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APAMIA (Ancient city) SYRIA
Apameia -ea, or -ia (Apameia: Eth. Apameus, Apameensis, Apamensis,
Apamenus, Apameus). (Kulat el-Mudik), a large city of Syria, situated in the valley
of the Orontes, and capital of the province of Apamene. (Steph. B. s. v.; Strab.
xvi. p. 752; Ptol. v. 15. § 19; Festus Avienus, v. 1083; Anton. Itin.; Hierocles.)
It was fortified and enlarged by Seleucus Nicator, who gave it its name after
his wife Apama (not his mother, as Steph. B. asserts; comp. Strab. p. 578). In
pursuance of his policy of Hellenizing Syria, it bore the Macedonian name of Pella.
The fortress (see Groskurd's note on Strabo, p. 752) was placed upon a hill; the
windings of the Orontes, with the lake and marshes, gave it a peninsular form,
whence its other name of Cherrhonesos. Seleucus had his commissariat there, 500
elephants, with 30,000 mares, and 300 stallions. The pretender, Tryphon Diodotus,
made Apamea the basis of his operations. Josephus (Ant. xiv. 3. § 2) relates,
that Pompeius marching south from his winter quarters, probably at or near Antioch,
razed the fortress of Apamea. In the revolt of Syria under Q. Caecilius Bassus,
it held out for three years till the arrival of Cassius, B.C. 46. (Dion. Cass.
xlvii. 26-28; Joseph. B. J. i. 10. § 10.)
In the Crusades it was still a flourishing and important place under
the Arabic name of Famieh, and was occupied by Tancred. (Wilken, Gesch. der Ks.
vol. ii. p. 474; Abulfeda, Tab. Syr. pp. 114, 157.) This name and site have been
long forgotten in the country. Niebuhr heard that Famieh was now called Kulat
el-Mudik. (Reise, vol. iii. p. 97.) And Burckhardt (Travels, p. 138) found the
castle of this name not far from the lake El Takah; and fixes upon it as the site
of Apamea.
Ruins of a highly ornamental character, and of an enormous extent,
are still standing, the remains, probably, of the temples of which Sozomen speaks
(vii. 15); part of the town is enclosed in an ancient castle situated on a hill;
the remainder is to be found in the plain. In the adjacent lake are the celebrated
black fish, the source of much wealth.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Apamea ad Orontem, a city of Syria built by Seleucus Nicator on the site of the older city Pella on the river Orontes, and named in honour of his wife Apama.
A titular metropolitan see of Syria, in the valley of the Orontes, whose episcopal list dates from the first century (Gams,( 446, 451). It was still a flourishing place in the time of the Crusades, and was known to the Arabs as Famieh. Vast ruins of a very ornamental charcter abound in the vicinity. For another Apameia (in Phrygia) known as Apameia Cibotos (the Ark) see "Bulletin Critique" (Paris, 1890), XI, 296-297. There was still another see of the same name in Bithynia, whose episcopal list is known since the fourth century (Gams,( 443).
Apamea. One of the four great cities founded by Seleucus I Nicator (301-281
B.C.) in N Syria, Apamea on the Orontes was a citadel of the Seleucid kings, their
treasury, and their horse-breeding center. In the 1st c. B.C. Pompey destroyed
the fortress and Augustus punished the city for having sided with Anthony. Reestablished
in the 1st c. A.D. under the name Claudia Apamea, in the Late Empire it was the
seat of famous schools of philosophy. It became an important Christian metropolis,
was fortified by Justinian, sacked by the Persians, and destroyed in the Moslem
conquest in the 7th c. A.D. Only the acropolis, which was made into a fortress,
remained inhabited.
The site is a plateau on the SW tip of Jebel Zawiye overlooking the
valley of the Orontes. The ancient ramparts enclosed an area of more than 200
ha. The principal remains are a theater, a great colonnaded avenue, a basilican
building and a forum, several large churches, the N rampart gate, and some necropoleis.
