1
Northern Syria contained some of the greatest cities of the Roman empire. Most notably, Antioch, situated on the Orontes River less than 20 kilometres from the Mediterranean, played a prominent role in the political, cultural, and economic life of the region. Late antique Antioch has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. Most studies, however, have focused on the fourth century, as this period is richly attested through the voluminous works of two of the most famous late antique Antiochenes: the pagan orator Libanios and the Christian bishop John Chrysostom. Various recent works have drawn upon these sources to explore Antiochene religious culture and identities.1 In contrast, later periods of Antiochene history have been relatively neglected. There is a scholarly need for a history of Antioch in the sixth and seventh centuries, beyond the narrative presented in Glanville Downey’s classic monograph.2 This book will contribute towards this goal, alongside the studies of other scholars who have worked on sixth-century Antioch, such as Pauline Allen, Wendy Mayer, and Lee Mordechai.3
The dearth of work on this later period is largely due to the perception that there is a lack of surviving evidence.4 Yet sixth-century Antioch, at least, is hardly bereft of interesting source material. The renowned miaphysite leader Severos, patriarch of Antioch from 512 to 518, does not fall short of Libanios and Chrysostom in terms of his historical significance—or in his literary prolificacy. Admittedly, Severos was only based in Antioch for a brief period, and many of his extant works are not focused on the city, but several of his letters, as well as his extensive Cathedral Homilies, do deal with Antioch, and remain, despite a few important studies, underexploited by historians.5 Two key sixth-century historiographical sources were also produced in Antioch, and have a strongly local focus: the Chronicle of John Malalas, and the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrios Scholastikos.6 Major events in Antioch were also recorded by historians across the empire, including Prokopios, Zacharias of Mytilene, and John of Ephesus. Other insights into Antiochene society in this period come from a diverse range of sources associated with the city, from the homilies and letters of its other patriarchs to the Life of Symeon the Younger itself.7 There are undoubtedly gaps in the extant source material: as discussed below, archaeological evidence is particularly lacking. The written sources illuminate some events and themes, such as the activities of the city’s bishops, much more clearly than others. The countryside surrounding Antioch—including the area where Symeon the Younger’s monastery was situated—is less well served by the evidence than the city itself. Nonetheless, enough survives to enable a discussion of many key aspects of the region’s history.
This chapter will consider three key contested themes in the sixth-century history of the city and its environs. First, it will examine natural and military disasters and their significance. Archaeological evidence provides important nuance to the picture of crisis given by the textual sources; nonetheless, Antioch and its surrounding countryside do seem to have experienced exceptional difficulties in the sixth century. Second, it will consider social and economic tensions, arguing that, while there is no firm evidence of heightening social divisions in this period, latent socio-economic tensions were widespread and could break into the open in times of crisis. Third, it will consider religious and cultural relations, arguing that Christian communities in Antioch were fractured as much by tensions and disagreement over proper Christian identity and attitudes towards the pagan past as they were by Christological divisions. Explosive conflicts over paganism in sixth-century Antioch reveal the potency of these debates and indicate that cultural conflicts were intimately linked with, but did not directly correlate to, economic and social tensions. All these themes will be contextualized in terms of broader debates about the sixth-century eastern empire. Yet the focus throughout will be on a detailed analysis of the evidence from northern Syria itself, as it is unsafe to generalize from material from other regions and to assume that patterns were consistent across the Byzantine east.8
Disasters in Antioch: A City in Decline?
The traditional narrative of Antioch’s fate in the sixth century is one of decline. Literary sources relate that the city was smitten by a procession of devastating disasters including fire in 525, severe earthquakes in 526 and 528, a sack by the Persians in 540, the plague from 542 (with repeated recurrences later in the century), and further earthquakes in the 550s, 577, and 588.9 Much modern scholarship, heavily reliant on these texts, has continued this picture of crisis: thus Downey wrote that the Persian sack in 540 ‘brought the real greatness of Antioch to a close’.10 Even historians who have argued that near eastern cities remained prosperous throughout the sixth century have often viewed Antioch as an exception.11 Recently, however, attempts have been made to revise the common picture of sixth-century Antioch, on the grounds that archaeology suggests that the city remained prosperous well into the seventh century.12 This chapter will address the question of decline directly, first looking at the picture of crisis painted in the literary sources, before comparing this to the impression gained from the archaeological evidence from the city and the nearby countryside. It will suggest that, rather than contradicting the literary sources, the archaeological evidence provides limited support for their picture of difficulties in Antioch, while encouraging the historian to adopt a nuanced approach to exploring the effects of disasters. Archaeologists have recently proposed new models for understanding disasters that shift scholarly emphasis away from establishing any straightforward objective measure of the severity of a disaster towards understanding societal reactions to disasters and their diverse effects. Effects could vary greatly between different areas of the city and between different social groups, while, importantly, cultural, psychological, and ideological developments did not necessarily correspond exactly to economic conditions.
The Literary Evidence
Symeon the Younger’s birth, in c.521, coincided, approximately, with the beginning of Antioch’s age of insecurity. Although the previous decade had seen political and ecclesiastical instability, with a rapid turnover of patriarchs of different Christological opinions, it was only in the 520s that serious disaster struck.13 In 525, during the patriarchate of the Palestinian Chalcedonian Euphrasios, a severe fire broke out in the city, outbreaks of which seem to have recurred for months.14 The fire is presented in the sources as damaging in itself but also as God’s warning of the worse crises that were to come: thus John Malalas (whose account of the fire underlies most later descriptions) reports ‘this conflagration foretold God’s coming displeasure…many houses were burned and many lives lost and no one could discover the source of the fire’.15 ‘God’s displeasure’ manifested itself in full in the next year, 526, in the form of a devastating earthquake.16 Malalas again provides a vivid description of the destruction caused by the quake:
The surface of the earth boiled and blazed, setting fire to everything, and foundations of buildings were struck by thunderbolts thrown up by the earthquakes and were burned to ashes by fire, so that even those who fled were met by flames, like those who remained in their houses…. As a result Christ-loving Antioch became desolate…for nothing remained apart from some buildings beside the mountain. No holy chapel nor monastery nor any other holy place remained which had not been torn apart.17
The chronicler continues to describe the human effects of the disasters, stating that the victims included many visitors who had come to the city for the feast of the Ascension, as well as the patriarch, Euphrasios. Although he notes that God miraculously saved from death some of those who had been buried in the earthquake, including pregnant women and young children, he claims that the death toll was extremely high: 250,000 victims.18
As Malalas continues to report, the emperors dedicated considerable resources to the reconstruction of Antioch after this crisis. But disaster soon struck again, in 528, when the city was hit by another severe earthquake.19 Although the death toll was apparently much lower than in 526 (only 5,000 lives), the physical damage to the city was considerable: ‘the buildings that had been reconstructed after the former shocks collapsed, as did the walls and some of the churches.’20 This second earthquake—presumably because it followed so soon on the heels of the stronger disaster, and impeded the repair efforts—also appears to have had a significant ideological and emotional impact,21 as it prompted the emperor to rename the city Theoupolis, city of God, presumably as an appeal to God to restore his favour to the city.22 Numismatic as well as literary evidence attests that the city’s new name was used widely, if not exclusively.23
These disasters are mentioned not only by Antiochene authors but by writers from across the empire, which suggests their unusual severity and exceptional ideological impact. Prokopios refers to an ‘exceedingly violent earthquake’ in the city during the reign of Justin I.24 Marcellinus Comes includes the earthquake of 526 in his Latin chronicle of the period, even though his predominant focus is on Constantinople and the Balkans.25 So too Theodore of Petra, in his Life of Theodosios, describes his hero, a prominent Palestinian holy man, foreseeing God’s anger coming to the east; he continues to recount that:
After six or seven days, the news was brought that the great metropolis of the Antiochenes, as a result of a dreadful earthquake, had completely collapsed on the very day on which the great Theodosios had predicted the collapse, just as the prophet Jeremiah [had predicted] the capture of Jerusalem.26
And the bureaucrat John Lydos, based in Constantinople, emphasizes the damaging effects of the disasters in Antioch on the resources of the praetorian prefecture:
‘There was need of money, and without it none of the imperative tasks could be done.’ In order, however, that nothing of whatever was necessary for overturning the prosperity might be neglected, tremors, springing and splitting the earth from its roots, crushed Seleucus’ Antioch, having buried the city by the mountain situated above it, so that no distinction between mountain and city was left to the site, but the whole thing was glen and rocks, which erstwhile used to shade the Orontes as it flowed past the city. The prefecture, therefore, had to rain down over it an immense amount of gold meanwhile for the removal of the mounds which had been heaped up as a result of the collapse and had swollen up to a high rough terrain, for it was not safe to neglect the capital of the Syrians after it had been cast to the ground.27
This was not the end of the troubles which Antioch caused to the public finances. Lydos moves on directly to recount the next major disaster to strike the city, the Persian sack of 540:
As the city, however, was recovering, just as if from nether gloom, with much toil, abundance of funds, and collaboration of trades, after Justin had reached his end, Chosroes the evil genius with a vast army invaded the Syrias through Arabia, and, when he had captured by war the recently collapsed city because it had appeared to him easily subdued as it was unfortified, he burned it down, after working incalculable massacre, and indiscriminately looted the statues with which the city was embellished, including marble tablets, carved stones, and paintings, and drove away all Syria to the Persians. There was no farmer nor contributor any longer for the public treasury, and yet, whereas revenue was not being brought in to the empire, the prefect was obliged to support the civil servant and to furnish the government with all its customary expenses at a time not only when he was being deprived of the taxes from the Syrians, which even alone used to turn the scale for the authorities, but, besides, was also being hard pressed to supply added outlays too great to be counted both for the captured cities and for the contributors, if perhaps any chanced to have escaped the Persians’ bondage and to be wandering about in the deserted ruins of sites that used to be admired long ago.28
Lydos may, perhaps, have exaggerated the financial effects of these disasters in Antioch as part of his broader lament for the decline of the praetorian prefecture.29 Nonetheless, it is clear that Khosrow I’s sack of the city in 540 was widely perceived as a major catastrophe.30 The best-known account of the disaster is provided by Prokopios in his History of the Wars. He narrates the events leading up to and during the sack in some detail, culminating with his famous reflection:
But I become dizzy as I write of such a great calamity and transmit it to future times, and I am unable to understand why indeed it should be the will of God to exalt on high the fortunes of a man or of a place, and then to cast them down and destroy them for no cause which appears to us. For it is wrong to say that with Him all things are not always done with reason, though he then endured to see Antioch brought down to the ground at the hands of a most unholy man, a city whose beauty and grandeur in every respect could not even so be utterly concealed.31
Other authors, in contrast, were quick to identify the cause of the disaster. Thus the miaphysite chronicle of Pseudo-Zacharias of Mytilene presented the city’s sack as God’s punishment for Ephraim and other Chalcedonian bishops’ rejection of Severos of Antioch and acceptance of Chalcedon, while, as we shall see, Symeon the Younger’s hagiographer blamed it on paganism among the Antiochene population.32 This highlights one reason why disasters could prove ideologically destabilizing: severe calamities demanded an explanation, opening the way for rival political, religious, and other groups to interpret the crises to suit their particular purposes, and, perhaps, to subvert dominant ideologies.33
The year after the Persian army had plundered Antioch, plague broke out in the eastern empire. In the next year, 542, it reached the much-afflicted Syrian city.34 The so-called ‘Justinianic plague’ was described by numerous contemporaries, including Prokopios and John of Ephesus, but the author to give most information about its appearance in Antioch is the local church historian, Evagrios Scholastikos.35 Evagrios—who moves straight from his account of the Persian invasion to describing the plague, emphasizing their chronological proximity—draws his readers’ attention to a particularly damaging feature of the plague: its repeated recurrences throughout the later sixth century. In contrast to the largely depersonalized narrative of the earlier Antiochene chronicler Malalas, Evagrios explicitly states ‘I decided to interweave my own affairs also into the narrative’.36 Thus he not only gives a general account of the development of the plague, but also describes how subsequent outbreaks had affected his own life, from his childhood to the present day:
At the outset of this great misfortune I was affected by what are called buboes while I was still attending the elementary teacher, but in the various subsequent visitations of this great misfortune I lost many of my offspring and my wife and other relatives, and numerous servants and estate dwellers, as if the indictional cycles divided out the misfortunes for me. Thus as I write this, while in the 58th year of my life, not more than two years previously while for the fourth time now the misfortune struck Antioch, when the fourth cycle from its outset had elapsed, I lost a daughter and the son she had produced, quite apart from the earlier losses.37
His moving account is suggestive of the difficulties of recovering from a calamity which kept recurring. Although there is no reason to think that Antioch was affected by the plague more severely than other major urban centres, it is possible that its effects were felt particularly keenly in the context of the previous disasters to strike the city.
