Seleucus founded Antioch as a Hellenistic frontier capital
Antioch, beneath today’s Antakya in Turkey, was founded in 300 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator on the Orontes in the fertile Amuq plain. It became the Seleucid capital, a Roman and Byzantine giant, the main centre of Hellenistic Judaism, and a pentarchy city later called the cradle of Christianity.
Seleucus founded it alongside three sister cities to secure newly conquered territory, placing it between Mount Silpius and the Orontes. The site stood about ninety metres above sea level, beneath a mountain rising to 560 metres, on a plain that had been settled for thousands of years, as excavations at Tell Kurdu show. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch still carries the city’s name, and Muslim pilgrims visit the Habib-i Nejjar Mosque.
Three rivers water the surrounding Amuq plain. The Kara Su and Afrin fed the Lake of Antioch in its centre, while the Orontes ran north out of Syria along the southern edge, collected the lake’s outflow and cut west through the mountains to the sea. The soil was extraordinarily fertile, yielding wheat, barley, olives, oil and wine, and Antioch was famous for its cucumbers, cabbages and medicinal plants; cypress timber and building stone were plentiful too.
The Orontes was probably navigable as far as the city in antiquity, and rulers worked hard to keep it clear for trade. The walls, rebuilt at least eight times before the Crusades, first enclosed about 90 hectares, possibly expanding to 500 hectares by AD 540.
Roads fanned out in every direction, including eight kilometres south to the celebrated suburb of Daphne at modern Harbiye. Daphne’s many springs supplied Antioch with water, vital in rainless summers, and the two places were considered inseparable until Daphne was abandoned in the late Middle Ages. Today the ruins lie beneath Antakya in Turkey’s Hatay Province.
Source: Antioch
