Antioch: Crossroads of Empire

We begin with the founding of Antioch in 300 BC and to its last major sacking in 1268 AD, and all points in between.  

Transcript

The City of Antioch: Crossroads of Empire

April 2026

“Home to hundreds of thousands of people in its golden age, it was known as “The Second Rome” and subsequently “the Cradle of Christianity” before it experienced so many cataclysmic earthquakes and military conquests that it was reduced to a backwater.” 

Patricia Claus

“Antioch was the most multicultural city of Late Antiquity.”

Florent Heintz

“If Julian had flattered himself that his personal connection with the capital of the East would be productive of mutual satisfaction to the Prince and people, he made a very false estimate of his own character, and of the manners of Antioch. The warmth of the climate disposed the natives to the most intemperate enjoyment of tranquility and opulence; and the lively licentiousness of the Greeks was blended with the hereditary softness of the Syrians.”

Edward Gibbon

I originally set out to write a history of Syria in light of the fall of the House of Assad last year.  That quickly became a ridiculous proposition.  My series on Russia from 2022 extended to 5 episodes, each containing 4,000 words.  It would take 100,000 to justify a history of Syria.  There are places on the globe that favor geographical protection.  Egypt, Chile, or Sweden, or island nations like Britain and Japan.  Then, some locations are roadways that enable trade, caravans, and armies to pass through easily on the way from here to there.  Belgium and Burgundy, lying between France and Germany, are two of these.  But long before that, there was Syria; this area saw armies going from Mesopotamia to Anatolia. Or from Persia to Greece, or even Egypt to Mesopotamia, and later Arabia to the Eastern Roman Empire.  Being a causeway of history, the number of civilizations that have ruled the region of Syria includes… pause for breath: 

Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Seleucids, Egyptians again, Romans, Parthians, Persians again, Romans again, Arabs, Turks, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans (Turks again), Mamlukes (Egyptians, sort of, again), British, French, And Finally, Syrians again.  

I decided to make this manageable and confine this podcast to the onetime capital of Syria, the ancient and medieval city of Antioch.  This has the advantage of limiting the time frame from five millennia to a much easier two.  Also, by limiting the geography, we can accomplish a deeper dive into one of the more important cities in history.  

We tend to most prize the histories of those cities we can still visit—London, Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, or even the neighboring and rival city of Damascus.  But history is replete with lost cities that, in their day, were as important as the ones named above.  So to learn about Antioch is to inform ourselves about history not readily available today, but also to understand Syria itself as a crossroad of powerful empires moving across its borders, often in destructive ways.  

As is typical for most ancient cities, Antioch was founded on a river, in this case the Orontes.  The Orontes runs 355 miles, starting in Lebanon, flowing northwards through Syria before entering the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey.  Unlike many of these locations, Antioch did not rise gradually, as we see in the histories of other ancient locations such as Thebes, Rome, or Babylon.  Rather, the city was more akin to Alexandria, built as a capital, pre planned and meant to overawe the visitor.  

I intentionally used the term “Alexandrian similarity” because one of Alexander’s successors founded Antioch.  Established in 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, the new city was named after his father, Antiochus, and laid out on a grid plan modeled after Alexandria. Its strategic location near the Orontes River and at the intersection of major caravan routes (the Silk Road and spice trade routes) helped it flourish. 

Despite its geographic presence at the Western end, Antioch soon became the capital of the Seleucid Empire, hosting a diverse population of Greeks, Macedonians, Syrians, and Jews from the outset.  It was not a complete abandonment of the purported capital of Alexander at Babylon, or of the Persian capitals of Susa and Persepolis.  Instead, it was a matter of focus, especially for the Macedonian-descended Seleucids. Seleucia on the Tigris, located over the ancient city of Babylon, served as the administrative capital of the eastern provinces. The dynasty frequently used Antioch as its primary seat of government because the Empire’s focus gradually shifted westward to manage conflicts with the Ptolemies and later the Romans.