Antioch’s difficulties persisted in the later sixth century. As well as the repeated outbreaks of plague, earthquakes and invasions continued to pose a threat. The 550s saw several serious earthquakes in Constantinople and in the east: Antioch was affected, although it does not seem to have been among the worst-hit cities.38 In 573 a Persian army under the command of the general Adarmaanes approached, but did not take, Antioch; John of Epiphania reports, however, that the attackers ‘destroyed’ the city’s suburbs.39 In 577, according to Evagrios, an earthquake caused significant damage in Antioch and total devastation in its suburb of Daphne.40 In 588, a still more severe earthquake hit the city, apparently during the historian’s wedding festivities:
In the 637th year of the Era of Theopolis, in the 61st year after the previous earthquakes, when I was celebrating marriage with a young maiden on the last day of the month of Hyperberetaeus, when the city was conducting a festival and holding a public celebration of the procession and bridal ceremonies, at about the third hour of the evening, a convulsion and quake struck and levelled the entire city. Most buildings fell down when their very foundations were churned up…and an unquantifiable multitude was caught: as certain people conjectured, inferring from the bread supply, this affliction consumed about 60,000.41
Evagrios’s claim that it had been sixty-one years since the last earthquake in Antioch must be a reference to the disasters of the 520s, implying that the 588 earthquake was much the most serious quake to hit the city since then. The historian notes that God’s mercy was manifested in the crisis, since the patriarch Gregory was saved miraculously from death, and since there were no serious fires. Nonetheless, his description suggests that the earthquake dealt another severe blow to the city.
Evagrios’s History ends in 592, the year of the deaths of both Symeon the Younger and Gregory of Antioch. No later historical work from Antioch survives to provide a detailed picture of subsequent events in the city. In the seventh century, like the rest of the Byzantine east, Antioch experienced conquest by both Persian and Islamic armies. But it was the natural and military disasters of the sixth century that distinguished its fate in the eyes of contemporaries—as well as in those of many modern scholars. The literary sources undoubtedly suggest that these disasters were of great significance in many areas: not only did they cause many deaths and considerable physical damage, but they also had financial repercussions, even at an imperial level, as well as provoking strong emotional responses.
The Archaeological Evidence
The question remains: do these literary descriptions provide a realistic picture of the impact of the disasters? It has been suggested that ‘catastrophes’ in fact had only limited effects, at least in economic terms.42 When literary sources imply decline, archaeological evidence may suggest continuity or even prosperity. The economic situation of the sixth-century eastern Roman empire has provoked considerable scholarly debate, and even now few definite conclusions have been reached. The debate has centred largely on the question of whether the economy remained, in general, prosperous into at least the first decades of the seventh century, or whether it entered a period of decline from the mid-sixth century onwards.43 The severity of the plague and its effects has been hotly contested.44 It has become increasingly clear that it is dangerous to generalize about the Byzantine economy as a whole: the empire was very diverse, and even nearby settlements could experience divergent patterns of development.45 It is thus necessary for the present purpose to focus closely on the particular area of interest, Antioch and its surrounding countryside in northern Syria. This chapter will look at city and countryside in turn, while recognizing that the clear divide sometimes drawn between town and country can be problematic, and that the economies of city and countryside were closely linked.46 Archaeological evidence certainly complicates the picture of crisis drawn from the literary sources. It may lend some support to the view that Antioch and its hinterland saw economic contraction in the later sixth century, but does not straightforwardly reveal severe crisis or long-term devastation. Importantly, archaeologists are increasingly moving away from debating decline versus continuity or prosperity towards exploring new paradigms such as that of ‘resilience’, which encourage more nuanced ways of understanding a community’s response to natural and military disasters.
The cities of northern Syria, and in particular Antioch, receive much more attention in the literary sources than the local countryside. In contrast, archaeological evidence for the cities is generally in short supply, which makes it difficult to assess whether the traditional picture of decline derived from the literary sources is accurate. The archaeological evidence from Antioch itself is particularly complicated. The material is limited, since most of the ancient city either lies under modern Antakya or is buried under silt deposits.47 Some excavation has occurred, in areas including the ‘island’ between two branches of the river Orontes where the hippodrome and stadium were located, and the main street of the ancient city.48 The original excavation organized by Princeton in the 1930s tended to prioritize earlier evidence and visually impressive material such as mosaics over more prosaic finds and late Roman/Islamic material.49 The excavators also often did not provide enough precise evidence about coin and pottery finds to make the provisional datings in their reports secure.50 They sometimes seem to have associated signs of destruction with particular historical events on the basis of what one might expect from the literary sources, rather than from any solid evidence.51 The excavators also assume that all the parts of the former city apparently left outside Justinian’s new city walls (including the Orontes ‘island’) were abandoned in the sixth century, yet it is not certain that these areas were no longer inhabited just because they were now outside the walls.52 Prokopios asserts, and archaeological evidence confirms, that rebuilding work was carried out after the disasters of Justinian’s reign: the city did not become derelict.53 Jodi Magness and Lee Mordechai, among others, have recently mounted substantial challenges to older claims of severe sixth-century decline in Antioch.54 We must, therefore, be careful before suggesting that archaeology clearly supports a picture of devastation caused by disasters in this period.
Nonetheless, some evidence remains to support a picture of contraction and damage in the sixth century.55 We find occasional signs of the abandonment of some buildings in the course of the sixth century.56 For example, a survey on a road to the north of modern Antakya found a series of houses from the fifth or sixth century which may have been destroyed in a (perhaps earthquake-triggered) landslide, as they contain numerous skeletons under the destroyed roof. The area was never rebuilt, which may reflect sixth-century decline.57 Even if the buildings left outside Justinian’s new walls were not entirely abandoned, the decision to exclude large areas of the old city from the walls suggests that Antioch did not have the resources to defend all its residents.58 There is also no active evidence of building, including church building, after the death of Justinian in 565, though an argument ex silentio is risky given the limited amount of excavation which has taken place.59 It has been suggested that Antioch’s major port, the nearby Seleucia in Pieria, was largely abandoned in the sixth century, which, if true, would be a striking indication of economic change and retraction in the area.60 One seismological survey suggested that Seleucia was rendered unusable as a port due to silting caused by earthquakes.61 Preliminary publications of recent rescue excavations in Antioch mention sixth-century damage associated with disasters, although the full evidence to support this has yet to be published.62 Overall, although evidence is not abundant, it may suggest a reduction in prosperity in the second half of the sixth century. At the least, parts of the city and its suburbs seem to have experienced sustained damage, while other areas may have been hit less hard, or benefited more from reconstruction efforts.
To discover more about the fate of Antioch, it is necessary to turn to another environment whose fate was closely bound up with that of its leading city: the north Syrian countryside. The countryside of northern Syria is extensive and diverse; it is also unevenly furnished with archaeological evidence. Many of the most productive agricultural areas have produced little for the archaeologist, as fertile lands are inevitably most likely to see present day occupation. It is the ‘marginal’ areas—mountains, deserts—where the best evidence has survived for the study of the late Roman rural economy.63 In particular, attention has largely focused on the impressively well-preserved ruins of the villages of the Limestone Massif, three ranges of mountains to the east of Antioch. There were around seven hundred villages on the Massif, of varying sizes, typically composed of similar limestone, often two-storey, decorated houses.64 They seem to reveal striking prosperity: not only are the houses well built and sometimes spacious, but many of them also have carved adornments including elaborate column capitals. Decker argues that even the smaller houses on the Massif would have been worth at least 200 solidi, given that the church at Khirbet Hassan, similar in many respects to the middling sized houses of the Massif, cost 580 solidi.65 This evidence of affluence has led to much debate on the status of the residents of the villages.66
The question of relevance here, however, is how long this prosperity continued. As in the case of Antioch, much debate on the Limestone Massif has focused on whether the villages remained prosperous until at least the seventh-century Persian conquests, or whether their economy began to falter in the sixth century. Many arguments have rested on the dating of the village buildings. Georges Tate, who has done the most extensive work on the dating of the houses, argued that new construction almost came to a halt in the sixth century.67 He used the buildings dated by epigraphy to work out which building techniques and decorative styles were in use at different times, then dated the (far more numerous) buildings not dated by epigraphy by matching their construction techniques and styles to this scheme. Based on this system, he argued that house-building peaked in the late fifth century, beginning to decline from c.480; that by 550 it had already sunk to the level of the early fourth century; and after 550 it had all but stopped. Although inscriptions show that building work continued in the second half of the sixth century, the considerable majority refer either to churches or to extensions to houses, not to new houses, suggesting that settlement growth had come to a halt by this period.68 No inscriptions were found from the seventh century.69 Pottery and numismatic finds in excavations in Dehes had revealed, however, that settlement continued in the Massif until the ninth or tenth centuries; thus Tate sees demographic ‘stagnation’ rather than ‘decline’ in the late sixth century.70
Magness, however, has questioned Tate’s (and Kennedy’s) picture of stagnation in the Massif, on the basis of a reinterpretation of the three houses excavated at Dehes.71 She states that the excavators’ preconceived notions about decline in the sixth century caused them to misattribute the growth period at Dehes to earlier centuries when in reality it was the late sixth and seventh centuries that saw the most expansion in the settlement. She claims that all three buildings excavated at Dehes were in fact built in the late sixth or seventh century.72 Her arguments are largely based on the pottery evidence; whereas previous interpreters had viewed the accumulation of seventh-century and later pottery on the ground floor of the houses as a sign of decline, as the village’s inhabitants had ceased to take good care of their property, she suggests that in fact it shows that the houses were not inhabited, or constructed, before the sixth/seventh centuries. She dismisses the absence of epigraphy after 610 as ‘meaningless’, on the grounds that Dehes was clearly inhabited for several centuries more.73
Even if Magness’s arguments about Dehes are correct, they do not by themselves challenge our overall understanding of developments in the Limestone Massif. We cannot ignore the epigraphic evidence from the surveys of the Massif. While it may not provide much evidence about population, it is suggestive of building patterns. The numerous inscriptions from the fifth century in particular show clearly that building cannot in the Massif as a whole have started only in the late sixth or seventh centuries. In addition, the decline in inscriptions from the mid-sixth century does imply a fall in house building. While it is true that a reduction in inscriptions may sometimes reflect a loss of the ‘epigraphic habit’ rather than a fall in building, this is unlikely to be the case here, given that inscriptions continued to be produced for new churches and for extensions to houses.74 Recent studies of individual villages in the Limestone Massif, including Kafr ‛Aqāb, have supported Tate’s picture of a slowing of building in the sixth century.75 There therefore does appear to be some form of economic contraction, or at least stagnation, in the Limestone Massif in the late sixth century. It is possible that any combination of the troubles facing sixth-century Syria—plague, war, and earthquake—could have affected the Massif directly; or that the disasters had an indirect impact, since crisis in Antioch, the main trading link of the Massif, could well have had a knock-on effect on the villages’ economies.76
We should not overstate the extent of this economic decline in the Limestone Massif in the second half of the sixth century. It certainly does not appear to have become totally impoverished, as suggested not only by the continuation of church building (four churches are dated epigraphically to the period from 550 to 610, and, Tate suggests, nine more by decorative style) but also by the impressive silver treasure dedicated to the church in the apparently average village of Kaper Koraon.77 It is not, however, entirely certain what conclusions should be drawn from wealth devoted to churches, either in the form of building or of expensive gifts. First, it is not clear what proportion of the population contributed to such endowments, and thus how far wealth was diffused in the society.78 Second, it is possible that gifts to the Church would continue, or even increase, in times of difficulty, as a need was felt to propitiate God—hence the decision in the sixth century to give Antioch the new name of Theoupolis.79
Again, therefore, the picture that emerges of the economy of the Limestone Massif in this period is complex. It appears that the prosperous villages encountered some form of economic difficulty from the middle of the sixth century, resulting in a reduction in new building although not in severe impoverishment or depopulation. This lapse may well be related to a decline in Antioch’s fortunes in the same period. The argument that Antioch and the Limestone Massif entered a closely connected period of decline in the late sixth century would clearly be strengthened if corroborative examples could be found from other rural areas close to Antioch. No other nearby area has as much easily accessible evidence as the Massif, but several important survey projects have explored lowland areas in the Antiochene.80 The University of Chicago survey of the Amuq Valley, the land immediately around Antioch, has revealed intriguing finds. It has shown that, unsurprisingly, the valley around Antioch was densely settled in the late Roman period, and seems to have been prosperous: mosaic tesserae and imported pottery were found at many of the sites.81 Reports have emphasized that the Amuq Valley probably had similar building patterns to the Limestone Massif; the latter should not be viewed as exceptionally prosperous.82 The initial publications from the survey established that many of the Amuq Valley sites had ceased to be occupied by the tenth century at the latest, but uncertainties around pottery dating made it difficult to tell whether this process happened before, during, or well after the Islamic conquests.83
Subsequently, however, work on the pottery has enabled a more precise chronology. Asa Eger has argued that settlement in the Amuq in the late Roman period seems to have declined (or, if more ambiguously dated pottery is included in the analysis, to have stabilized), whereas elsewhere in the Levant the late Roman period shows the highest levels of settlement.84 This was partially caused by environmental factors, as the Amuq became increasingly marshy in the late Roman period and thus less suitable for settlement, encouraging movement to upland areas such as the Limestone Massif.85 Nonetheless, it seems to confirm that the Antiochene region experienced a different, and less prosperous, development pattern than other areas of the Levant in this period. This is also suggested by the epigraphic evidence: the declining rates of inscriptions in the Limestone Massif in the sixth century are not the norm. In the countryside around Hama/Epiphania, for example, to the south of the Massif, twenty-five of the fifty extant dated inscriptions come from the period 565–605.86 The reduction in building in the Massif in this period thus seems to have been exceptional, and may well have been related to its close connection with the trouble-beset city of Antioch.
