations are also laid down to protect lieges against dishonest or oppressive procurators and farmers of the estate revenues.

The court of burgesses had several similar regulations, such as those concerning the wife’s property and the majority of boys, who at fifteen could make wills and dispose of estates. A wife could make no will without her husband’s consent, except for disposing before witnesses of her own property. Violent seizure of goods was punishable with a fine of 36 sols, and restitution had to be made; but if the deed were denied the witnesses might be called on to swear on the Cross and Gospels, and the defendant would then have to fight one of the witnesses, provided the value of the goods exceeded one mark. At least two witnesses were necessary unless some patent fact, such as the presence of wounds, took the place of a second. Further sections deal with lost or strayed Arab horses, mules, etc., providing redress against persons failing to give them up. If they claimed to have bought them, but were unable to produce the seller, they might be punished as robbers.

A tenant was bound to pay rent for the full term agreed on, unless he were crossing the sea to Cyprus or the land of the Franks. If he merely coasted the shores of Syria he was bound to pay all, and in default the landlord could sequestrate the property. A horse or mule when bought and found to be a kicker could be returned within a year and a day, when the price was repayable. A fine of 36 sols was imposed for using false weights or measures, or neglecting the order of the seigneur’s crier. Measures bore the seigneur’s seal, and if this were removed the offender and his property were at the discretion of the court. A regular banking system is assumed; deposits were made, and bankers might be commissioned to pay debts. If goods were lent to merchants going abroad on condition that the lender received only one-third or one-fourth of the profits, accidents would be at the borrower’s risk; if half the profits were to go to the lender, the latter shared in losses equally with the borrower.

If one merchant sold goods to another and the transaction were registered at the custom-house of Antioch, no revocation was admitted.

Though many of these provisions seem just and thoughtful, the barbarous character of the Code, with its superstitious regard for oaths and constant recourse to the ordeal of battle, is obvious enough; and we know from other sources that cruel punish­ments, such as that of blinding, were common.

The coinage of this period displays much variety, resulting from the blending of three distinct tradi­tions—Arab, Byzantine, and French; but it cannot be said that the artistic merit is great. The twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century were notoriously backward from a numismatic point of view: the short-cross pennies of Henry II or the contemporary deniers of France would not lead one to expect the royaux and pavilions of the fourteenth century, rivalling the best productions of Greece; and Antioch perished before the great advance had been made. No mint seems to have existed outside the capital, and there coinage of a European type was restricted to the smaller values in copper or debased silver. The gold in circulation was probably in large measure of Arab or Byzantine origin, but the princes, in view of the extensive trade of their subjects with Arab peoples, resorted to the curious device of issuing gold coins almost entirely Oriental in design. Some of these were servilely imitated from those of contemporary Fatimite caliphs by Frank engravers quite ignorant of Arabic, who represented the lettering by arbitrary lines, angles and annulets, mixed up with Latin legends and crosses. Somewhat later the imitation becomes more intelligent. Syrian and Egyptian coins are copied by men having some knowledge of Arabic, though the spelling is often wrong and names illegible. These are dated according to the year of the Hegira, and include the name of Mohammed and texts from the Koran. Thus in 1250 we hear of the papal legate accompanying St. Louis protesting against the use of infidel designs by Syrian Christians. Such pieces were probably the Antiochene bezants mentioned in an agreement between the Prince of Antioch and the Hospitallers in 1231.

More interesting are the smaller values, alter­nating between Greek and Latin, and bearing some curious religious types. The rare bronze of Bohemond I, who perhaps felt himself more of a vassal of the Empire than some of his successors, are of a purely Byzantine type, having on the obverse the bust of St. Peter as the patron of Antioch, and on the reverse a cross with floriated baseband in the angles the four Greek letters B H M T, being part of the prince’s name. Tancred has several varieties, some with Peter as before, and on the reverse a Greek motto much abbreviated, “Lord, help thy servant Tancred,” between crosses. Later his own bust appears on the obverse, wearing Arab costume, perhaps to conciliate his native subjects. It is full-faced, with pointed beard, and wears a jewelled robe and large turban or kefiteh (properly a large, light, brightly covered shawl, said to be the original of the heraldic mantling). The figure holds a sword and is surmounted by a cross.