By the 2nd century BC, the city’s wealth and size earned it the nickname “Queen of the East, though there was not a single individual who coined the term. It featured grand public works – temples, theaters, city walls – befitting its status, and the nearby suburb of Daphne was famed as a pleasure retreat for the elite. Through the Hellenistic period, Antioch was one of the most important cities in the Near East, laying the foundations of its multicultural identity.  

And of this period of Antioch Patrica Claus writes:

“Among its great Greek buildings was the theatre, of which substructures remain on the flank of Mt. Silpius, and the royal palace, which was most likely situated on the island. At its zenith, Antioch enjoyed a reputation for being “a populous city, full of most erudite men and rich in the most liberal studies,” according to Cicero, who wrote about it in his work “Pro Archia Poeta.”

The Seleucids are an interesting case.  Whereas other successor kingdoms, such as Ptolemaic Egypt or the various principalities in Anatolia or Greece, largely were focused on a single nation, the Seleucids were a true imperial state.  In some respects, it was a pale copy of the old Persian Empire rather than a Hellenistic state. It ranged from Judea to the Indus River, from Arabia in the South to the Caucasus in the North.  Yet it was called the “Fragile Giant” by Michael Taylor in an article in Ancient Warfare Magazine.  Part of it was that, given the far-flung nature of the Empire, wars could be fought with Egypt, in Anatolia, and in India, all at the same time.  The Seleucids also lacked the unifying history and ethnicity of the Persians. 

Christine Kondoleon, in the book Antioch: The Last Ancient City, notes, “Greek-speaking Jewish culture flourished alongside Roman, Egyptian, and Near Eastern cults. A large middle-class shared in the wealth and culture of the city, and art abounded in numerous forms, especially in beautiful mosaics depicting scenes from mythology and everyday life.”

Why so much of this piece on the Seleucids? Because they were the founders, and if not for Rome, I would speculate the likes of Antiochus III and his heirs would have conquered Egypt, Anatolia, and Greece, restoring the Alexandrian Empire.  But then again, “if not for Rome” was the phrase reverberated by hundreds of people from the 600s BC to the 15th century AD. 

The Seleucids did fall, primarily to Rome, and in 64 BC Antioch came under Roman control (following internal strife in the Seleucid dynasty and Pompey’s Syrian campaign) and was made the capital of the Roman province of Syria, largely because of its sheer size. During that period, it was estimated to have a population of 800,000, with only Rome and Alexandria being larger in the Roman world. Julius Caesar visited the city in 47 BC and confirmed its freedoms during his eastern campaign, in which he defeated Pompey and pacified the East.  

Later, under Augustus, a great Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was erected on Mount Silpius. Emperor Trajan famously resided there during his Parthian campaign, and in AD 115 a catastrophic earthquake shook Antioch so severely that Trajan took refuge in the hippodrome; he and his successor, Hadrian, later helped rebuild the city (though its population never fully recovered). 

In AD 256, the Sassanid Persian king Shapur I sacked Antioch, slaughtering tens of thousands and deporting the survivors, but Rome soon restored the city under Valerian. And it was from Antioch that Valerian set out in an ill-fated campaign that not only saw defeat, but also saw Valerian captured in 260 AD.  It was a wonder that the Persians did not permanently capture Antioch during that period.  

Despite these disasters, Antioch’s economy thrived on Mediterranean and overland trade (including the spice trade), and it remained a key military and commercial hub on Rome’s eastern frontier. Geography wins, and regardless of the various setbacks, Antioch was still in a great position to take a cut of the cross-continent trade routes.   

Antioch also became a crucial center for early Christianity. The city even boasted its own martyr. Ignatius of Antioch was an early Christian writer and the Patriarch of Antioch. Though little is known of his life (he lived in the 2nd century AD), while on route to Rome, where he was to be murdered, Ignatius wrote a series of letters. This correspondence is central to a later collection of works by the Apostolic Fathers. His letters represent a muscular, suffering Christianity. “It is not that I want merely to be called a Christian, but to actually be one. Yes, if I prove to be one, then I can have the name...Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the Devil--Only let me get to Jesus Christ!” 

Not quite Paul of Tarsus’ preaching of gentleness of love.  