New archaeological and survey work, as well as the reconsideration of existing finds, has the potential to shed further light on the sixth-century development of the Antiochene.87 Asa Eger and Alan Stahl are leading a re-examination of the materials from the 1930s Princeton excavations.88 Turkish teams have conducted some new excavations in Antioch itself, under the auspices of the Hatay Archaeological Museum and Hatice Pamir.89 As for the north Syrian countryside, the tragic events of the last decade have of course made further archaeological work very difficult. Recent detailed studies of individual villages from the Limestone Massif, as well as ongoing interpretation of survey data, do, however, offer hope of improving our understanding of settlement patterns in the countryside.90 Newer methodologies and technologies may also be productive. Archaeoseismology as a discipline has faced substantial methodological challenges.91 It can run the risk, for instance, of circularity, as seismologists attempt to deduce information about the magnitude of earthquakes from descriptions in historical sources; historians must then be wary about quoting this as evidence for the severity of the earthquakes, as it is clearly not independent of the literary material.92 Nonetheless, interesting material has been brought to light: evidence of earthquake ‘shifting’ and damage has been discussed, for instance, at the site of Qalaat Semaan and in the aqueducts supplying Antioch itself.93 These scientific studies have the potential to develop our understanding of natural disasters; the challenge for the historian is to develop sufficient skills in other disciplines to be able to read scientific publications analytically.94
Archaeologists have also developed new paradigms for understanding the effects of disasters on society. There has been a move away from straightforward analyses of decline versus continuity towards more nuanced discussions of responses to natural and military disasters. Scholars have become increasingly interested in the concept of ‘resilience’, as a way of understanding how societies responded to challenges posed by events such as natural and military disasters.95 Archaeologists and seismologists alike now generally agree that events such as earthquakes in and of themselves do not typically have serious long-lasting negative consequences for most societies, although they could cause considerable short-term damage.96 More important was how societies prepared for and responded to disasters; earthquakes of similar magnitudes could have very different effects in different physical and social environments. Earthquakes could also offer opportunities for cities to rebuild in accordance with changing social and cultural needs and expectations.97 Diversity is key here: some groups may have benefited from disasters, while others were left impoverished and facing challenges.98 Earthquakes could heighten social tensions, acting as ‘stress-tests that could trigger cascading effects that compounded pre-existing social vulnerabilities and weaknesses’.99 These studies of resilience encourage historians to adopt a nuanced approach to assessing the economic, social, cultural, and ideological effects of disasters, one which appreciates variety and diversity and which interrogates how disasters intersected with other societal developments. When discussing crisis, we should distinguish between the strictly economic impact of disasters and their psychological and emotional effects, which could be much more significant. The perception of many contemporaries that Antioch was in crisis is shown, perhaps best of all, by its renaming to Theoupolis, in an apparent cry for help to a God who seemed to have forsaken the city.100 The ideological as well as physical ramifications of disasters provide an essential context as we turn to an examination of social and cultural conflicts in the region.
Society and Culture
Social, cultural, and religious conflict in the sixth-century eastern empire has been the subject of considerable research.101 Less work has been done, however, on the specific area of the Antiochene and northern Syria. This is largely due to the problems inherent in the source material from the region: this provides considerable, if often complex, evidence about some topics, such as the activities of the bishops, but far less about others. It is often difficult to assess whether the relative insignificance of some themes in the written sources—for example, lay elites, or late sixth-century miaphysitism—reflects historical reality or the preoccupations of the authors. There is nothing to compare to the papyrological evidence from Egypt which provides such a rich resource for socio-economic historians. It is thus not always possible to confirm whether broader theses that have been proposed about the empire as a whole apply to the Antiochene. In the second half of this chapter I will attempt, nonetheless, to explore three key potential areas of conflict within northern Syrian society: tensions between different socio-economic classes, cultural conflict between Christians, and religious friction between rival Christian and non-Christian groupings. When possible, I will relate the material from Antioch to broader debates about sixth-century society, but my focus will remain throughout on the local evidence and its limitations and possibilities.
Socio-Economic Relations
The sixth century has been presented by some historians as a time of growing socio-economic inequality and of concomitant increases in social tension. Jairus Banaji has argued that late antiquity saw drastic change in patterns of power, status, and wealth in the countryside, as the traditional local landholding elites, associated with the town councils, were replaced by a new class of aristocrats whose authority derived predominantly from their offices in the imperial administration, but who came to ‘dominate’ provincial landholding. He claims that all levels of society had become increasingly stratified by the sixth century: among the upper classes, there were greater gradations than before, with a small group of aristocrats possessing far more power and wealth than even the rest of the landholding elite, while, among the peasantry, increasing divisions had emerged between a relatively small number of prosperous families with some social status and the majority, whose lives remained unstable despite general increases in rural wealth. He emphasizes, however, that different areas—even nearby areas—could have very different patterns of social organization, and that his arguments, which are predominantly derived from Egyptian papyrological evidence, might not apply across the eastern empire.102
Building, in some respects, on Banaji, Peter Sarris has also depicted the sixth century, and especially the later sixth century, as a time of heightened social conflict. He argues that across late antiquity, nobles had amassed increasingly large estates, taking over the lands of previously independent farmers through persuasion or coercion. This—and in particular, its impact on tax revenues, as the powerful aristocrats were better able to avoid paying their taxes—caused tension between aristocratic and imperial interests, which prompted Justinian to attempt to crack down on elite abuses. But Justinian failed in these efforts, and in the later sixth century the landholding elites further enforced their power in the countryside, effectively preventing the emperor from having any direct association with the rural population. This proved socially destabilizing on at least two levels: first, the lower classes increasingly associated the emperor with the powerful and often oppressive landholders, which may have loosened their loyalty to the government and possibly facilitated the invasions of the seventh century. Second, after the peasantry had enjoyed a brief improvement in living standards after the plague of 542, as their labour became more valuable, the reassertion of aristocratic dominance in the second half of the century caused increased social resentment and sometimes even open class conflict.103 The core of his book is focused on Egypt (in particular on the estates of the Apions), but he also applies his arguments to the eastern empire as a whole.104 I will consider below whether his use of evidence from Antioch is convincing.
While Banaji and Sarris’s analyses are predominantly socio-economic in focus, Peter Bell has recently examined a range of potential conflicts, including economic, religious, and ideological tensions, and imperial responses to them.105 In the third chapter of his monograph, which focuses on the socio-economic themes discussed by Banaji and Sarris, he argues that, in the sixth century, relations between the rich and the poor were in general intensely exploitative: ‘unless everything we read in the literary sources is seriously distorted, we have no compelling reason to dissent from the conclusion of A. H. M. Jones, a historian not given to sensationalism, that, “taken as a whole, the peasantry were an oppressed and hapless class”.’106 Emperors and nobles extracted as much revenue from the peasantry as possible—and their demands may have increased in the sixth century due to the varied financial pressures on Justinian’s government, from natural disasters to the costs of war and building work. Although various factors combined to prevent any large-scale movements of class conflict, some peasant communities did practise varying strategies of resistance to oppressive magnates, and submerged social tensions were sometimes brought to the fore in times of crisis. Whereas Banaji’s and Sarris’s books rely heavily, although not exclusively, on Egyptian papyrological evidence, Bell’s geographical focus is broader, as his arguments are based predominantly on legal and hagiographical material. All three scholars, however, acknowledge that there was considerable variation in social relations between different regions. Do their theses apply to the sixth-century Antiochene?
The historian attempting to answer this question is immediately forced to confront difficulties in the source material. Relatively little information survives from the sixth century about lay society in the Antiochene countryside, or even in the city itself. The homilies of Severos of Antioch might seem the most promising source for Antiochene social relations, as they certainly refer frequently to the rich and poor, but as Peter Brown has shown, Christian orators tended to use rhetoric about wealth and poverty in highly ideologically charged ways, often separating society into two binary groups without acknowledging different degrees and gradations in wealth and status.107 Even the secular social elites are largely invisible in the extant sources. The comites Orientis are sometimes mentioned by the chroniclers and historiographers, but in general far more is reported about the city’s bishops. In part this must reflect the well-known phenomenon of the ‘flight of the curiales’ and related growth in status of the bishops.108 Yet scattered references make it clear that Antioch did still contain some wealthy elites who played a prominent role in city life. The comes Orientis was undoubtedly influential: Asterios in the later sixth century apparently succeeded, if we can trust the report of Evagrios Scholastikos, in arousing the city’s population against their patriarch, Gregory.109 Earlier in the century, Severos, during his patriarchate in Antioch, wrote several letters arguing that disobedient clerics and monks should not be allowed to avoid the judgements of ecclesiastical courts by turning to civil courts: one was addressed to Hypatios the στρατηλάτης (general), whom the letter reveals to have been based in Antioch, and who, Severos implies, could have had the power to overturn the judgement of the Church.110
Except in the case of major imperial appointments, however, mentions of individual named notables are rare. More common are generic references to the city’s notables, which suggest that it did contain a recognized elite, even in the later sixth century. Thus Severos in another letter refers to the ‘glorious nobles/rulers’ of Antioch;111 Evagrios states that ‘the entire upper tier of the city’ supported Asterios against Gregory in the conflict mentioned above, and that ‘very many of the notables’ fell victim to the earthquake of 588;112 Symeon the Younger’s hagiographer refers to ‘most of the leading men of the city’.113 He also does in fact mention a few named notables, including Anastasios, a scholastikos and the friend of two illustres, Asterios and Thomas Veredaronas.114 Evagrios Scholastikos himself should be considered a member of the elite, given that he refers to public celebrations in the city for his marriage festivities, to his servants and ‘estate-dwellers [χωρίτας]’, as well as to honours bestowed upon him by the emperors Tiberius and Maurice.115 Unfortunately, there is little precisely dateable archaeological evidence to flesh out this rather meagre picture derived from the literary sources. While lavish elite houses, featuring famous mosaics, have been discovered in Antioch and its suburb of Daphne, most of these are dated to the fifth century or earlier and it is difficult to establish how long they remained in use.116 Thus, while it seems that there was an identifiable elite within the city, there are considerable limitations on how far we can understand their composition, numbers, and lifestyles.