Roger, who for a time adopted Latin legends, returned to Greek before the end of his reign, and even the earlier issues have the purely Byzantine type (familiar in the West from its adoption by the Venetians) of Christ standing blessing, with cruciform nimbus, between the letters I C—X C. On the reverse the legend is DNE SALF(ac) T(uum) RO. Later the obverse shows the Virgin in nimbus and jewelled mantle, with both hands raised, between MH ΘΥ, and on the reverse, in Greek, ‘Lord, help Thy servant Rotzerius.’ Others show St. George, with nimbus, galloping and piercing a serpent with his lance, and the curious legend ROGER PRIGRINOS A. Bohemond II, the last prince to use Greek letters, returned to the Peter type. The deniers of Raymond of Poitiers are very rare, and show the bare head of the prince with RAMUNDIS, and on the reverse a cross between circles and ANTOCHIE. This remained the ordinary type for the rest of the period. The piece most frequently met with in collections is the denier of Bohemond IV, showing the prince’s head en­closed in a helmet with vizor and nose-piece, and marked by a lateral cross; legend BOHAMUNDUS: on the reverse is the name of the city and a cross having a crescent in one angle. This emblem belonged properly to the counts of Toulouse, and seems to have been copied at Antioch from Tripolitan issues.

That the part played by the Italian republics in furthering the conquest of Syria was mainly dictated by commercial motives cannot be doubted, and it was repaid by grants from the princes of settlements and important trading privileges. Both Pisans and Genoese aided in the First Crusade, and a fleet of the latter lay at St. Simeon, then the harbour of Antioch. After some severe fighting the crews were mostly incorporated in the Frankish army before the fall of the city, while other Genoese helped to provision the besiegers. The Genoese continued to hold the port till it was incorporated in the principality three years later. Bohemond at once granted the Genoese merchants thirty houses in Antioch, the Church of St. John, a place for storing merchandise, and a water-supply. In return they undertook to aid the prince against all who tried to seize the city. Owing, however, to the close relations between Genoa and Provence they would not bear arms against Raymond when his rivalry with the Norman prince came to a head, though offering to mediate. The Genoese also helped in the reduction of the county of Tripoli, and aided Tancred in extending his dominions. In fact few coast towns were acquired by the Crusaders without the help of an Italian fleet. This was particularly noticeable in the long conflicts with the imperial garrison of Laodicea. Tancred seized this important harbour-town in 1103, but next year it was recovered by the Greeks, though a Norman garrison retained the citadel for a time. Only in 1108 did the prince, aided by a Pisan army, definitely incorporate the city, and, besides granting the Pisans important rights at Laodicea, allowed them to settle at Antioch in the Vicus S. Salvatoris.

The Amalfitans, who have previously been mentioned as already established at Antioch before the Crusades, retained their concession, or ruga, which adjoined that of the Genoese, and later had a depot at Laodicea. By this time they had become less wealthy, and seem not to have been greatly favoured by the princes. There was also a small Venetian colony with a church, several houses, and a fondaco, or depot for storing goods.

As the fortunes of the principality declined after Saladin’s conquests, the sea-borne trade of Antioch was virtually restricted to the one port of St. Simeon. Yet both the Genoese and Pisan settlements, with their own viscounts, lasted on; the former, by the Church of St. John, is mentioned as late as 1264, but the Venetians seem already to have disappeared. Grants from later princes are preserved, dealing with the jurisdiction of the Italian officers and the dues payable by the settlers. The principal Pisan officials, the consuls, resided at Accon, but they were represented at Antioch by a viscount. At first the Genoese alone were exempt from trade dues, and the Venetians and Pisans only obtained a reduction and eventually exemption after much haggling. In 1216 Prince Rupin levied tolls both from Genoese and Pisans at St. Simeon, probably finding that the state revenues were falling off. Though the estates granted to these Italians were properly communal property there was a tendency for the colonists, or rich men who had leases of them, to convert them into private possessions. Complaints of this kind were made against the Genoese family of Embriaci at Antioch.

