page_title: Apamea (Phrygia)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Apamea (Phrygia) / History
caption_attribution_description: Bataille de Kibotos (1096)
context_page_description: Apamea Cibotus, Apamea ad Maeandrum, Apamea or Apameia was an ancient city in Anatolia founded in the 3rd century BC by Antiochus I Soter, who named it after his mother Apama. It was in Hellenistic Phrygia, but became part of the Roman province of Pisidia. It was near, but on lower ground than, Celaenae.
context_section_description: 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.  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. The 92 BC Levant earthquake likely affected the area as well. 
  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 1080, and from the late 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.
caption: Battle of Kibitos, 13th century manuscript
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