Antiocheia

This paper presents some thirty unpublished bronze lamps that are housed in local museums
of Cilicia, Hatay and Mardin in southern Turkey. The chosen methodology of this paper is
to compare these lamps typologically, dating them by reference to the extensively published
examples by Maria Xanthopoulou, 2010. The dating of our lamps does not generally extend
beyond the Early Byzantine period, although some isolated samples could be later. In
addition, they belong to a very homogenous group because of their restricted area of origin.
Thus, our awareness of the objects enriches the general overview already offered by the
latest European and Mediterranean studies on this topic. The Southern Anatolian workshops
initially based their work on Italic patterns, were later influenced by the Byzantine art of
Constantinople, and, after the Muslim conquest, by Islamic models.

After the death of Alexander III of Macedon, the Seleucid Empire emerged as one of the most powerful Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia. His huge territorial extension and the various peoples who came under their control necessitated the creation of a mighty army that would ensure their control and help protectit from its enemies.

Throughout history, the Seleucid military might demonstrated
many times its importance for the maintenance, expansion and defense of the Empire. Rarely the Seleucid army was defeated in a campaign and it happened in front of the almighty Rome. After the defeat at Thermopylae and Magnesia, and following the imminent withdrawal must conquer the Ptolemaic Empire, the new king Antiochus IV Epiphanes held a military parade as never been done before, its real purpose is unknown, but the Seleucids showed the world the power that still had the Empire. Through the stories of several classic sources, we can come closer to this event and what
it could entail.

The similarities between St George and the Muslim saint Khidr are striking. When looking for the mentifacts at the root of the similarities, we come across the Greek god Zeus, the Hebrew prophet Elijah, and the Phoenician weather-god Baal. This leads us to believe that the St. George we know today has little in common with the Palestinian martyr he is named after. We maintain that the modern St George is a conglomeration of mentifacts that are thousands of years old.

Beyond the devastation and tragedy of human lives precipitated by the conflict in Syria, priceless representations of ancient culture and history have likewise fallen victim to a seemingly never-ending maelstrom of destruction. Ancient monuments and art have either been destroyed, damaged, or lost as chaos persists in a region that has for thousands of years seen the footprint of a parade of civilizations. (...)
The scenes tell the story of the founding of Pella/Apamea and further development of this city on the Orontes river. Three main groups of scenes can be distinguished: (1) the foundation of Pella-on-the-Orontes by the legendary Archippos, (2) the (re)foundation of the city as Apamea-on-the-Orontes (earlier Pella-on-the-Orontes) by Seleucus I Nikator and the simultaneous financial generosity of his wife, Apama, for the development of the new Seleucid colony in 300 BC, and (3) the raising of the town fortifications around monumental public buildings and an illustration of the daily life of a joyous people living in the rich Apamean agglomeration and hinterland. Features of style date the panels to the 4th century AD.

The Museum of Hatay (Antioch on the Orontes, today Antakya, southeastern Turkey) preserves a mummiform bronze lamp of great interest, so far unpublished (accession no. 7587). The lamp, in the shape of a mummified Osiris, has only a few parallels; it contains inscriptions with magical formulas that can be paralleled in other magical texts. Our specimen belongs to a very small group of so-called mummy lamps on which recently Jean-Louis Podvin has focused in his study. We may add another item from Alexandria. This lamp has been on display for many years in the museum of Hatay, Antakya, but its inscriptions had so far remained unnoticed. They bring us back to the world of magic: the lamp is in a good state of preservation and is of a large size. Because of its inscriptions, the lamp could belong to the equipment of a place of worship. It might be supposed to have been carefully hidden during the persecution against magic and magical practices in Antioch, especially in the 4th cent. A.D. Perhaps a similar fate could have preserved the lamp from Canosa, discovered in a partition wall. This bronze find enriches the small group of osiriform lamps known until now. It allows us to know further evidence of Osiris worship in ancient Syria. The inscriptions present us with an hitherto unattested epithet next to well-known formulas.