The situation is still more difficult with respect to the countryside, for which literary evidence is extremely slight. Occasional references do suggest that elites owned estates around Antioch: thus for instance, as mentioned above, Evagrios refers to losing many of his ‘servants and estate dwellers’ to the plague, apparently implying that he possessed agricultural workers, although the term ‘χωρίτης’ is perhaps ambiguous.117 The sermons of both Severos and Symeon the Younger make several references to oppressive landlords and oppressed agricultural workers, but in generic terms which may reflect rhetorical convention as much as social reality.118 Given the shortage of literary evidence, archaeology must come to the fore, and again it is the Limestone Massif that provides the most material. As mentioned above, most of the houses in the Massif appear to have been well-built, expensive structures. This notable evidence of prosperity has led to much debate on the status of the residents of the villages: were they subordinate to (probably city-based) landowners, or independent? Tate argued that there was no evidence for large estate owners in the villages, and that the residents appear to have been independently wealthy peasants.119 This view that most of the Massif’s residents were independent farmers has been widely accepted: Wickham, for example, although conceding that city-based landowners would be unlikely to show up in the archaeological record, has argued that it is very improbable that landowners would provide such elaborate housing for their tenants, and that tenants would struggle to pay for the houses themselves in addition to rent and tax.120
There are, however, sceptics. Purcell and Horden have argued that an ‘independent producer is an inherently unlikely specimen in the Mediterranean world’ and that the villages of the Massif belonged to wealthy landowners based in Antioch, whose subordinate peasants had ‘little or no autonomy’.121 They do not, however, explain why these dominant landowners would have expended significant sums of money on providing ornamented houses for their tenants. Sarris, while accepting that some of the Massif was inhabited by independent farmers—it being in any case relatively unproductive land, and therefore less appealing to large landowners—claims that there is also probable evidence for estate owners, adducing Tchalenko’s argument that villages whose Arabic names start with beit/ba were in origin epoikia, Byzantine estates. This etymological evidence is unconvincing, but Sarris also notes that we should not exaggerate the richness of the village houses, pointing out that the ground floors appear to have been dedicated to livestock.122 Similarly, Bell makes the important point that some of the villages in the Massif may have been less prosperous than the more celebrated examples.123 Bavant has recently argued that the archaeological evidence suggests the intervention of some non-resident landlords in parts of the Massif.124 It seems likely that the Limestone Massif saw a combination of estate villages and autonomous farms; perhaps, as Sarris suggests, more fertile areas closer to Antioch would have seen more heavy involvement by the city’s wealthy upper strata. Certainly, the notables of the city referred to in the sources discussed above must have possessed land somewhere in the region, if not necessarily in the Massif. There is some, although limited, epigraphic evidence for the existence of noble landholdings to the southwest of Antioch: a sixth-century inscription from Kara Douran, in the region of Mount Cassius, seems to refer to the property of either the ex-consul Patrikios, or the ex-consul (and future emperor) Justinian—its interpretation is uncertain.125 Overall, it remains unclear how far the countryside was dominated by powerful nobles.
Given the limitations of the evidence relating to Antiochene lay society, it is difficult to make any firm statements about social relations in the period. Nonetheless, both Sarris and Bell have argued, largely on the basis of two references in the sources, that Antioch did conform to their picture of rising societal tensions.126 The first of these is found in Evagrios Scholastikos’s account of the Persian retreat from Antioch in 573.127 Evagrios claims that the Persian defeat was entirely unexpected, since most of Antioch’s population had abandoned the city, including patriarch Gregory, who had fled with the church treasures ‘both because much of the wall had collapsed, and because the populace had rebelled in its desire to begin a revolution, as is accustomed to happen and particularly at such moments [emphasis mine]’.128 The second passage comes from the ninth-century chronicle of Theophanes, and refers to events of 608/9: the chronicler reports that Jewish rioters in the city ‘killed many men of property and burnt them’.129 These passages do suggest some tensions in the city. Yet the first does not explicitly relate the disturbance to any particular social discord, beyond a dissatisfaction with the city’s leadership, while the latter postdates the events it describes by more than two centuries, and gives the conflict a religious as well as social dimension. Together, they may hint at the existence of social conflict within Antiochene society, but are not sufficient to prove that such conflict had increased in the sixth century. Rather, they suggest that in sixth-century Antioch, as throughout most of the ancient world, socio-economic inequalities and oppressive behaviour by elites created the possibility for social tensions.130 Even if discord between the powerful and poor in society was usually submerged, it could be activated in certain contexts—and in particular in times of crisis. Antioch’s repeated experiences of disasters and concomitant decline may have encouraged the development of these tensions, tensions, which, as we will see, could be exploited by individuals such as holy men for their own benefit.
Cultural and Religious Tensions
Social and economic tensions had an intimate, but by no means straightforward, relationship with cultural and ideological conflict. Peter Bell has provided a powerful analysis of ideological friction in the sixth-century empire. Of particular interest here are his arguments about the relationship of classical paideia, Christian ideology, and paganism.131 He traces the complex position of classical paideia (and other manifestations of classical culture such as art) within the growingly dominant Christian ideology of the empire, showing that while the two could be combined harmoniously, they could also come into conflict.132 Opinions varied about what was acceptable within Christianity. Particularly importantly, his analysis implies that the same or very similar ‘classicizing’ phenomena could, in different contexts and when embraced by different people, be regarded either as entirely legitimate and perfectly compatible with Christianity or as unacceptable relicts and symptoms of paganism. Equally, classicizing cultural forms could be used by sincere Christians who viewed them as an unproblematic part of their cultural heritage—but they could also be deployed by religious dissidents who were often unable to reveal their pagan views openly but could express their ideological alienation by drawing upon traditions associated with pre-Christian culture. Indeed, in Bell’s view it is essential to recognize that genuine pagan views were still relatively widespread in the sixth century.133 For him, the manifold references to pagans in the literary sources, and in particular the many accounts of anti-pagan purges, only make sense in a world in which the existence of pagans was taken for granted—even if many of the accusations of paganism were fabricated, or at least exaggerated, for political reasons. For these cultural and religious tensions often had a social dynamic, since traditional elites were often associated with classical paideia, and thus social or political conflict between nobles and the emperor or nobles and the Church could be expressed in terms of cultural or even religious conflict. The traditional lifestyle and education of many notables rendered them vulnerable to accusations of paganism.
These themes are of great importance to an understanding of sixth-century Antiochene culture. Throughout the century we can trace divergent, and sometimes conflicting, attitudes within the city towards the classical inheritance and its contemporary manifestations. It is important to note that there is no simple correlation between these attitudes and particular socio-economic or political groupings: we find differing views even among members of elites with similar educational experiences. Not all manifestations of ‘pagan’ or ‘secular’ culture were confined to the elites. This is not to say, however, that these tensions never had any social or political aspects. Throughout much of the period these disagreements did not erupt into open conflict. But in the later sixth century, Antioch did see explosive religious-cultural controversy, in the form of several ‘pagan’ scandals, in one of which the patriarch, Gregory, was implicated. By examining the broader evidence for cultural tensions within the city first, before considering the pagan scandals in more detail, it may be possible to reach a better understanding of the intersection of ideological, socio-economic, and political factors within sixth-century conflict.
Public spectacles, civic identities, and Christian ideology
The surviving sources from sixth-century Antioch reveal the existence of an ongoing cultural clash between rigorist Christians who expected their co-believers to follow very strict moral codes and others who believed that Christianity was compatible with traditional aspects of culture and entertainment. This is shown particularly clearly by debates relating to one aspect of civic life with long-established pre-Christian roots: athletic and theatrical performances in the theatres and hippodromes.134 The population of Antioch had a reputation for its love of these spectacles, and they seem to have retained an important role in the city’s life across the sixth century.135 John Malalas records developments related to the theatres, games, and circus races in Antioch from the age of Augustus onwards.136 As he recounts, in the sixth century emperors repeatedly banned theatrical performances, often in response to riots by the factions, but these bans usually proved temporary; although the performances had the potential to excite unrest, they were too popular to be suppressed entirely.137 Chariot races also continued throughout the century. If we can believe the hostile report of John of Ephesus, Gregory, the patriarch from 570–92, even received money from the emperor to build a new hippodrome for the Antiochenes in an attempt to bolster his popularity after being accused of paganism:
and, contriving to appease and mollify the people of his city, he asked the king to command him to build a hippodrome for them. He bestowed this on him, and in addition he gave him the expenses for the building of the church of Satan, in which he was going to perform his whole will and pleasure, so that he, as was said, even brought mimes with him down from the capital, so that for some, this was [a source of] laughter and mockery and derision, but for others, [a cause of] sorrow and distress….138
John’s scathing account provides an important reminder that theatrical and sporting performances could prove highly controversial. While the emperors’ decisions to ban spectacles seem to have been based on fear of disruption, other Christians objected to the performances on moral grounds.139 This is displayed particularly clearly in the Cathedral Homilies of Severos, who repeatedly fulminates against all kinds of spectacles, on various grounds, from the indecent dress and behaviour of both the actors and the audience, to the aggressive behaviour of the spectators, and the cruel mistreatment of the animals involved.140 He goes so far as to suggest that the theatrical and sporting performances are inherently pagan and incompatible with Christianity. Thus he claims that each kind of spectacle is consecrated to a particular pagan deity: horse racing to Neptune, wrestling to Mercury, wrestling with animals to Artemis, theatrical performances to Bacchus.141 He protests that the common cry of spectators at the horse races, ‘Fortune of the city, grant victory!’ was effectively denying God’s providence by attributing the outcome of the race to a demon, Fortune (a reference to the classical protective deity of the city, Tyche).142 He associates processions at Daphne (for Severos, a notable centre of pleasure and luxury) with the veneration of Jupiter.143
If Hollman is right to date a curse tablet found in the hippodrome at Antioch to the late fifth or early sixth century, Severos’s arguments might seem to be justified: the tablet calls upon various Olympian deities to curse the horses of the Blue faction.144 Yet it is clear that the vast majority of those attending the spectacles in Antioch and Daphne at this time would have self-identified as Christians. Severos himself acknowledged that many people would not accept that there was any association between the performances and paganism, and that he would therefore have to persuade them of their wickedness on other grounds.145 This was not, therefore, a clash between Christianity and paganism, but between different approaches to Christianity. To an extent, Severos’s hostility towards the theatre and hippodrome may have been encouraged by the fear of losing members of his audience to their spectacles; it was thus in part a question of rivalry at a practical level.146 Yet in other areas of society and culture it is equally possible to discern a deeper conflict between Christian attitudes towards ‘secular’ or ‘pagan’ material, which ranged on a spectrum from the complete condemnation of any aspects of identity or practice which were not explicitly Christian, particularly if they had pre-Christian roots, to the total acceptance of traditional culture as entirely compatible with Christian piety.147
This is visible, for example, in expressions of civic pride and identity. Pride in one’s city was an important phenomenon in classical culture, and usually involved an emphasis on the city’s past, including myths related to its foundation, which had often taken place in the pre-Christian era. Some Christians, however, eschewed any pagan or pre-Christian elements in civic identities, instead stressing only their cities’ roles in Christian history.148 Severos, again, represents this rigorist Christian viewpoint. In his Cathedral Homilies he frequently exalts Antioch’s special status, but bases this on exclusively Christian grounds. Thus he repeatedly cites the statement in Acts 11:26 that it was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.149 He also claims that various martyrs had a particular fondness for Antioch, often because they had lived there, or been martyred there, or because the city possessed a relic of them.150 Similarly, on a visit to the port of Seleucia he declares that the port was ‘truly blessed and holy’, and deserved imperial support for its regeneration, because Scripture reports that it was from Seleucia that Paul and Barnabas had set sail to Cyprus.151 He makes no mention of any secular, let alone pagan, part of Antioch’s history.
