Greek city of Apameia in Phrygia
Bronze 16mm (3.5 grams) Struck 133-48 B.C.
Reference: Sear 5122 var.; B.M.C. 25.85,91-3 var.
Turreted bust of Artemis right, bow and quiver at
shoulder.
Naked Marsyas advancing right, playing double flute,
Maeander pattern beneath; to right, AΠΑ.
Founded by Antiochus I, and named
after the king's mother, Apama, Apameia was situated
near the sources of the great river Maeander and was an
important road junction for routes in all directions. It
grew to become one of the great cities of Asia Minor,
and participated in the silver cistophoric coinage under
the later Pergamene kings and, after 133 B.C., under the
Romans.
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Apamea or Apameia (Greek:
Απάμεια) –
previously, Kibotos (Greek: κιβωτός), hę
Kibôtos or Cibotus – was an ancient city in
Phrygia,
Anatolia, founded by
Antiochus I Soter (from whose mother, Apama, it
received its name), near, but on lower ground than,
Celaenae (Kelainai).
Geography
It overlooks the
Ghab valley and the site is now partly occupied by
the city of
Dinar (sometimes locally known also as
Geyikler, "the gazelles," perhaps from a tradition
of the Persian hunting-park, seen by
Xenophon at Celaenae), which by 1911 was connected
with
İzmir by railway; there are considerable remains,
including a theater and a great number of important
Graeco-Roman inscriptions.
Strabo (p. 577) says, that the town lies at the
source (ekbolais) of the
Marsyas, and the river flows through the middle of
the city, having its origin in the city, and being
carried down to the suburbs with a violent and
precipitous current it joins the
Maeander after the latter is joined by the
Orgas (called the Catarrhactes by
Herodotus, vii. 26).
History
The original inhabitants were residents of Celaenae
who were compelled by Antiochus I Soter to move farther
down the river, where they founded the city of Apamea (Strabo,
xii. 577).
Antiochus the Great transplanted many
Jews there. (Josephus, Ant. xii. 3, § 4). It
became a seat of
Seleucid power, and a center of Graeco-Roman and
Graeco-Hebrew civilization and commerce. There
Antiochus the Great collected the army with which he
met the
Romans at
Magnesia, and two years later the
Treaty of Apamea between Rome and the Seleucid realm
was signed there. After Antiochus' departure for the
East, Apamea lapsed to the
Pergamene kingdom and thence to Rome in 133 BCE, but
it was resold to
Mithridates V of Pontus, who held it till 120 BCE.
After the
Mithridatic Wars it became and remained a great
center for trade, largely carried on by resident
Italians and by Jews. By order of Flaccus, a large
amount of Jewish money – nearly 45
kilograms of gold – intended for the Temple in
Jerusalem was confiscated in Apamea in the year 62 BCE (Cicero,
Pro Flacco, ch. xxviii.). In 84 BCE
Sulla made it the seat of a
conventus, and it long claimed primacy among
Phrygian cities. When Strabo wrote, Apamea was a place
of great trade in the Roman
province of Asia, next in importance to
Ephesus. Its commerce was owing to its position on
the great road to
Cappadocia, and it was also the center of other
roads. When Cicero was
proconsul of
Cilicia, 51 BCE, Apamea was within his jurisdiction
(ad Fam. xiii. 67), but the dioecesis, or
conventus, of Apamea was afterwards attached to Asia.
Pliny the Elder enumerates six towns which belonged
to the conventus of Apamea, and he observes that there
were nine others of little note. The city minted its own
coins in antiquity. The name Cibotus appears on some
coins of Apamea, and it has been conjectured that it was
so called from the wealth that was collected in this
great emporium; for kibôtos in Greek is a chest or
coffer. Pliny (v. 29) says that it was first Celaenae,
then Cibotus, and then Apamea; which cannot be quite
correct, because Celaenae was a different place from
Apamea, though near it. But there may have been a place
on the site of Apamea, which was called Cibotus.
The country about Apamea has been shaken by
earthquakes, one of which is recorded as having happened
in the time of
Claudius (Tacit.
Ann. xii. 58); and on this occasion the payment
of taxes to the Romans was remitted for five years.
Nicolaus of Damascus (Athen. p. 332) records
a violent earthquake at Apamea at a previous date,
during the
Mithridatic Wars: lakes appeared where none were
before, and rivers and springs; and many which existed
before disappeared. Strabo (p. 579) speaks of this great
catastrophe, and of other convulsions at an earlier
period.
Apamea continued to be a prosperous town under the
Roman Empire. Its decline dates from the local
disorganization of the empire in the
3rd century; and though a
bishopric, it was not an important military or
commercial center in
Byzantine times. The
Turks took it first in 1070, and from the 13th
century onwards it was always in
Muslim hands. For a long period it was one of the
greatest cities of
Asia Minor, commanding the Maeander road; but when
the trade routes were diverted to
Constantinople it rapidly declined, and its ruin was
completed by an earthquake.
Apamea
in Jewish tradition
Apamea is mentioned in the
Talmud. The passages relating to witchcraft in
Apamea (Ber. 62a) and to a dream in Apamea (Niddah, 30b)
probably refer to the Apamea in Phrygia which was looked
upon as a fabulously distant habitation. Similarly the
much-discussed passage, Yeb. 115b, which treats of the
journey of the exilarch Isaac, should also be
interpreted to mean a journey from
Corduene to Apamea in Phrygia; for if
Apamea in Mesene were meant (Brüll's Jahrb.
x. 145) it is quite impossible that the
Babylonians should have had any difficulty in
identifying the body of such a distinguished personage.
Christian
Apamea
Apamea is enumerated by
Hierocles among the
episcopal cities of
Pisidia, to which division it had been transferred.
The bishops of Apamea sat in the
Council of Nicaea (325). Arundell contends that
Apamea, at an early period in the history of
Christianity, had a church, and he confirms this
opinion by the fact of there being the ruins of a
Christian church there. It is probable enough that
Christianity was early established here, and even that
Saint Paul visited the place, for he went throughout
Phrygia. But the mere circumstance of the remains of a
church at Apamea proves nothing as to the time when
Christianity was established there.
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