Libanius (born 313, died post 393) was a sophist (professor of rhetoric). He was born in Antioch and taught in the city from 354 until his death. His works are many and varied. Among his speeches, the Antiochicos or « Antiochean » (speech), is entirely dedicated to the praise of Syrian Antioch. Libanius delivered it during the Antiochean Olympic Games of 356. In the edition of the collected speeches of Libanius in the “Collection des Universités de France” it takes up volume III. Odile Lagacherie and Michel Casevitz edited the Greek text and translated it into French. My task was to write the introduction (47 pages) and the historical notes (122 pages). I discussed the text as a historical source.

The introduction deals first with the date of the text. A detailed analysis follows: this analysis shows the compliance of Libanius to the rules and clichés of the rhetoric of praise. The speech is nonetheless an important document for the history of Antioch and its famous suburb, Daphne, but also for the history of the civic and urban reality from Hellenistic times to Late Antiquity. Libanius claims to inform his listeners both about the past and the present of his city. Nearly a third of the Antiochicos is devoted to its past. Libanius tells of the legends of pre-foundations and foundation, and then gives an outline of the history of the city in the Hellenistic period. These narratives are a valuable source concerning the various functions of the foundation stories, the conditions of their emergence and their importance at the beginning of Late Antiquity. The main function of these narratives, however, is to celebrate contemporary Antioch. The important thing for Libanius is the present, and the Antiochicos can be used as a source not only about the realities of the urban landscape and the functioning of the institutions in the fourth century but also about some of the great debates of the 4th c. The excavations conducted in Antioch and Daphne have so far produced a lot of mosaics but few results of relevance to knowledge of public architecture and the urban space, and the texts which inform us about the history of Antiochean urban space are in their majority written after the middle of the fourth century: in many ways, and despite its rhetoric, the best source on Antioch in 356 is in fact the Antiochicos. For this reason, I took care to identify, analyse and evaluate all the insights given by Libanius, and chose to provide the text with a topographic index (p. 202-205). In ancient rhetorical tradition, the orator must speak on behalf of the city, as its servant. The way in which Libanius understands this task and carries it out it is in itself the subject of history. The study of the text as a historical document depends on our understanding of Libanius’ goals when he pronounces his speech, and then revises it for publication. Libanius’ aims are to build a consensus and to contribute to maintaining the Antiocheans as an imagined community, regardless of their religion, and to defend Antioch as a city (polis), in an era where the traditional vision of the city and its role within the Roman empire is questioned not only by Christianity, but also by the institutional changes linked to the emergence of a new definition of the empire. The introduction concludes with a study of the reception and posterity of the speech.

In the notes, my goal was both to explain the text and identify its historical interest and the questions it raises. The 36-page bibliography is indicative of the breadth and quantity of the reading required. But beyond just reading, this work conducted in 1993 led me to undertake a great deal of research and to specialize gradually in the field of the urban history of the Late Roman East. Many notes are based on articles published between 1999 and 2016 regarding in particular the Antiochicos, or more generally the work of Libanius, or Antioch, studied from different angles under various aspects and with the help of multiple sources. A lot of work has also been done to explain the various allusions made by Libanius and to highlight the apport of his speech to the cultural history of Late Antiquity.

For reviews, see:
http://www.hsozkult.de/searching/id/rezbuecher-27409?title=m-casevitz-u-a-hrsg-libanios-antiochicos&q=Malalas&sort=&fq=&total=48&recno=1&subType=reb ;
A. Busine, L’Antiquité Classique 86, 2017, p. 351-352, disponible en ligne : http://www. https://sites.uclouvain.be/antclas/AC_2017_cr/Busine_Casevitz.pdf).

In ancient Antioch there was a gate called the Cherubim Gate. It was held that statues at this gate were cherubs taken from the temple in Jerusalem when the city was destroyed in 70 CE. However, the fact that a quarter in the city close to the gate was called Kerateion seems to indicate that the name of the gate had a different origin.

This contribution is presenting 25 funeral steles and grave slabs from the ancient metropolis of Antioch-on-the-Orontes which are stored today in the Museum of Hatay. The steles and slabs show a rather simple relief decoration and bear Greek inscriptions. They can be dated from the 2nd cent. B.C. until the 2nd cent. A.D.

