A Short History of Antioch, 300 B.C.-A.D. 1268

! tl i ttftSJfo*! i VZ Ki) M ic asrc HANDBOUND AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS ^Tg<^ 7 A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTIOCH BY THE SAME AUTHOR LIFE AND LETTERS IN ROMAN AFRICA. 5s. net SPAIN UNDER THE ROMAN EM- PIRE. 7s. 6d. net SYRIA AS A ROMAN PROVINCE. 7s. 6d. net SARDINIA IN ANCIENT TIMES. 6s. net C " This kind of book is unfortunately too rare '' in English scholarship.'1 — The Oxford Magazine. X H K o w X H S o « (I) > < K W z w O ! * Ipjp A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTIOCH 3OO B.C. — A.D. 1268 4 Vu ,v c o BY 5 V " « E. S. BOUCHIER, M.A. LATE CLASSICAL TUTOR OF NON-COLLEGIATE STUDENTS, OXFORD, AND ASSISTANT MASTKR AT BRISTOL GRAMMAR SCHOOL; AUTHOR OF 'SYRIA AS A ROMAN PROVINCE,' 'SARDINIA IN ANCIENT TIMES,' ETC. HoKfe38-_ IS. |. 3a OXFORD BASIL BLACKWELL LONDON: 4, STATIONERS' HALL COURT, E.C. 4 1921 ' 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 Introduction whose labours are often buried in the back numbers of various Memoires, 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 world-wide 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 con- gregations. In an age when healthy political activity and a real party spirit were impossible, vi Introduction 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 im- passioned and imaginative addresses of their golden- mouthed 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 moun- tain sides, and the ravages of barbarian enemies, have obliterated ancient Antioch except for part of the Byzantine circumvallation. Something will no vii Introduction 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 de- scriptions 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 viii Introduction 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 Alexan- drine 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 misgovern- ment 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 ix Introduction 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 war- fare with the infidel; also the shortlived occupa- tion by the Seljuk Turks, which was abruptly ter- minated 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 jinhappy 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 sym- pathies, and correspondingly hated by the peoples of the interior, who again and again sought to weaken and devastate it.

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