Other Christian authors took a very different approach. John Malalas, a contemporary of Severos, recounts Antioch’s pre-Christian past at length, from its foundation by Seleukos Nikator.152 The chronicler does not hesitate from recording explicitly pagan aspects of these myths (which he reports as factual history): even the story of its foundation revolves around a pagan act of augury.153 He implies that the Antiochene people associated landmarks in their region with pre-Christian myths, reporting, for example, that Seleukos Nikator had:
found that giants had lived in the land; for two miles from the city of Antioch is a place with human bodies turned to stone because of God’s anger, which are called giants to the present day; equally, a giant known as Pagras, who lived in the land, was burnt by a thunderbolt. So it is plain that the people of Antioch in Syria live in the land of the giants.154
Malalas does not reject the image of Antioch presented by Severos; in fact, he too reports that Antioch was where Christians were first called Christians, and highlights its association with various martyrs.155 Yet for him this Christian history does not replace the pagan past, nor is the latter shameful or to be forgotten; rather the two complement each other as sources of pride and identity for the city.
Again, therefore, we find a tension between opposed Christian viewpoints, one rigorous and exclusionary, the other relatively inclusive (there were, of course, a range of possible degrees of strictness: we must imagine a spectrum of opinions, rather than two strictly opposed positions). It is important to recognize that this was a complex ideological conflict, and did not represent a divide as simple as, for example, the Church versus the laity. Not all clerics were as strict as Severos. As we have seen, patriarch Gregory apparently arranged for the construction of a hippodrome in Antioch. In one of his letters Severos reproached the clergy of Apamea for quoting ‘the rhetor of Greece’ in their letter to him, stating that they should have cited only the Bible.156
Nor did the tensions have a straightforward socio-economic dimension. As mentioned above, Bell and others have drawn a connection between continued adherence to classical culture and social elites. Indeed, it has been suggested that by this period the lower classes would not even have understood references to classical mythology.157 It may well be true that intellectuals and elites were more likely to be interested in myth and classical history. Although the mythological mosaics that survive from Antioch seem to date from earlier centuries, mosaics with classical and quasi-pagan themes were still being produced for elite residences in the sixth century in other parts of the eastern empire.158 Education in classical authors remained common for elites, and while Severos (who had himself trained as a lawyer) may have later shunned these aspects of his upbringing, he was probably in a minority.159 Nonetheless, the controversy surrounding theatrical and sporting spectacles suggests that the problem was more complex: the spectacles must have been attended by Antiochenes from across the social spectrum, and, given that the popular mime and pantomime performances were still dominated by classical mythological themes, must have given many lower-class citizens some familiarity with aspects of pre-Christian mythology.160 This was therefore an ideological conflict that did not correlate straightforwardly to any particular social divide, either between clergy and laity, or between rich and poor. Nonetheless, as will be argued later, these tensions could undoubtedly be exploited in the context of social polemic.161
Pagan scandals
But did ‘paganism’ only survive in the eyes of rigorist Christians, in the form of cultural practices largely stripped of their original cultic significance, or did paganism as a religion really persist into the sixth century? Contemporary Christian sources from across the empire certainly refer frequently to the existence of pagans: a well-known example is John of Ephesus’s account of his conversion missions, apparently supported by Justinian, to pagans in Asia Minor.162 Modern scholars have been divided on how literally to interpret these accounts: some prefer (while not completely denying the survival of any paganism) to see the vast majority of references to paganism as either rhetorical, fear-mongering, or politically inspired, while others, although acknowledging that the label could be used for rhetorical purposes, insist that it would only be powerful in a society in which pagans still existed, and that there is no good reason to think paganism had been extinguished by this date.163 Peter Bell notes, suggestively, that sixth-century authors sometimes refer to pagans in passing, rather than placing them at the centre of their narratives, in ways which suggest that ‘their existence is taken completely for granted’.164 It is unlikely that we will ever be able to prove how common paganism really was at this time, but there is no reason to dismiss out of hand the idea that some ‘real’ pagans might have lived in parts of the empire in the sixth century.
Nonetheless, it is clear that references to ‘pagans’ could be used to fulfil a range of polemical and political purposes which were not necessarily related to the realities of pagan survivals. The emperors provided much of the impetus behind this development. Pagans had been scapegoated for large-scale disasters by the emperors since at least the reign of Theodosius II (408–50).165 In the sixth century, and in particular during Justinian’s reign, there were recurrent imperially backed purges of ‘pagans’ in Constantinople and other major cities, often following on the heels of natural disasters.166 It is difficult to interpret the driving aim behind these purges: they could be seen as purely cynical and politically motivated, given that the ‘pagans’ targeted were almost invariably members of powerful elites or dissident intellectual circles who could pose a threat to the stability of the regime. On the other hand, the emperor’s religious convictions may have been crucial: Justinian may well have believed that it was necessary to remove pagans as well as other perceived ‘sinners’, such as homosexual men, in order to create orthodox ideological conformity and thereby to appease God.167 It is perhaps best, with Peter Bell, to view the purges as both politically and religiously motivated.168 The empire’s secular elites were, as mentioned above, particularly vulnerable to accusations of paganism because, even if practising Christians, many retained aspects of elite pre-Christian culture and lifestyle, which could be condemned by rigorous Christians from different social circles as inherently pagan.169
Antioch itself saw two major anti-pagan purges in the sixth century. The first of these, which may have taken place in the mid-550s, is described only in the Life of Symeon the Younger.170 The hagiographer recounts that the ἄρχων (commander/official) Amantios was sent to the city, whereupon he ‘found most of the leading men of the city and many of its inhabitants possessed by Hellenism and Manichaeism and astrology and automatism and other ill-omened heresies’; he is said to have punished the culprits severely.171 This incident is discussed in greater depth in Chapter 3, but several points should be noted now. The purge seems to have been imperially sponsored, as the hagiographer describes Amantios being sent from the palace; Amantios is also known as a Justinianic agent from the chronicle of John Malalas, in which he is named as the official sent to suppress the Samaritan revolt in Palestine in 555/6.172 The purge had a political aspect as well as a religious one, as the hagiographer refers to Amantios condemning to execution a δημότης (common man/member of circus faction) who had been involved in popular/factional disorders. Finally, there may have been a socio-economic dimension to the incident, since the dissidents exposed by Amantios apparently included ‘most of the leading men of the city’. This event, then, seems to fit into the broader pattern of Justinianic purges of ‘pagans’, including in particular members of elites, who may have posed a political threat to the city or emperor’s security.
The second, more famous, incident, is in some respects more obscure, even though it is discussed at some length by two independent sources. It revolved (at least in terms of its significance in Antioch) around Gregory, patriarch of the city from 570 to 592. The former monk had experienced a turbulent start to his patriarchate: not only had his predecessor, Anastasios, been deposed by Justin II on rather dubious grounds, but in 573 Gregory had fled from Antioch in face of the threat of Persian invasion.173 It is not clear whether this contributed to his unpopularity, but certainly by 579 he had provoked considerable opposition in his see. The conflict which broke out in this year is described by both Evagrios Scholastikos and John of Ephesus, who held diametrically opposed attitudes to Gregory: Evagrios worked for the patriarch, and was his close supporter, whereas John was very hostile to him on doctrinal grounds. Unsurprisingly, the two provide a very different account of events.174 What is clear from both is that a major scandal exploded in the east when several prominent officials were supposedly discovered to be practicing paganism and even engaging in human sacrifices; Gregory was one of the figures accused. Even Evagrios acknowledges the hostility towards Gregory in Antioch: ‘Gregory came into great danger, since great attacks were made upon him by the people’;175 John of Ephesus reports that ‘the whole city was shaken and stirred up, and there were diverse shouts, and the church was closed, and Gregory did not dare to come out from the bishop’s residence’.176
Perhaps surprisingly, no investigations seem to have been made into the patriarch at this point, an omission which John scathingly attributes to the establishment’s desire to avoid a scandal. John does report, however, that ‘some time later’, Gregory went to Constantinople with many gifts for the senate and clergy; these apparently won him sufficient good will for the case against him to be dropped.177 It was at this point that, as mentioned above, Gregory supposedly arranged to build a hippodrome in Antioch to appease its population. Evagrios’s account of this second phase of the trouble is quite different: he reports that Gregory had quarrelled with the comes Orientis, Asterios, who successfully roused the elites, the people, the tradesmen, and the factions of Antioch against the patriarch.178 Asterios was removed from his role as comes Orientis, but this failed to quell the disturbance, and various accusations were made against Gregory by the citizens, including a banker who claimed that the patriarch had slept with his married sister. Gregory was forced to go to Constantinople to defend himself, with Evagrios acting as his legal aide; after a detailed investigation, Gregory was cleared, and his accusers punished.
It is difficult to know how to reconcile these two accounts, and unlikely that it will ever be possible to establish the precise sequence of events. Nonetheless, the episode has suggestive implications. In particular, the accusations against Gregory raise the question of what was really at stake in anti-pagan violence. Even if it is possible that some of those targeted were practising pagans, it is highly unlikely that this was true of the patriarch himself. Some of those who resisted Gregory in Antioch may genuinely have believed that he was guilty of the charge. Other motives for involvement, however, seem to have been personal and political. Gregory certainly had his enemies in Antioch, as becomes clear in Evagrios’s description of the later outbreak of opposition to the patriarch. As mentioned above, Evagrios reports that a conflict had taken place between the comes Orientis, Asterios, and Gregory, and that ‘the entire upper tier of the city’ sided with the general against the patriarch, as did as the ‘popular element’, the tradespeople, and the circus factions. A banker accused Gregory of having inappropriate relations with his sister, while ‘other similar people’ proffered ‘indictments about how the prosperity of the city had often been abused by him’.179 Unfortunately, it is difficult to know what had caused Gregory’s quarrel with Asterios, as well as his apparent unpopularity in the city, although there is some suggestion of financial mismanagement. It is thus highly tempting to suggest that in this case accusations of paganism were used for political reasons, although the evidence is rather unclear, since, as we have seen, Evagrios implies that these accusations against Gregory were separate from the earlier charge of paganism, whereas John of Ephesus presents the two conflicts as closely linked. At the very least, it may be suggested that Gregory’s unpopularity in certain circles must have rendered him vulnerable to charges of heterodoxy. This incident is particularly important given the relative silence of the literary sources on the activities of secular elites in Antioch compared to those of the patriarchs. If Asterios, with the support of local elites, was able to rouse most of the city against Gregory, powerful laymen could still pose a severe threat to the authority of the Church—although ultimately the threat did not prove fatal, since Asterios was removed from his position and Gregory was cleared of all charges. Certainly, the patriarch did not possess unquestioned authority within his city, whose political situation appears highly volatile.
Taken together, these various incidents confirm that anti-pagan purges were often not strictly religious in their origin; rather, they involved a heavy element of political conflict and score-settling, whether between emperors and elites or between local rivals for authority. This is not to deny that genuine anti-pagan fervour often played a vital role in the development of these movements, particularly, perhaps, in terms of gathering momentum and mass support. Indeed, accusations of paganism could only be powerful among a population which believed, in general, both that paganism existed and that it was an unforgivable sin that posed a threat to society, a view which was undoubtedly encouraged, in some situations, by imperial and clerical elites. In the ideological climate of the sixth century, a charge of paganism was perhaps the most powerful way of destroying someone’s reputation and status: few may have had the resources to resist such an allegation. This may be why the sources contain relatively little information about strictly political or social conflict in Antioch in this period: in a society with an overwhelmingly religious political discourse, secular tensions may well often have manifested themselves in ‘religious’ conflict. The events of the later sixth century clearly point to instability within Antiochene society: the patriarch, who by this point played a vital role in the city’s secular as well as religious governance, seems to have relied on imperial support to retain his position in the face of widespread local opposition. It is tempting, if impossible to prove, that the city’s repeated experience of disaster had contributed to this political volatility. Certainly, disasters are likely to have encouraged anti-pagan activity: as will be argued in Chapter 3, it was not only emperors who scapegoated ‘pagans’ for causing crisis.180 Controversy over supposed paganism was thus closely linked to wider developments in the history of the city.
