Antioch of Syria

ANTIOCH OF SYRIA
Antioch of Syria was located on the river Orontes, about 18 miles (30 km) upstream from the Mediterranean seaport of Seleucia and some 350 miles (550 km) north of Jerusalem. (Acts 13:4) Seleucus I Nicator, first ruler of the Seleucid Empire, founded Antioch in 300 B.C.E. As the capital of that empire, Antioch soon acquired great importance. In 64 B.C.E., Roman General Pompey made Syria a Roman province, with Antioch as its capital. By the first century C.E., the metropolis ranked third in size and wealth among the cities of the Roman Empire, after Rome and Alexandria.
Antioch was a commercial as well as a political center. The wares of all of Syria passed through it before being exported to the rest of the Mediterranean basin. “Since it was near the frontier between the settled Graeco-Roman area and the eastern states,” says one scholar, “it was even more cosmopolitan than most Hellenistic cities.” There was a large Jewish community in Antioch, and according to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, they “made proselytes of a great many of the Greeks” who lived there.
 
Category:Antioch
Category:Syria