The introduction of Hellenic cults in Seleucid Syria: Colonial appropriation and transcultural exchange.
Rolf Strootman, University of Utrecht

The Amuq Plain in what is now the Turkish province of Hatay once was a core region in the Seleuckid imperial system in the Near East. Strategically located at the crossroads of Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia and Syria, this was one of the areas where the Seleukid dynasty concentrated its colonizing efforts. The region was transformed into an ‘imperial landscape’ not only through settlements (notably Antioch-on-the-Orontes and Seleukeia-in-Pieria) and dynastic toponyms (Pieria, Seleukis), but also through the establishment of religious cults that linked this country to a Greek ‘motherland’ and was thus instrumental in the creation of a common identity for the newly established communities. However, the Amuq region was no empty land when Greek settlers first arrived there in the wake of the Macedonian conquest. Various sources suggest that indigenous cults already in place were adapted by the colonizers to chime in with the new ‘colonial’ topography. This in turn is suggestive of a process of transcultural interaction in the establishment of empire in the Amuq Plain region in the third Century BCE rather than a one-sided imposition of ‘Hellenism’.

Antiocheia is a city founded in Anatolia under the rule of Augustus, where Veterans are mainly settled down in that main Roman colony. The aim of that article is to study how that city had the characteristics role and the factors of Romanization in the chronological stages reflected on the ornamentations in those early Roman buildings. The total site as a whole (Propylon, Temple and Portico) constitutes the Augustus sanctuary located in the eastern part of the site. According to the results of our study, the general characteristics of those buldings, - like plan and frontal elevations-, shows a kind of western points, but on the other hand, some details of architectural work and decoration carry the local traditions of Anatolia.

When Augustus travelled to the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire in the years 22–19 BC, he entered an area which had been affected particularly badly during the Roman Civil Wars. Thus, the princeps took great interest in getting an idea about the prevalent problems and seeking appropriate solutions. His main objective, however, was to solve the smouldering conflict with the Parthian Empire which the Romans were facing on their eastern border. +++ The article offers an itemized overview of Augustus' stages in Sicily (22/21 BC), in Greece and the Aegean Islands (21/20 and 20/19 BC), in Asia Minor and Syria (20 BC) as well as his return to Italy and Rome (19 BC). +++ On his travel Augustus was accompanied by a large entourage, of whom the young Publius Quinctilius Varus formed part, as well. In the year 22/21 BC Varus took over his first known office: the quaestorship. An honorary inscription from Tenos shows that Varus was serving as quaestor Augusti and was therefore directly reporting to the princeps. Three further inscriptions from Pergamum (20 BC) and Athens (19 BC) give evidence that subsequent to his quaestorship Varus continued in the entourage of Augustus. In doing so he possibly visited Alexandria Troas, too. At least it appears noticeable that the Quin(c)tilii being one of the leading families of the city bore the same nomen gentile and that referring to both Varus' family and the Alexandrian Quin(c)tilii the praenomina Publius and Sextus have occurred time and again.

Johannes Chrysostomos und Libanios waren im4. Jahrhundert berühmte Söhne ihrer Stadt. Was machte Antiochia so einzigartig und warum war Bildung für Heiden und Christen von so herausragender Bedeutung? Die Rekonstruktion der Schülerschaft in der Schule des Libanios in Antiochia soll Aufschluss darüber geben.

Jacques Leblanc et Grégoire Poccardi,  "Recherches sur la topographie d'Antioche sur l'Oronte et de ses environs à partir de la documentation photographique de l'époque du Mandat français", jeudi 23 mai 2019 de 14h à 16h en Sorbonne, salle D52 (escalier E, 1 er étage).

À l'occasion de la parution  de l'édition traduite et annotée de l'Éloge d'Antioche (discours XI)  de Libanios dans la CUF, une soirée de présentation est organisée le 13 octobre à 19h à la librairie Guillaume Budé, 95 boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris,  avec Michel Casevitz, Odile Lagacherie et Catherine Saliou. Plus de précisions ici: http://www.librairieguillaumebude.com/2016/09/soiree-libanios-le-jeudi-13-octobre-a-19h.html.