Settlements > Antiochia of the Chrysaorians
Antiochia of the Chrysaorians
Background
Antiochia of the Chrysaorians was an ancient city of Caria, Anatolia, the site of which is near Doğanyurt, Çine, Aydın Province, Turkey. The city is located in the saddle between two heights. The area is noted for its dark marble and for gemstones that resembled garnets. Stephanus of Byzantium claims that there were two cities named Alabanda (Alabandeus) in Caria, but no other ancient source corroborates this.
According to legend, the city was founded by a Carian hero Alabandus. In the Carian language, the name is a combination of the words for horse ala and victory banda. On one occasion, Herodotus mentions Alabanda being located in Phrygia, instead of in Caria, but in fact the same city were meant. Amyntas II, son of the Persian official Bubares, is known to have been given the rule over the city by king Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BC).
In the early Seleucid period, the city was part of the Chrysaorian League, a loose federation of nearby cities linked by economic and defensive ties and, perhaps, by ethnic ties. The city was renamed Antiochia of the Chrysaorians in honor of Seleucid king Antiochus III who preserved the city's peace. It was captured by Philip V of Macedon in 201 BC. The name reverted to Alabanda after the Seleucid defeat at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. The Romans occupied the city shortly thereafter.
According to Cicero in Greece they worshiped a number of deified human beings, at Alabanda there was Alabandus. In 40 BC, the rebel Quintus Labienus at the head of a Parthian army took the city. After Labienus's garrison was slaughtered by the city's inhabitants, the Parthian army stripped the city of its treasures. Under the Roman Empire, the city became a conventus (Pliny, V, xxix, 105) and Strabo reports on its reputation for high-living and decadence. The city minted its own coins down to the mid-third century. During the Byzantine Empire, the city was a created a bishopric.
Famous residents included the orators Menecles and Hierocles, who were brothers.
The ruins of Alabanda are 8 km west of Çine and consist of the remains of a theatre and a number of other buildings, but excavations have yielded very few inscriptions.
