APAMEA
(Qalaat al-Mudik) Syria.
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.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. C. Butler,
AAES Pt. II,
Architecture
and other Arts (1903)
I; F. Mayence,
AntCl 1 (1932); 4
(1935); 5 (1936); 8 (1939)
I; id.,
BMusArt 3 ser. 3
(1931); 4 (1932); 6 (1935); 8 (1936); 10 (1938)
I; E.
Frézouls, “Les théâtres romains de Syrie,”
Annales archéologiques de Syrie 2 (1952)
I; id.,
Syria 36 (1959); 38 (1961)
I; V. Verhoogen,
Apamée de Syrie aux Musées royaux d'art et d'histoire (1964)
I; J.-C. Balty, “Rapport sommaire concernant les campagnes de 1965 et 1966 à Apámee,”
Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes 17 (1967)
I; id., “La grande mosaïque de chasse du Triclinos,”
Fouilles d'Apamée de Syrie, Misc. 2 (1969)
I; id., ed.,
Apamée de Syrie, Bilan des recherches archéologiques (Colloques de Bruxelles, 1969 et 1972)
PI; id. “Mosaïque de Gè et des Saisons à Apamée,”
Syria 50 (1973)
I.
J.-P. REY-COQUAIS