The citadel was on a hill to the W separated from the plateau by a
slight hollow; the only traces are the many stones reused in the Saracen ramparts
and in modern houses. In the hollow SE of the acropolis are the ruins of a large
theater of the Roman period, with a diameter of 145 m. The hemicycle, which is
badly damaged, is supported by the slope of the hill to the W and by thick, radiating
walls and arcades to the E. The scaenae frons follows the Roman pattern of a semicircular
exedra flanked by two rectangular ones, while the Corinthian pilasters on the
rear facade of the stage building and the precision of the stone-cutting and joints
exemplify the Hellenistic tradition.
Linking the ruins is a N-S avenue ca. 1600 m long built in the 2d
c. A.D.; it is 24 m wide, and has a covered portico 10.5 m high and 7.5 m wide
on each side. In different sections the columns have plain shafts, straight fluting,
or curious spiral fluting. Several sections have been restored. At the extreme
S the rear wall of the W portico, which has doorways at ground level and windows
above, bears traces of painted inscriptions from the Late Empire, actually a wine
tariff. At the center of the avenue, to the E, is a section made up of columns
with spiral fluting and brackets, engaged in the shafts, that carried statues
of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus. The portico at the N end
still bears a series of inscriptions honoring the founder, Lucius Julius Agrippa,
who dedicated the portico, a basilica, and some adjacent baths in A.D. 116. A
large part of the porticos was paved with mosaics.
Near the middle of the avenue, to the E, is a quadrangular pillar
carved with vine scrolls and Bacchic scenes, among them the legend of Lycurgus
and Ambrosia. This pillar supported a great arch at the entrance to a cross street.
The E-W streets off the great avenue are regularly spaced at intervals of ca.
110 m; the N-S streets are 55 m apart. The gridiron plan probably dates from the
beginning of the Hellenistic period.
At the center of the great avenue, on its W side, are the massive
remains of a monument, basilican in plan, which an inscription apparently identifies
as the Tycheion. Three large bays, with arches over them supported by engaged
Corinthian columns, led to a huge three-naved hall lighted on the other three
sides by windows with grilles. The hall stands on a podium ca. 3 m high. To the
W is the forum, a large rectangular courtyard lined with columned porticos. It
is reached from the great avenue by a street 9 m wide, with a double colonnade.
At the entrance to this street were two enormous columns with spiral fluting,
at the other end four similar columns carrying honorific statues. The outer wall
of the forum had windows with grilles let into it, and the outside of the wall
bore brackets for statues. On the N side stood a large portico, only a few columns
of which are still standing. They have swelling bases carved with five rows of
ivy leaves with broad acanthus leaves above them, and are supported by two molded
plinths placed one on top of the other.
Near the intersection of the great avenue and the street leading from
the theater was a circular building ca. 25 m in diameter that consisted of a portico
surrounding a courtyard. To the SE was a market, a section of which was paved
with mosaic in the middle of the 5th c. A.D. At 150 m S of the intersection was
an enormous church with an atrium, opening onto the E side of the colonnade. Its
earliest mosaics date from the end of the 4th c. A.D., but it was rebuilt several
times in the 5th and 6th c. The church was found to have been built over the great
synagogue of the late 4th c. A.D., which had an enormous floor mosaic containing
numerous Greek donor inscriptions. The principal mosaic was a composition in the
Pompeian style in shimmering colors, representing the Muses dancing.
Ruins of several other Christian basilicas of conventional plan (three
naves and a narthex) have been found, one NW of the city, another outside the
city walls, 500 m to the N. A large Christian church had been built with materials
from a monument of the Roman period, mosaics from which have been found beneath
the marble floors. A number of buildings, notably a large house with a triclinium
now being excavated, contain storied floor mosaics in many colors. The majority
of the Apamea mosaics as well as many pieces of marble sculpture have been moved
to the Damascus and Brussels museums (part of the Brussels collection was lost
in a fire).
At the N end of the great avenue is a gate in the wall, rebuilt in
the Byzantine period. It consists of a semicircular archway flanked by two half-ruined
towers. The necropoleis, principally to the N and E of the city, contain various
types of tombs, sarcophagi, urns, and hypogaea with arcosolia; many stelai were
reused in the ramparts during the Byzantine period.
J. P. Rey-Coquais, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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