Christological controversy
One explanation that has been offered for the accusations against Gregory has yet to be considered: that the charges against him were invented or at least encouraged by his Christological opponents, miaphysites.181 In order to assess the plausibility of this theory, it is necessary to consider in some detail the position of miaphysites within Antioch in the sixth century. This is challenging, however, since, below the level of the bishops, evidence about religion in the city is again uneven. Antioch has sometimes been presented as a Chalcedonian haven in the midst of a miaphysite countryside, and sometimes (perhaps more commonly) as a miaphysite stronghold.182 The evidence presents two particular difficulties. First, it is often difficult to isolate evidence about the Antiochene area in particular from sources dealing with the east more generally; even the letters of Severos range in scope across the diocese of Oriens and beyond. Secondly, sources dealing with this topic are often highly polemically charged. It is not safe to state that Antioch was thoroughly miaphysite at the time of Severos’s accession in 512 purely on the basis that the anonymous Life of Severos claims that the whole city welcomed the new patriarch with joy and spontaneously anathematized Chalcedon.183 Nonetheless, enough material survives from the earlier decades of the century to draw some conclusions about what seems to have been a Christologically divided city. In the second half of the century evidence becomes sparser, since our major sources, including Evagrios Scholastikos’s History, say little about contemporary Christological disputes; it is difficult to determine whether this omission is conscious and politic, intended to smooth over controversy, or whether it reflects the genuine unimportance of Christological divides in Antiochene society.184
In the early parts of the sixth century, Antioch was thoroughly divided on the question of Christology, perhaps more so than any other patriarchal see.185 Events surrounding the deposition of the Chalcedonian patriarch Flavian in 512 provide evidence of an active Chalcedonian element in the population: Evagrios Scholastikos reports that when the anti-Chalcedonian bishop Philoxenos of Mabbog persuaded the monks of First Syria (that is northern Syria, normally regarded as predominantly pro-miaphysite in contrast to the Chalcedonian Second Syria) to pressurize Flavian into anathematizing Chalcedon, ‘the populace of the city rose up and effected a great slaughter of the monks’.186 Pseudo-Zacharias also reports, if in even vaguer terms, that the anti-Chalcedonian monks who went to Antioch to oppose Flavian met with violent resistance: ‘some of them were beaten and some of them were killed; nevertheless Flavian was driven from his see.’187 As Alpi has observed, there is no comparable evidence of violent unrest when Flavian’s miaphysite replacement Severos was forced to flee his see later in the same decade.188 In general, miaphysite sources describing Antioch during Severos’s patriarchate tend to present the city as ‘orthodox’ (that is, for them, miaphysite).189 Yet various references in Severos’s own homilies imply that he was fully aware of the existence of Chalcedonians within Antioch. The caption to Homily 64 claims that it was pronounced in a church where ‘Nestorians’ (i.e. Chalcedonians) tended to congregate secretively.190 In Homily 29 Severos states that it is necessary to anathematize heretics in order to prevent God from wreaking devastation on whole communities; this is why ‘we’ anathematize those who divide Christ into two natures. He then turns to talking about a particular ‘wicked’ man, apparently well known to his audience, who had lived among them spreading heresy and causing violent disturbances, without Severos knowing; finally, however, he had been exposed and punished, along with his family and accomplices.191 In both one of his homilies and one of his hymns he attacks claims by the dyophysites that a drought in the region had been caused by the anathematization of Chalcedon.192 In this homily, he refers to:
the raging wasps of the Nestorian heresy, which buzz with unpleasant and polluted sounds, go around between the houses and creep into the inner rooms, and, through one or two insane women somewhere, apply their leprosy, although the whole city is healthy and closes its ears to their words through the grace of God.193
The patriarch is here clearly trying to mock and downplay the significance of Chalcedonianism and its adherents, associating it with the credulous and weaker female sex, but the care he takes to refute the argument about the drought suggests that he felt dyophysitism to be a greater threat than he was prepared to admit. Even at the height of anti-Chalcedonian power in Antioch, therefore, Chalcedonianism was never eradicated.
Equally, miaphysitism seems to have remained active in the city and its environs even after Severos’s deposition. While in exile both Severos and Philoxenos of Mabbog claimed that much of the Antiochene population had remained loyal to ‘orthodoxy’: thus Philoxenos said that he had heard that the ‘God-loving Christian people of Antioch’ were openly proclaiming their willingness to be martyred for the faith.194 While these claims doubtless contain some exaggeration, it is unlikely that either bishop would have praised Antioch if it had wholeheartedly embraced Chalcedonianism. The chronicle of John Malalas reports that when, in the early 530s, a rescript was promulgated ordering that obdurate anti-Chalcedonians should be exiled, ‘a riot broke out in Antioch, and the mob burst into the bishop’s residence, throwing stones and chanting insults’.195 Many monasteries in the Antiochene area endorsed miaphysitism even in the face of persecution. Pseudo-Zacharias records a list of monastic communities and abbots who were expelled in the persecutions of the 520s: it included the abbot of the monastery of the Syrians in Antioch, and the monastery of Thomas of Seleucia.196 This last is particularly interesting as it shows that there were miaphysites in the coastal regions west of Antioch (close to Symeon the Younger’s monastery), not only to the east in the Limestone Massif. Antioch therefore was a divided city in the early sixth century: it cannot be seen in simple terms as either a Chalcedonian or a miaphysite stronghold. On both sides of the divide, accusations of violence were made: thus, after Severos’s deposition, monks from Second Syria claimed that he had been involved in various attacks on Chalcedonian monks, including on a group travelling near Symeon the Elder’s monastery in the Limestone Massif, while several anti-Chalcedonian authors denounced Ephraim, patriarch from 527 to 545, as a cruel and violent oppressor.197 Even if the violence may have been exaggerated on both sides, such claims suggest that the conflict involved considerable embitterment and hostility, at least among the region’s monastic communities.198
It is much harder to trace the fate of miaphysitism in Antioch later in the century. We have no sources comparable to the homilies and letters of Severos and Philoxenos for guidance. Later sixth-century anti-Chalcedonian authors display limited interest in Antioch. Thus in his Lives of the Eastern Saints John of Ephesus includes only a very few tales about Antiochene holy persons, none of whom are distinguished by their struggles for the faith.199 This does not necessarily mean, however, that there were no miaphysites in Antioch, since John’s focus throughout the work is on monks of his acquaintance, and in particular monks from his region of origin in Mesopotamia.200 John’s Ecclesiastical History contains a few references to miaphysite activity in Antioch in the later sixth century, but these generally describe exceptional events, rather than providing evidence of a widespread miaphysite presence. He discusses at length the activities of the controversial miaphysite patriarch Paul of Antioch (appointed in 564 by Jacob Baradaeus at the behest of Theodosios of Alexandria), whom John supported.201 Paul, however, like other miaphysite bishops in this period, was almost certainly not based in his titular see.202 John does refer to Jacob Baradaeus writing letters on the occasion of reaccepting Paul into communion ‘both to here at the imperial city, and to Antioch, and to other regions’, which might suggest a miaphysite audience in Antioch, but could also be a symbolic reference to addressees in Syria more generally.203 Subsequently John also provides a hostile account of the miaphysite patriarch of Alexandria, Damian, sneaking into Antioch with the plan of appointing a certain Severos as patriarch to rival Paul. He gives a vivid description of Damian and his companions having to escape the Church of Cassian through the latrine in order to avoid capture by the Chalcedonians.204 He also reports that the Ghassanid phylarch Al-Mundhir (who is valorized by John as a miaphysite leader) came to Antioch with emperor Tiberius’s support and ordered the Chalcedonian patriarch to stop the persecution of the miaphysites; again, however, it is unclear whether this refers to persecution within Antioch or within the Syrian provinces more generally.205 On another occasion, rival factions of miaphysite monks in the rural monasteries come into such violent conflict with each other that, according to John, they were imprisoned and brought to Antioch, causing their monastic habit to be ‘mocked by pagans and Jews and heretics’.206 John’s accounts make it clear that miaphysitism was not an organized and cohesive movement in this period, but was riven by many factions and disagreements. These various references in his Ecclesiastical History show that Antioch was a place of concern for miaphysites in this period, but do little to reveal whether it saw a continuous miaphysite presence, or whether the miaphysites were losing support in the city and were only based in certain monasteries in the countryside.
On the Chalcedonian side, even Antiochene authors tell us little. Evagrios Scholastikos, for example, despite his professed focus on ecclesiastical history, barely refers to Christological disputes in Antioch during his lifetime. Michael Whitby has argued that the explanation for this silence may have been that in fact there were not very many miaphysites in Antioch at this time, and so they posed no threat to the Chalcedonian authors.207 He suggests that the repressions of patriarchs such as Ephraim must have had some effect, and that in any case miaphysitism had always been more popular in the monasteries to Antioch’s east than in the city itself. There certainly may have been a lack of anti-Chalcedonian clerical leadership in Antioch by this point: although the miaphysites had appointed replacement patriarchs of Antioch after Severos’s death in 538, there were some gaps between appointments, and the patriarchs probably spent little time in their patriarchal see.208 Even if miaphysitism did continue among the Antiochene laity, this would not necessarily have led to clashes with the Chalcedonians; there is some evidence that miaphysites and Chalcedonians could have friendly social relations, and sometimes even worship together.209
On the other hand, Pauline Allen sees the silence of Evagrios on this topic as deliberate, calculated, and polemical. By her argument, he had no desire to stir up pre-existing tensions, so avoided discussing the conflict, but, by all but ignoring the existence of miaphysites, implied that only the Chalcedonians constituted the true Church.210 Occasional references do suggest that Evagrios, and other Antiochene Chalcedonians of his day, were acutely aware of ongoing conflict. In Evagrios’s discussion of Severos’s patriarchate, he refers to his enthronement missives, stating, ‘these indeed have been preserved down to our time, and from there many disputes have arisen for the church, and the most faithful populace has been divided’.211 Admittedly, this remark is not necessarily specific to Antioch itself, but it shows that Evagrios was well aware of continued conflict. Evagrios’s employer, Gregory, made calls for Christian unity and an end to the obsession with difficult points of doctrine. Thus in a sermon on the baptism of Christ he presented the unquestioning worship of the heavenly powers as a model for his congregation: ‘the cherubim and seraphim…sing hymns; they do not make excessive inquiries into the one whom they venerate.’212 Later in the same sermon, Gregory appeals directly to his audience, ‘Why do we fight each other pointlessly? Why do we battle each other, we who have been commanded to love even those who hate us?…why do we fulfil the desire of our common enemy?’; he continues to explain that it is the Devil who has stirred up the conflicts within the Church.213 Evagrios too claimed that Christological conflict was caused by the Devil.214 Such arguments must have been intended at least in part to win over a divided audience; Gregory’s homily would surely not be necessary in a fully Chalcedonian city. Evagrios’s downplaying of contemporary conflict thus seems likely to reflect a conciliatory attitude among some prominent Chalcedonians of the day, rather than the unimportance of miaphysitism in Antioch. This does not preclude the possibility that miaphysitism was declining in the city in this period, nor that relationships between miaphysites and Chalcedonians were often less tense than has sometimes been thought. Indeed, a more conciliatory approach by the clergy might encourage positive social interactions. But it does seem unlikely that miaphysitism could have been completely eradicated from the city within half a century, although its influence may have been greatly reduced.