Among the articles of export 'at the time was the juice of the scammony, a kind of convolvulus, which hardened to a gum and was extensively used as a purgative in the West. That which grew round Antioch was considered the best, and both Venetians and Florentines conveyed it for sale to England. Sugar was also exported from the district.

Silk was already much worked before this period, and large quantities were found by the Crusaders stored at Antioch, along with fine carpets, gold, silver, and jewels.

All the chief Latin cities had an exchange in which merchants met, and correspondents of the great Italian merchants resided there, so that paper money had a wide currency. Trade with China and Farther India was carried on by the Persian Gulf ports; and Aleppo in the intervals of war remained the chief exchange station between Central Asia and Antioch. There was also an important trade-route through Armenia from Russia and adjoining countries, by which furs and hides were imported. The silk industry continued active throughout the period. Some of the products of the Antiochene looms were of uniform colour, some moirée, some brocaded with raised ornaments. Diapered cloth and silk stuffs, adorned with gold or silver thread woven into the woof, were extensively exported to the West. A thirteenth­century inventory of St. Paul’s in London includes a cope of Antiochene cloth with ornaments woven in gold thread; another somewhat later mentions a sacerdotal robe of red Antiochene cloth with birds and animals worked in green, their heads and feet woven in gold. Another had eagles in gold and silver, and both at Canterbury and St. Paul’s were vestments from the cloth of Antioch and Tarsus. Other stuffs were woven of goat’s-hair imported from Persia. The finely equipped houses of Antioch were furnished with rich brocades and carpets from Mosul, Bagdad, etc. Soap-making, glass-works, dyeing, and tanning gave employment to many persons, but there was little metal-work, except some forging of iron dug in the Lebanon district, Arab wrought metals being imported instead. Smaller domestic articles, such as lamps, cups, basins, bottles, etc., were of glass enamelled in bright colours on a gold ground, and this ornamental glass was largely exported. Lamps in particular were often adorned with lettering set off with rosettes, heraldic emblems, etc.

The ornamental gold and jewelled church furniture, such as that described in an inventory of the treasurer of St. Peter’s of Antioch, follows the  Byzantine tradition, and included such articles as a Greek cross adorned with pearls and jewels, a gold jewelled chalice, books of the Epistles bound in silver plates, ivory combs, silver cloths to cover the pyx, a silver censer and chrism vases, and gold rings adorned with topazes.

The mountains round the city were still thickly wooded, and fruit-trees, especially vines, abounded in the neighbourhood, with lemons, almonds, dates, figs, and the sweet citron, then called the citron of Antioch. Cotton had also begun to be cultivated, and was exported to Europe by the Genoese. Roads were kept up by corvees, and the great vassals had the duty of guarding them, and raising the tolls paid by caravans, as, for instance, on crossing the Iron Bridge on the Aleppo road, or at the important toll-gate below the castle of Magal, which commanded the sea road from Antioch to Asia Minor.