Was Antioch the “cradle of Christianity” as some would contend due to the presence of many figures such as Paul and Ignatius? I would be hard-pressed to omit Jerusalem or Rome, but it was very important. A large Jewish community in the Kerateion quarter made the city a fertile mission field. Traditions (and New Testament accounts) hold that the Apostle Peter helped establish Antioch’s church, and Paul (and Barnabas) used Antioch as their missionary base around AD 47–55. According to Acts 11:26, Antioch was the first place where the term “Christian” was coined to describe Jesus’s followers, which, given its Greek influence, makes more sense than say Jerusalem or Rome. 

“By the mid-3rd century, Antioch hosted numerous church synods (ten major assemblies between 252 and 300) and was recognized as one of the five apostolic “patriarchates” (alongside Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, and, later, Constantinople). In AD 327, Emperor Constantine the Great (the first Christian emperor) began construction of a grand Domus Aurea, or “Great Church,” in Antioch, which served as the city’s cathedral for the next two centuries—under Constantine and his successors, Antioch’s bishop exercised great influence in theological and ecclesiastical affairs, reflecting the city’s prestige in Christian antiquity.

Throughout the Apostolic Era, Antioch remained the most prominent in wealth and leadership among the five Sees. Her history is part and parcel of larger ecclesiastical history, and a good part of the events and beliefs which constitute this history originated either within the See of Antioch or with Antiochian personalities. The theological turmoil that stirred Antioch during these early centuries is indicative of the dynamic nature of the Christian community there.

Historian Andrea U. De Giorgi also notes that it was not just the founding of Constantinople as the new capital by Emperor Constantine that shifted the center of the Roman Empire from the West to the East.  “More subtly, though, Antioch’s growth brought a shift in the way space in antiquity was perceived and experienced. By sewing together Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, the city forged a new Greco-Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), one that gradually swung its fulcrum away from the Italian peninsula. Roads led to Antioch from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia; Byzantine chroniclers narrated the whole history of the world from the banks of the Orontes.”

During the 4th and 5th centuries, Antioch continued to prosper under Roman rule even as the Western half of the Empire collapsed. The city continued to benefit from olive plantations and other agriculture in the region. It remained a major garrison and administrative center (the seat of the comes Orientis overseeing the eastern dioceses). 

However, the city was repeatedly struck by calamity. In 526 and 528 AD, powerful earthquakes devastated Antioch, destroying much of its ancient architecture. Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) undertook an ambitious rebuilding program, repairing fortifications, public buildings, and churches. He even renamed the city Theopolis (“City of God”) in honor of its Christian significance.  But in addition to the earthquakes, Antioch, like all of Eastern Rome, was hit by a plague in the 540s that devastated the population.  Despite Justinian’s efforts, Antioch never regained its former magnitude: chroniclers note that its population was greatly reduced by the late 4th century. By the time of Justinian, it had already lost tens of thousands of residents.

The 6th and early 7th centuries brought war and natural disasters. Similar to the mid-200s, Antioch was occupied twice by Sassanid Persian forces (during the wars of Emperor Justin II around AD 540 and again under Khosrow II in 611). It is an awesome thing for trade to be on the main road, but those same roads bring more than caravans.  

Each time, Roman forces eventually retook the city, but imperial authority was weakening.  The Emperor Heraclius managed to defeat the Persians, but the effort so weakened both Roman and Persian forces that neither was able to deal with a new threat from the South that would change Antioch’s and the world’s fortunes in the 630s.  

In AD 637, Antioch fell to the Muslim Arab armies of the Rashidun Caliphate. After a siege following the decisive Battle of Yarmouk, the city was absorbed into the Islamic world. Under early Umayyad and later Abbasid rule, Antioch was an important provincial center and trading hub for a time, but its size diminished. And a nearby rival, Damascus, which had been around for millennia, began to be seen as the more logical capital in the region.  By the mid-7th century, Antioch had become a smaller frontier town, and the legendary era of Greco-Roman Antioch was over.

