LAODICEA A.D MARE
Syria.
With Seleucia,
Antioch, and Apamea, one of the four great towns
which Seleucus I Nicator (301-281 B.C.) founded in N
Syria. Conquered by Pompey and declared by Caesar
to be a free town, it suffered badly during the Roman
civil wars. It was sacked by Pescennius Niger at the end
of the 2d c. A.D., restored by Septimius Severus, and continued to be an active city during Byzantine times and
after the Moslem conquest.
There are few remains of what was a rich and well-built town (
Strab. 16.2.9): colonnades, a monumental
arch, sarcophagi, all within the modern town. The sanctuaries, public baths, amphitheater, hippodrome, mentioned
by ancient authors or by Greek inscriptions, and the
rampart gates depicted on coins, have all disappeared.
The town occupies a rocky promontory, bounded to
W and S by the sea and to the E by two hills. Earthquakes and sieges have left no trace of the ramparts, but
the confines of the ancient town can be determined by
topography and by the two large necropoleis to the E and
N. Including the port, its area was ca. 220 ha, and the
plan of the Seleucid town can be recognized under the
modern streets. Those running E-W were spaced 100 or
120 m apart, those running N-S ca. 60 m apart. A wide
avenue, bordered with porticos in Roman times, ran N-S
across the town, from the tip of the peninsula to the
gate where the road to Antioch started; perpendicular
to this, three colonnaded streets ran from E to W. The
one to the N was centered on the entry to the citadel
on the high hill to the NE. The central one came from
the E gate, where the Apamea road reached the city.
The street today is occupied by the great souk, where
there is still an alignment of 13 monolithic granite columns. A tetrapylon marked the crossing of this thoroughfare with the N-S avenue. The S street began at the
port and ended to the E at the long steep hill to the
SE, where a monumental four-way arch, erroneously
called a tetrapylon, closed off the view. This arch consists of four semicircular arches, one on each side, supporting a stone cupola. Columns engaged in pilasters
serve as buttresses at the corners of the four masonry
moles. Not far away, inside a mosque, is the corner of
a Corinthian peristyle, with capitals and entablature.
Virtually nothing remains of the theater, which was built
against the SE hill and whose cavea had a diameter of
ca. 100 m.
The port was a basin, now silted up, E of the modern
port, and not long ago the huge marble blocks used to
pave the wharfs could be seen there. Coins of the Imperial period depict the lighthouse: it stood on the basin's
N breakwater, where the small modern lighthouse is
located. It was a round or polygonal tower with two
stories, the upper one set back; it stood on a base with
two steps and was topped by a statue.
Several large marble statues of Hellenistic style have
been found in Laodicea or its vicinity (now in the
Damascus museum).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. Renan,
Mission de Phénicie (1864-74); M. de Vogüé,
Syrie centrale, Architecture civile et
religieuse (1865-77)
I; J. Sauvaget, “Le plan de Laodicée-sur-mer,”
BEO 4 (1935)
MPI; H. Seyrig, “Le phare de
Laodicée,”
Syria 29 (1952) (
Antiquités syriennes IV)
I.
J.-P. REY-COQUAIS