Churches built by the Latins followed the French type, but the internal decorations were mostly due to Greek or Arab craftsmen. The town houses, owing to the heat, necessarily conformed mainly to the Oriental plan, but the Crusaders introduced the use of tiled roofs such as still survive in the modern town. The houses were mostly of two stories, having a central court level with the first floor reached by an outside staircase. The ground floor would be occupied with shops, stables, kitchens, or store-rooms; the courtyard would open direct to the large living apartments, which in the richer dwellings were finely adorned with mosaics, marbles, paintings, glass windows, vaulted or panelled roofs, the walls often decorated with silk hangings of local make. Several of the rich town houses had private chapels, with their own priests. The country seats surrounding Antioch were, however, more of the type which we associate with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in this country. The principal dwelling of every seigneur would be a strong fortified castle (or, as the Franks usually called it, a krak, from the Arab kerak, a strong­hold), the garrison of which was commanded by a châtelain, who represented the seigneur during the latter’s absence, as for example, if he had a court appointment requiring his presence at Antioch. By the castle a church would be raised, and the Syrian villagers who held land under the seigneur would be subject to the ordinary feudal system. One such castle, that of Sahioun, lying among the fierce marauding tribes of the Ansaries Mountains (the ancient Bargylus), by the main road from Aleppo to Laodicea, is still well preserved. It was the property of a rich vassal of the princes of Antioch, and stands on a crest enclosed between two ravines. There are three main blocks of buildings, the central being the very strong castle, with donjon enclosing chambers for the seigneur and his chief officers, a chapel, the great hall, and—a feature hard to parallel in an English or French mediaeval castle—some stone baths. Separated by deep trenches cut in the rock are two large walled courts with portcullised gates, containing the dwellings of dependents; and there are also ruins of the houses of native servants, round a small Syrian chapel adorned with frescoes. At the bottom of the trench isolating the castle on the east are mangers cut in the rock, and once covered by a roof, where many horses could shelter in the event of an Arab raid.

The costumes worn were predominantly Oriental, and Franks long settled, as well as the half-caste Poulains, mostly wore beards. In the earlier years settlers from Europe were tolerably numerous, and it was possible to keep up armies predominantly Frank in origin; but as these sources of supply ceased the seigneurs had to draw on their own vassals, who provided the Turcoples, light cavalry of mixed Syrian and Franco-Syrian origin, armed with Arabian lances having a reed handle. Syrian men-at-arms also came to be employed by the princes, as well as by vassals and monasteries. Slaves were partly Armenians, partly negroes brought by the caravans from Arabia. Tournaments, hawking, and hunting with Turcoman dogs or Syrian greyhounds took up much of the attention of the richer classes, who also appreciated games of chance, chess, and the recitation of chansons de geste, for which their adventurous life afforded much material. It is a curious phenomenon that this Eastern city, with its traditions of serious Greek philosophical and theological study, should have given an impetus to a kind of literature owing little or nothing to Greek or Roman models. The epic poem known as the Chanson d’Antioche, but perhaps more accurately the Chanson de Jerusalem, is in its original form one of the earliest examples of this species of literature. It was composed by the pilgrim Richard, who took part in the First Crusade, and carries the narrative down to a point just before the arrival at Jerusalem. This was worked over by another poet, Graindor de Douay, a century later; and several incidents are not now considered historical. The siege and fall of Antioch, with the ensuing battle with Kerboga, are, how­ever, narrated with extraordinary minuteness, the faults of the Crusading leaders are clearly recog­nized, and the position of the city gates, with the names and arms of the besieging chieftains, is described, rivalling in wealth of detail, if not of poetical imagery, the messenger’s report in the Seven against Thebes. We hear of the Turkish guards by the Iron Gate, the Norman and Breton corps posted near the citadel:

‘De vers la maistre tour, au pié de la montaigne

La sont tout li Normant et tout cil de Bretaigne;

Li dus de Normandie, son tréf tent en la plaine,

Et li baron d’Anjou et li baron de Maine.’

The baggage animals come up from the harbour with provisions for the host:

‘Del port Saint Simdon venoient dix somiers

Tout cargie de vitaille et de pan a mangier,’

but the convoys sent to escort them were unable to save them from the Turks, who brought them into the city by the bridge. Beyond this bridge, in the flowery meadows bordering the Orontes, the Arab horses are seen grazing:

‘ Desous l’iave de Ferne fu’ biaux li prés floris.