Muslim Arab governors ruled Antioch for centuries, even as trade and culture continued to link the city to both the Islamic world and Constantinople. Antioch’s mixed population included Christians (Greek, Syriac, Armenian), Jews, and Muslims, reflecting its diverse heritage. In 969, the Roman Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas recaptured Antioch, and it became the Empire’s northeastern bulwark. For a brief period, Antioch regained some prominence as a frontier fortress. However, in 1084, the city was again captured by Turkish forces (the Seljuk Turks under Suleiman), and Eastern Roman rule in the region collapsed.

Antioch once became prominent in historical annals with the advent of the crusades. In 1098, Antioch was besieged and captured by the leaders of the First Crusade (notably Bohemond of Taranto, who set himself up as Prince). This new Principality of Antioch was to remain in Latin hands for 170 years. During this Latin Christian period, Antioch was ruled by a Norman-Frankish nobility (Bohemond I and his successors). The principality was often at war with surrounding Muslim powers and, surprisingly, with the Eastern Roman Empire: it was besieged by Kerbogha of Mosul (1100), involved in Byzantine attempts to regain it (the Treaty of Devol in 1108), and subject to raids by Muslim leaders like Imad ad-Din Zengi and Saladin. 

Crusader Antioch had a mixed population of Latins, Eastern Christians, and Muslims, and its economy centered on local agriculture and trade through its port at Seleucia Pieria (later replaced by the new harbor of Saint Simeon). In the late 12th century, Muslim rulers like Nur ad-Din and Saladin reopened long-distance trade links that benefited Antioch, but in the 13th century, shifting trade routes (especially overland routes opened through Mongol domains) began to undermine its prosperity.

Antioch was a city whose renewal depended on trade, and the temporary cessation of trade with the East that followed the Mongol conquests accelerated its decline. The final blow for Antioch came in 1268, when the Mamluk Sultan Baibars captured Antioch after a bloody siege. Baibars ordered the city’s destruction; the fortifications and much of the civilian population were destroyed or deported. Antioch’s walls were torn down, and the city was largely abandoned. From that point on, the ancient city of Antioch ceased to be a significant urban center.

Antioch remained largely in ruins until 1517, when the Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered the Mamluk domains (including Syria). The site of Antioch became the modest town of Antakya in the Ottoman Sanjak of Aleppo and remains by that name and part of Turkey to this day. 

Modern Antakya preserves historic landmarks from its long past. The Great Mosque of Antakya (Ulu Camii) dates to the late Ottoman period and stands on the site of earlier churches.  There are several artifacts from its earlier history in the Antakya Museum.  

The ruins of Antioch lie mostly buried under modern Antakya’s streets, but archaeological excavations (especially in the early 20th century) have revealed rich traces of its past. In particular, dozens of elaborate Roman- and Byzantine-era mosaics have been uncovered in villas and public buildings around Antioch. These floor mosaics (now displayed in the Hatay Archaeology Museum) depict mythological and everyday scenes with exquisite detail, reflecting the city’s former wealth and cosmopolitan culture. The example above (dating to the 5th–6th centuries CE) shows the figure of Narcissus from a “Megalopsychia Hunt” mosaic. Other artifacts – columns, capitals, inscriptions – attest to Antioch’s Hellenistic and Roman heritage.

Antioch’s cultural legacy is also felt through religion and language. The city was a major center of Hellenistic Judaism in antiquity and later an influential seat of early Christianity. It came to be known as “the cradle of Christianity,” since (as noted above) Peter and Paul helped found the church there, and it was the first community called “Christian”. Today, several Eastern Christian churches still bear Antioch’s name (the Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Maronite, etc.), even though their actual centers are in Damascus or Lebanon. Likewise, Antioch’s Islamic heritage endures: local traditions honor Habib al-Najjar (Habib the Carpenter), whose tomb is in Antakya’s Habib-i Nejjar Mosque and is visited by pilgrims from across the Muslim world.

Antioch is that classic example of the very thing that led to its greatness, geography, also led to its often being conquered and pillaged.  Being on the route between East and West, and situated on a geologic fault line, this city, unlike its near contemporary Alexandria or the even older Rome, no longer exists in its original form.   But we have our history, and it is rich indeed.