Conclusion
In some respects, the sixth-century Antiochene reflects broader developments in the eastern Roman empire. Thus, despite gaps and interpretative difficulties in the evidence, we can see signs of conflict between emperor and local elites, between secular and religious leaders, and between the rich and the lower classes—although it is not clear that Sarris’s argument that such social tensions were rising can be sustained. We can also see fundamental tensions within Christian approaches to identity and behaviour, which suggest that religion was not a straightforwardly integrating or unifying force in society. Conflicts over ‘paganism’ reveal the intensity that perceived religious dissidence could generate, and show how suppressed social and political tensions could find outlets in specific forms of violence. Yet Antioch’s position was exceptional, largely because of the series of devastating disasters that hit the city across the sixth century. The literary sources paint a consistent picture of the physical and emotional damage caused by the crises. Although it is much harder to trace the effects of disasters in the limited archaeological record from the area, there is some evidence to corroborate the image of decline in the written sources. Certainly, there is no reason to question the severe ideological and emotional effects of the disasters, which are likely to have contributed to political, social, and religious instability within the city. Although social and cultural tensions undoubtedly reflect both long term developments in the region and wider trends in the society of the empire, they may well have been intensified and exacerbated in this context of crisis.
All of this provides the crucial background to the life and cult of Symeon Stylites the Younger. His whole life was, according to his hagiographer, interwoven with the disasters to hit the city: his father was killed in the earthquake of 526, while a significant part of his career revolved around handling the subsequent earthquakes, invasion, and plague which afflicted Antioch and its environs. Disasters posed a significant challenge to the saint’s claims to be able to protect his supplicants. Any holy man’s career was inextricably linked to his local society: he had to understand, and perhaps manipulate, social and cultural realities in order to carve out a space for himself as a source of authority. Thus, as we will see in the next two chapters, Symeon the Younger seems to have played on tensions between the wealthier and poorer classes, as well as on culturally sensitive areas such as paganism, as part of his efforts to assert his own role as moral arbiter and religious figurehead. This is manifested not only in the hagiographic material associated with his shrine, but also in a text which may well date from his lifetime, and which forms the subject of the following chapter: the sermon collection attributed to the stylite.
1 See e.g. Maxwell 2006; Soler 2006; Cribiore 2007; Sandwell 2007; and Shephardson 2014.
2 Downey 1961.
3 See esp. Allen 1981; Mayer 2009; Mayer and Allen 2012; Mordechai 2019. Mordechai’s work focuses primarily on the archaeological and scientific evidence; he does consider textual material, but rather fleetingly (cf. the comment on p. 208 which dismisses literary sources for the period other than Prokopios and John Malalas).
4 See e.g. Liebeschuetz 1972, p. 259; Shephardson 2014, p. 252.
5 Exceptions include esp. Alpi 2009; see also Allen 1996; Allen and Hayward 2004.
6 On Malalas, see esp. the articles collected in Croke, Jeffreys, and Scott 1990; Liebeschuetz 2004; on Evagrios, see above all Allen 1981; Whitby 2000; with Caires 1982; Whitby 1998.
7 For full references to the surviving works/fragments of the sixth-century Antiochene patriarchs, see CPG III, 6902–16 (pp. 306–9) for Ephraim; 6944–69 (pp. 313–19) for Anastasios; and 7384–94 (pp. 383–5) for Gregory.
8 For the need to recognize that even nearby settlements could experience very different patterns of economic development, see e.g. Horden and Purcell 2000, p. 53; Liebeschuetz 2001a, p. 5; Stathakopoulos 2007, p. 117; and for a slightly later period, Haldon 2012, p. 121.
9 For a list of disasters affecting Antioch in this period, see Mordechai 2019, pp. 207–8.
10 Downey 1961, p. 527. For his narrative of the sixth-century disasters, see ibid. pp. 503–74.
11 Foss 1997, p. 259; Wickham 2005, p. 623; Walmsley 2007a, p. 37, 2007b, pp. 334–5.
12 See esp. Magness 2003, pp. 206–9. Cf. also Mayer and Allen 2012, pp. 11–13.
13 The following narrative focuses only on the events which make most impression in the sources; for a more detailed account, see Downey 1961, pp. 503–74.
14 See Pseudo-Dionysios (II, p. 20); Theophanes, AM 6018 (p. 172); Malalas 17.14 (p. 344). The extant Greek manuscript of Malalas does not provide a clear date for the fire, but two witnesses probably drawing on the lost original of Malalas do: Pseudo-Dionysios dates it to the year 837 (i.e. 525/6) and Theophanes to AM 6018, October of the 4th indiction (i.e. 525), a date which is generally accepted: see Downey 1961, p. 520 n. 75, though note that ‘the earthquake preceded the fire’ seems to be a mistake (the earthquake followed the fire). These texts describe a distinct fire whereas Evagrios Scholastikos states that ‘frequent and terrible conflagrations occurred at Antioch, as if leading in the most frightful tremors that took place there and providing a prelude to the sufferings’: Evagrios Scholastikos 4.5 (p. 155, trans. p. 203).
15 Malalas 17.14 (p. 344, trans. p. 236).
16 On the earthquake, see Marcellinus Comes, sa. 525–6 (p. 41); Malalas 17.16 (pp. 346–50); Evagrios Scholastikos 4.5 (pp. 155–6); Pseudo-Dionysios (II, pp. 47–52); Pseudo-Zacharias (II, p. 76); Theophanes, AM 6018–19 (pp. 172–3).
17 Malalas 17.16 (pp. 346–7, trans. pp. 238–9). Italics indicate the parts of the text attested only indirectly.
18 According to the Life of Symeon 7 (p. 8), these victims included the saint’s father, John.
19 On this earthquake, see Malalas 18.27 (pp. 269–70); Evagrios Scholastikos 4.6 (p. 156); Pseudo-Dionysios (II, pp. 72–4); Theophanes AM 6021 (pp. 177–8).
20 Malalas 18.27 (pp. 369–70, trans. pp. 256–7).
21 See Meier 2003, pp. 345–57, arguing that conventional coping strategies in times of natural disaster withstood the 526 earthquake but were severely challenged in 528.
22 Malalas 18.29 (p. 371); Evagrios Scholastikos 4.6 (p. 156). One manuscript of Malalas claims that the decision to change the city’s name was made at the order ‘of holy Symeon the miracle-worker’ i.e. Symeon the Younger. But the original manuscript seems to have read only ‘Symeon’: ‘holy’ and ‘miracle-worker’ were added later, and the link to Symeon the Younger seems unlikely, given that it is not attested elsewhere, and that Symeon was still a young child in the 520s. See Bury 1897, p. 229. Belgin-Henry has recently argued that this change in name was part of a wider ‘sanctification of topography’, in which Symeon the Younger’s move up the ‘Wonderful Mountain’ may have played a role: Belgin-Henry 2019.
23 On the coins, see e.g. Salamon 1993, pp. 15–20; Metcalf 2000, pp. 110–11. Salamon argues that some coins seem to refer to the city as ‘Christoupolis’ and possibly ‘Kurioupolis’ and ‘Huioupolis’, and connects this to the ‘neo-Chalcedonian’ theological programme of the patriarch Ephraim.
24 Prokopios, Wars II.xiv.6 (I, p. 214, trans. I, p. 383).
25 Marcellinus Comes (p. 41) (on his focus on the west, see Croke 1995, pp. xx–xxi).
26 μετὰ γὰρ ἓξ ἢ ἑπτὰ τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἡμέρας καταμηνύεται ὡς ἡ μεγάλη τῶν Ἀντιοχέων μητρόπολις διά τινος φοβερωτάτου σεισμοῦ κατ’ ἐκείνην ἐμπεπτώκει τὴν ἡμέραν, ἐν ᾗ τὴν ἔμπτωσιν ταύτης ὁ μέγας οὗτος προεφήτευσε Θεοδόσιος, ὥσπερ ὁ προφήτης Ἱερεμίας τὴν τῆς Ἱερουσαλὴμ ἅλωσιν: Theodore of Petra, Life of Theodosios (p. 87).
27 Lydos, De magistratibus 3.54 (ed. and trans. pp. 216–17).
28 Ibid.
29 On Lydos, see Maas 1992.
30 For other accounts of the sack, see Marcellinus Comes (p. 48); Malalas 18.87 (p. 405); Pseudo-Dionysios (II, p. 69); Evagrios Scholastikos 4.25 (p. 172) (account based on Prokopios); Pseudo-Zacharias (II, p. 190) (unfortunately his full account of the invasion is lost); Life of Symeon 57–64 (pp. 50–6). On the event’s ideological significance, see esp. Meier 2003, pp. 313–18.
31 Prokopios, Wars II.x.4–5 (I, pp. 193–4, trans. I, pp. 343–5).
32 Pseudo-Zacharias (II, p. 190); for Symeon’s hagiographer, see below p. 162.
33 On the ideological ramifications of disasters in this period, see esp. Meier 2003, passim: he focuses particularly on the growth of Kaiserkritik but addresses many aspects of the broader topic.
34 On the sixth-century plague, see esp. the essays collected in Little 2007b.
35 Prokopios, Wars 2.22 (I, pp. 249–56); John of Ephesus, as preserved in Pseudo-Dionysios (pp. 79–109); Evagrios Scholastikos 4.29 (pp. 177–9). See also Allen 1981, pp. 193–4.
36 Evagrios Scholastikos 4.29 (p. 178, trans. p. 231).
37 Ibid.
38 Malalas 18.112 (pp. 413–14), 18.118 (p. 416), 18.124 (p. 419). Some of these earthquakes seem to be mentioned in the Life of Symeon 78 (pp. 66–8), 104–7 (pp. 81–8): see below pp. 150–6.
39 John of Epiphania (p. 275); he is followed by Theophylact Simocatta III.10.8 (p. 131); see also Theophanes, AM 6066 (p. 247). Evagrios’s account of this incident reports that the Persian army was repulsed unexpectedly from the city; he does not refer specifically to damage to the Antiochene suburbs but does describe the army’s general pillaging of the region: Evagrios Scholastikos 5.9 (p. 206).
40 Evagrios Scholastikos 5.17 (p. 212).
41 Ibid. 6.8 (pp. 227–8, trans. pp. 298–300; quotation at p. 227, trans. pp. 298–9).
42 Horden and Purcell 2000, pp. 305–8; Wickham 2005, p. 13.
43 For the former position, see e.g. Whittow 1990; Magness 2003. For the latter, see e.g. Kennedy 1985a; Liebeschuetz 2001a, esp. p. 410.
44 For arguments that the plague did have a considerable impact, see e.g. Little 2007a; Sarris 2007; McCormick 2015; Meier 2016; for arguments tending to downplay its importance, see e.g. Haldon et al. 2018; Mordechai and Eisenberg 2019a, 2019b; Mordechai 2020.
45 See e.g. Horden and Purcell 2000, p. 53; Liebeschuetz 2001a, p. 5; Stathakopoulos 2007, p. 117; Haldon 2012, p. 121.
46 On the problematic divide between town and countryside, see esp. Horden and Purcell 2000, pp. 90–100; and on the terminology, Saradi 2006, pp. 96–100. On links between economies of town and countryside, see Foss 1995, p. 221; Liebeschuetz 2001a, pp. 7–8, 295; on Antioch in particular, see Di Giorgi 2016, p. 3 and passim.
47 Sandwell and Huskinson 2004, p. 2. See, however, Casana’s comments in the same volume: he notes that many sections of the ancient city are under fields, not silt, and could potentially be excavated (Casana 2004, p. 117).
48 The excavation reports are published by Princeton: Elderkin et al. 1934–72.
49 For a summary of the Princeton excavations, see Kenfield 2014; for critical discussions of the excavations and publications, see e.g. Bowersock 1994, pp. 423–4; Aser Eger 2013, p. 105; Di Giorgi 2016, pp. 27–33.
50 Ward-Perkins 1996, p. 150; Magness 2003, p. 206; Di Giorgi 2016, ch. 1.
51 See e.g. Stilwell in Elderkin et al. 1934–72, III, p. 9. See also Asar Eger 2013, p. 105; Mordechai 2019, p. 214.
52 Fisher in Elderkin et al. 1934–72, I, pp. 6, 19, 23 n. 5.
53 Prokopios, On Buildings 2.10.2–25 (pp. 76–80); Foss 1997, p. 193; Brasse 2010.
54 Magness 2003, pp. 206–9; Mordechai 2019.
55 ‘Contraction’ is employed by Aser Eger 2013, p. 95; reduction of Antioch’s size is also emphasized in Aser Eger 2015, pp. 64–5.