Là paissoit li chevaus à Fabur l’Arabis.’

Then the city falls, and the half-starved Crusaders enter,

‘Mais de vitaille truevent moult petite fuison,

Car Turc l’avait gastée au siège d’environ.’

 

The expedients which were resorted to to still their hunger are told with relentless realism.

The writer apparently belongs to Flanders or Picardy, but another poem on a similar subject in the Provencal dialect is probably by a native of Limousin or Auvergne. Only a fragment of some 700 lines survives, dealing with the battle outside Antioch against Kerboga; but though there are points of contact with the French poem new names and incidents are introduced, probably from the recollections of Provencal Crusaders.

The arms of the Crusaders are described in great detail: in the French and Flemish camp were 15,000 well-armed men with hauberk and helmet of Arab pattern:

‘XV. milia que son tan jen garnitz,

Quascus porta auberc e vert elm sarazi.’

The Normans under Duke Robert bear English axes and javelins:

        ‘Abchas portont anglezas e guirez per lansar;

the flags of vair, ermine, and other patterns are carefully described, and the sixty loyal counts all clothed in white who served under Bohemond. Then we are taken to the Turkish camp; the emir Kerboga is careless and truculent: he mocks at the Virgin Birth, and at the folly of men who can believe in the efficacy of a rusty and blood-stained lance:

 

‘E lo fer d’ una lansa roelhos e sanglen

Al que lor deus pres mort, pasio e tormen ;

Aiso creson li fol, tan an petit de sens;’

and amuses himself before the battle with a gorgeous set of chess-men—‘escaxs d’evori e d’aur ft.’

The Latin patriarchs of Antioch had under their immediate authority seven bishops, four arc­bishops, and eleven Latin monasteries, besides a much larger number of heretical monasteries. The ecclesiastical court under their control judged cases of heresy, sorcery, marriage questions, wills, tithes, and matters immediately affecting the ecclesiastical order. The clergy of Syria are described as the richest in proportion to their number in the world, often holding estates in Europe besides receiving tithes of crops, live stock, and spoils of war. Yet they gave liberally in charity and displayed a laudable absence of bigotry, and a genuine desire to reunite the Christian Churches in the face of the common foe. The Franks were anxious to conciliate the native Christians, who were industrious agriculturists and traders, and had most of the natural resources of the country in their hands. All legislation makes careful provision for them; all feudal courts had a bailiff specially charged with Syrian jurisdiction, just as at Antioch they had a court of their own, presided over by their own reis, who no doubt followed local customs as well as the statute law of the Franks. The Syrian bishops, Jacobite or Nestorian, and the Armenian bishops also, were regarded as suffragans to the Patriarch of Antioch in a way the Byzantine Church would never have tolerated. The Franks gained by this attitude; they were introduced by their native subjects to Oriental science and to much of the learning of the Arabs. The relations between Antioch and Armenia were particularly close; marriage alliances were frequent; Armenian troops were helpful in war; feudal customs and to some extent Latin religious observances spread in the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. Though the ruling classes at Antioch tried to keep up French as the official and court language, it is clear that Armenian as well as Arabic were widely spoken in the surrounding district.

The attitude to the Greeks—or Griffons, as they are usually called by the chroniclers of the time was not altogether friendly. The claim of the Empire to an ill-defined overlordship was resented by the Franks; Greek bishops were only recognized if they definitely accepted the Roman supremacy; but there is no reference to actual persecution, and their clergy could bear witness in an Antiochene court. Jews were few and could hold no land, ranking below Mohammedans. In spite of the frequent wars there was much intercourse with the Arabs. Arab guards were for a time maintained at Antioch; as already mentioned, coinage of an Arab type was struck; and the Arabic language, as well as such sciences as astronomy, geography, rhetoric, and natural history, made their way among the Franks. The Templars with their remote castles among the mountains were particularly amenable to this influence, which at last seems to have sapped the purity of their faith. Medicine was chiefly practised by native Christians, especially Jacobites, and had both Greek and Indian features. Antioch had an important medical school, one of the leading teachers of which, Theodore, became physician to the western emperor Frederic.

