In 1961, G. Downey bookended his seminal work – A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest – with descriptions of the physical space of Antioch: first, a short, nine-page chapter on the city's natural resources and last, a topographical excursus of its buildings and a list of written testimonies from its visitors. Although briefly referencing the wider territory, Downey defined the city itself narrowly with a focus on the central urban core and nearby suburb of Daphne. Over 50 years later in a similarly titled work, D.G. offers an appreciable expansion of this view through a holistic synthesis and analysis of old archaeological material and recent survey data gathered from a much more broadly delimited Antioch. A member of the Oriental Institute's ‘Amuq Valley Regional Project’ (AVRP) and part of the current revival of the ‘New Committee for the Excavations of Antioch and its Vicinity’, D.G. argues for the extensive ‘urban system’ of Antioch in which town and country developed over time through a symbiotic relationship between its people and their ever-expanding environment (p. 5). The work is clearly intended for scholars already initiated into the study of Antioch, but it nevertheless provides a much-needed supplement to the text-based approach characteristic of Downey and others.
The book does not follow a chronological division as the title may suggest, but is instead divided into six thematic essays based upon interrelated sub-regions and issues of Antioch's landscape. After a brief introduction, Chapter 1 neatly contextualises the book's symbiotic approach by exploring how limitations in the earlier agendas of Robert Braidwood in the Amuq Plain, Georges Tchalenko in the limestone massifs and the original Princeton Excavation in the city itself have shaped modern conceptions of the region as a series of disconnected territories and histories. The following four chapters represent the core of the book. Chapter 2 first defines the foundation and development of Antioch's urban centre using a comparison with the layout of Seleucia on the Tigris. D.G. argues that even as the urban space developed closely along its original Seleucid layout, political, economic and demographic pressures increasingly pushed the limits of Antioch into the hinterland. Chapter 3 follows this thread by focusing on the evolution of the Amuq Valley and Plain. Initially, Hellenistic settlements spread out between even earlier mounds, but by the second century ce, a dense web of durable sites appeared connected by Roman infrastructure. Over-exploitation and environmental changes related to the wetlands at the heart of the Amuq Valley gradually fostered expansion into the highlands and mountainous regions of the Amanus range and the limestone Jibāl, both of which are covered in detail in Chapter 4. D.G. spends much of this chapter reconciling earlier surveys with more recent initiatives like the AVRP in order to highlight the economic prosperity of the Antiochene elite sustained by these districts during the Roman and late-antique eras. Chapter 5 turns west of Antioch to places like Seleucia Pieria, Mt Casius and Daphne and attempts to establish both actual and perceived incorporations of this space into Antioch's territory. With this geographical examination complete, Chapter 6 questions the extent to which the character of the Antiochenes within the urban centre extended to and unified the surrounding regions and challenges traditional literary characterisations with what is left of the visual record and abiding connections to a discrepant, but ultimately Hellenic identity. Chapter 7 concludes with a brief reiteration of earlier themes.
In fulfilling the aims of his study to unify the urban centre of Antioch with the territory surrounding it, D.G. provides a welcome contribution by offering a comprehensive vision of the city often overlooked or abbreviated in more text-based studies of the famous metropolis. Many of the chapters begin with lengthy descriptions of each district's environment, noting physical geography as well as the particular flora and fauna that filled this space. At times, D.G.’s analysis takes on an almost travelogue quality, which is only enhanced by regular interspersions of other travel narratives of visitors to the territory of Antioch even well after the Classical period. Far from trivial, by grounding the urban centre in its full locality, D.G. establishes a firmer base for understanding why and how the city developed beyond the external imperial forces making use of the centre. Additionally, for an area of the world increasingly off limits, this work assists in contextualising the spatial imagination of a new generation of scholars studying Antioch.
Along these same lines, D.G.’s work must be commended for populating the natural landscape of Antioch with its idiosyncratic human agents. A complex spectrum of actors is gleaned not only from traditional literature and more familiar artefacts like mosaics, but also from inscriptions and archaeological survey – all four sources bolstered by several recent publications of the last fifteen years. D.G. indeed captures the ‘vitality of the region’ (p. 117) as people traversed the road system, built and maintained canals and other water management systems to control flooding, cultivated forests and orchards, mined for stone and minerals, cashed in on local markets within and outside the city, and tended to manifold cults and religious festivities. Chapter 6 holds a promising discussion of group identity outside the city, although it is somewhat truncated compared to earlier chapters. Some of the interpretations of the visual record may find debate, such as the argument that the iconography of a coin of Vespasian shows the curbing of Antiochene civic pride rather than a general imperial restoration of peace for cities (pp. 170–1). Still, a far more inclusive and variegated definition of ‘Antiochene’ emerges from this ‘multilayered universe that was Antioch’ (p. 166).
Given these important contributions and the overall strength of the argument, a few aspects of this work do limit the audience or at least necessitate familiarity with Downey's lengthy history before proceeding. The chronological limits of the study are understandably broad given the nature of the archaeological data, and D.G. does ask pardon for ‘frequent forays’ into multiple eras (p. 4). However, the occasionally rapid traversing of centuries with only brief allusions to historical events can make it difficult to get a sense of the chronological context. Likewise, although D.G.’s written descriptions do an excellent job of exploring the relationship between individual sites and districts of Antioch's territory, the maps and visualisations do not always fully support these descriptions. The presentation of geographical features is helpful, but it can be hard to locate some of the places mentioned, and the survey maps – especially the older reprints – are not always readily accessible to a non-archaeologist. On a far more minor note, a few editing issues arise (e.g. both ad and ce appear; it is unclear why the tetradrachm in fig. 2.5 is described as ‘bronze’ [p. 43]).
These criticisms aside, D.G. succeeds in dispelling the myth that further exploration of Antioch is beyond reach. The city has an incredibly complicated historical, literary and archaeological record, but, as D.G. points out, it is far from ‘an unknown entity, practically invisible’ (p. 3). This work taps into recent momentum in the study of this city and larger trends in the scholarship of ancient landscapes and aptly demonstrates the benefit of integrating a new methodological lens and survey data with old material.