The bourgeosie continued mainly of European origin, and its communal institutions, with its courts of fonde and chaîne for commercial cases, and its officers, viscomte, greffier, and jurés, were largely outside the feudal system. Owing to constant losses in war the noblesse was necessarily more often recruited from the rich commercial class than in the West. The orders seem to have been friendly to one another, and bourgeois were often admitted to knighthood. As a class, however, they were opposed to wars, and did not welcome new Crusades, which interfered with their commercial activity. The ordinary meeting-place for the municipal authorities was a hall adjoining the. Cathedral, called the Curia, or Palatium Beati Petri, which served as a kind of Hôtel de Ville. The chief and representative of the citizens, corresponding to a Western burgomaster or mayor, seems to have been called a praetor.

A list of the chief state officials, partly Byzantine, partly Frank in origin, is given by Galterius, but their duties are very imperfectly known, the dux, an office retained from imperial times, was a kind of praefectus urbi, next in dignity to the prince in Antioch itself, but not having authority over the whole principality. Under the dux stood a viscount, who would collect imposts, provide for the public safety, and issue military orders in wartime. A judge to decide private suits and a praeco, who gave notices of the orders and decisions of the government, were both immediately under the prince’s control; and among other officers were a chancellor, chamberlain, and vice-dapifer, or steward, of whom the two latter accompanied the prince in war. The prince’s personal retinue, domestici amici, formed an inner circle, but a larger council, including the barons of the state, was convened in times of danger. The princes had chaplains attached to their service and pages and huntsmen who accompanied them when hunting, even during campaigns. The clergy were quite ready to serve in the wars; they helped to man the towers of Antioch when an attack was momentarily expected after Roger’s defeat, and several of the leading clerical officials accompanied the army on campaigns.

It may be well in conclusion to add a few words as to the reasons why the Franks, with all their  zeal and activity in religion, war, and commerce, maintained so weak a hold on their Eastern possessions, and exercised but a transitory influence. The principality of Antioch lasted only 170 years, and during the last part of the time included only the immediate neighbourhood of the city and its port. The contrast with Rome at once presents itself. It is not here a matter of mere numbers. The Franks settled in Antioch and other Syrian towns no doubt exceeded the Romans in their most flourishing era. Their failure was rather due to the absence of a strong and uniform nationality behind the colonies. Their divisions were manifested from the first by the establishment of four states instead of one, and through lack of concentration they were unable to reduce the dangerous hinterland, and left Aleppo and Damascus to be the sources of constant danger to themselves. Further, as immigration dwindled, they were largely left to their own resources. We have seen how even the Roman garrisons in Syria soon proved worthless from a military point of view, and had to be strongly reinforced from Europe for any serious campaign. The advent of fresh bodies of Crusaders was irregular and not always well timed, while the intervention of the Byzantine Empire always provoked jealousy and ill-will. The mixture of diverse races also had an undoubtedly enervating effect on the national character. European women were naturally few, and the offspring of Frank fathers and Syrian or Armenian mothers were unlikely to carry on the warlike traditions of their Teutonic ancestors.

In spite of all this the site of Antioch was so strong, and it was so comparatively easy to supply it from the sea, that it long outlasted two of the three sister states; and if the European powers had been less absorbed in their own quarrels and more awake to the danger of surrendering the whole eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the infidel, Antioch could probably have been held at least till the flood of Ottoman invasion in the fifteenth century. No help came, however; the prince seems to have cared more for his county of Tripoli than for his northern capital. Assailed by an army of African savages, Antioch met the fate long before denounced by the Sibyl, from an enemy whom that prophetess of woe can hardly have foreseen…