56 For a general overview, see Foss 1997, pp. 193–4, although not all the dates he cites are definite.
57 Casana 2004, p. 120; Asa Eger 2015, pp. 64–5.
58 For an important recent study of Antioch’s walls, see Brasse 2010.
59 On churches, see the detailed study of the archaeological and literary evidence by Mayer and Allen 2012, p. 163.
60 Kennedy 1985a, pp. 154–5; De Giorgi 2016, pp. 138–9. It is possible that the decline of Seleucia may have encouraged a growth in the alternative river harbour of Al-Mina: see De Giorgi 2016, pp. 142–3; for a more cautious view, see Vorderstrasse 2005, pp. 44, 68–9.
61 Erol and Pirazzoli 1992, although it is worth noting that the silting of the port could not be dated precisely by archaeological methods, and the date is again inferred from historical sources (they suggest that the 526 earthquake was probably responsible).
62 Pamir 2014, pp. 106, 112. See the critical reviews of the volume containing this summary by De Giorgi 2015; Brands 2018. I am not aware of the excavation reports yet being published in full, although I must note that I am unable to read Turkish and have therefore been unable to consult publications in Turkish associated with these excavations.
63 Sarris 2006, p. 117.
64 Wickham 2005, p. 443.
65 Decker 2009, p. 42.
66 See below pp. 36–7.
67 A French-Syrian team have been refining Tate’s dating system on the basis of a close study of the village of Serğilla. The volume published so far only proposes a relative dating chronology, but promises that an absolute chronology will be given in vol. 2. This will be a very important step forward: Tate and Abdulkarim et al. 2013 (see p. 559). This volume also has extensive further bibliography on the Limestone Massif.
68 There are only three exceptions, two of which are from Deir Semaan, considered exceptional by Tate due to its status as the pilgrimage base for the site of Symeon the Elder’s monastery at Qalaat Semaan.
69 Tate 1992, pp. 85–179.
70 Ibid. p. 184.
71 Her arguments have been accepted by scholars including Asa Eger 2013, pp. 206–9; Avni 2014, pp. 295–6.
72 Magness 2003, pp. 196–206.
73 Ibid. p. 206.
74 The concept of the epigraphic habit was developed in Macmullen 1982. On new inscriptions from this period, see Kennedy 2007, p. 90.
75 Riba 2018, passim, but for a summary pp. 394–5.
76 Foss 1997, p. 204. Trombley has argued that economic change in the Massif can clearly be linked to the Persian invasions of the province rather than to the plague on the basis that there is a lull in inscriptions starting not in 542 (the year of the plague outbreak) but in 539 (a year before the Persian sack of Antioch): Trombley 1997, p. 176 n. 85. Yet the corpus of inscriptions is not large enough to show that the absence of surviving inscriptions from the two years between invasion and plague is significant.
77 Tate 1992, pp. 336–7; on the Kaper Koraon treasure, M. Mango 1986, pp. 12–13; Boyd and Mango 1992, p. xxv.
78 Cf. Naccache 1991, I, p. 300.
79 Cf. Kennedy 1994, pp. 267–8.
80 For a summary, see Asa Eger 2015, esp. pp. 39–47.
81 Casana 2004, p. 115.
82 Casana and Wilkinson 2005, p. 41; Casana 2014, p. 213.
83 Casana and Wilkinson 2005, pp. 44–5.
84 Asa Eger 2015, esp. pp. 40–2.
85 Ibid. pp. 188–97; see also De Giorgi 2016, pp. 88–91.
86 Foss 1997, p. 233.
87 De Giorgi 2016, p. 8, speaks of a ‘new vitality in Antiochene studies’.
88 For some early results of this process, see Asa Eger 2013; Stahl 2017.
89 See e.g. Pamir 2014 (though see critical reviews of the volume containing Pamir’s article by De Giorgi 2015 and Brands 2018); Pamir 2016; Pamir and Sezgin 2016. Pamir’s publications contain further references to more publications in Turkish, which unfortunately I have not been able to consult since I cannot read Turkish.
90 e.g. Tate and Abdulkarim et al. 2013; Asa Eger 2015; Riba 2018.
91 See e.g. Ambraseys 2009, esp. ch. 1; Sintubin 2011.
92 Mordechai and Picket 2018, pp. 336–8.
93 For Qalaat Semaan, see Karakhanian et al. 2008; for the aqueduct, see Benjelloun et al. 2015.
94 For one example of a survey which attempts to integrate literary, archaeological, and scientific material, see Mordechai 2019.
95 For a general overview of the concept of ‘resilience’, see Haldon and Rosen 2018 (and the articles collected in that volume); for sixth-century Antioch, see Mordechai 2019; on the Limestone Massif, see Lewit 2020.
96 See e.g. Ambraseys 2009, p. 839; Mordechai and Pickett 2018, p. 344.
97 Mordechai and Pickett 2018.
98 See esp. Izdebski, Mordechai, and White 2018, who analyse the unequal ‘social burden of resilience’.
99 Mordechai and Pickett 2018, p. 344.
100 Mordechai offers a different explanation of Antioch’s renaming, seeming to suggest that it was part of a drive by the government to encourage people to move to the city: Mordechai 2019, p. 213.
101 Key works include Banaji 2001; Sarris 2006; Bell 2013.
102 Banaji 2001.
103 Sarris 2006, passim, but esp. pp. 228–34.
104 For criticisms of Sarris’s use of papyri in discussing the Egyptian evidence, see in particular Mazza 2008 (her own analysis of the Apion material is found in Mazza 2001); and Hickey 2012, e.g. pp. 28, 41 n. 15, 62–4, 98 n. 25, 110 n. 87, 127, 131 n. 178, 149–51, 157–9.
105 Bell 2013.
106 Ibid. pp. 51–118, quote at 82–3.
107 On Severos, see Alpi 2009, pp. 173–8; on Brown, see below pp. 99, 108.
108 On this, see esp. Liebeschuetz 2001a, esp. chs 3–4, pp. 104–68; see also Liebeschuetz 1972, pp. 260–3.
109 See below pp. 45–7.
110 Severos, Letters 1.40 (I.I, pp. 126–9).
111 
: ibid. 1.43 (I.I, p. 136).
112 τὸ πᾶν τῆς πόλεως κεφάλαιον: Evagrios Scholastikos 6.7 (p. 226, trans. p. 296); ἀξιολόγων πλεῖστοι: ibid. 6.8 (p. 228, trans. p. 300).
113 τοὺς πλείους τῶν πρώτων τῆς πόλεως: Life of Symeon 161 (p. 144).
114 See below pp. 163–4.
115 For his marriage festivities, see Evagrios Scholastikos 6.8 (p. 227); for his estate dwellers, ibid. 4.29 (p. 178, trans. p. 231), for honours from the emperors, ibid. 4.24 (p. 240). Cf. Allen 1981, pp. 2–3.
116 The excavation reports from the houses at Antioch are problematic and the dwellings have yet to be thoroughly studied: see Dobbins 2000, pp. 51–2. The most convincing work on the dating of the mosaics in Antioch is that of Campbell 1988.
117 οἰκέτας τε καὶ χωρίτας: Evagrios Scholastikos, 4.29 (p. 178, trans. p. 231).
118 e.g. Symeon the Younger, Sermons 6.4 (pp. 19–20), 16.6 (pp. 79–80); on this theme in Severos’s homilies, see Alpi 2009, p. 175.
119 Tate 1992, p. 349.
120 Wickham 2005, p. 447.
121 Horden and Purcell 2000, pp. 274–5.
122 Sarris cites two authors on the topic (Sarris 2006, p. 122, n. 33). But the first, Sodini, states that village names are unreliable as sources for their subsequent development as their status may have changed without any concomitant change in name (Sodini 2003, p. 47), while the second, Feissel, explicitly notes that it is impossible to infer from the existence of a ‘b’ in an Arabic place name that it was originally an epoikion (Feissel 1991, p. 296). Sarris also attempts to use etymology to show that the region around Symeon the Younger’s monastery saw many noble-owned villages, on the basis that the Lives of Symeon and Martha refer to several settlements with names with the formula ‘chorion of name’ (Sarris 2006, p. 121). He again cites Feissel in support of this argument, but Feissel’s discussion focuses only on the origin of the place names, and does not draw any inferences about their social status in the sixth and seventh centuries (Feissel 1991, pp. 297ff.). For Sarris’s argument about not exaggerating the wealth of the dwellings, see Sarris 2006, pp. 122–4.
123 Bell 2013, p. 58.
124 Bavant 2013.
125 Mouterde interpreted the inscription to read ‘tomb belonging to the very illustrious and very glorious ex-consul Patrikios, in the time of lord Justinian’ (IGLS 1232); Feissel as ‘place belonging to the very glorious and very excellent ex-consul and patrician, (our) lord Justinian’ (Feissel 1992, 404–7). See also SEG 42:1363. Strangely, Trombley (and subsequently Sarris) seems to have combined these readings: he refers to the inscription as commemorating a place which was owned first by Patrikios and subsequently by Justinian (Trombley 2004b, p. 76; Sarris 2006, p. 124).
126 Sarris 2006, 232; Bell 2013, pp. 114–15.
127 On which, see Evagrios Scholastikos 5.9 (p. 206).
128 Evagrios Scholastikos 5.9 (p. 206, trans. p. 268).
129 Theophanes, AM 6101 (p. 296, trans. p. 425).
130 See de Ste. Croix 1981, passim.
131 Bell 2013, esp. ch. 5.
132 Many other scholars have also explored the relationship between Christianity and the classical tradition in late antiquity: see e.g. Jaeger 1961; Lemerle 1971, ch. 3; Garzya 1985; Bowersock 1990; Maas 1992; Liebeschuetz 1995; many of the articles in Allen and Jeffreys 1996; Johnson 2006a (esp. part 3); Kaldellis 2007a, part 1; Smith 2019.
133 Anthony Kaldellis has also argued strongly for the persistence of paganism in the sixth century, including in elite Constantinopolitan circles: see e.g. Kaldellis 2003, 2004a, 2004b, ch. 5, 2014c.
134 I focus in the following discussion primarily on the Roman-style hippodrome games, but the Greek athletic games were also subject to debate and lasted longer in Antioch than in most of the east (the last Antiochene Olympic Games was held in 520): see Remisjen 2015, esp. ch. 3.
135 On Antioch’s reputation, see e.g. Prokopios, Wars 1.17.37 (I, p. 88); Life of Thekla 15 (p. 228); with Saradi 2006, p. 296.
136 e.g. Malalas 9.21 (p. 171), 10.27 (pp. 188–9), 12.3–10 (pp. 215–18), 12.26 (pp. 228–9), 12.44, 46 (pp. 238–40) (all examples from before the sixth century—on the sixth century, see below). On Malalas’s interest in the hippodrome and circus factions see A. D. E. Cameron 1976, pp. 138–9.
137 Malalas 17.12–3 (pp. 343–4), 18.41 (p. 376), 18.62 (pp. 390–1), 18.67 (p. 393).
138 
sixth-century Antiochene patriarchs, I use Whitby 2000, p. 320.
139 This was certainly not a new source of controversy in this period: John Chrysostom is only one example of an earlier bishop vehemently hostile to the theatre (see e.g. Leyerle 2001, esp. ch. 3).
140 On the indecency of spectacles, see e.g. Homily 95 (p. 94); Homily 54 (p. 55); on the behaviour of the spectators, see e.g. Homily 26 (pp. 548, 550–2); Homily 54 (p. 52); for mistreatment of animals, Homily 26 (p. 548). For Severos on spectacles, see Graffin 1978; Saradi 2006, p. 296; Alpi 2009, pp. 178–83.
141 Homily 54 (p. 48).
142 
: Homily 26 (pp. 544–6, quote at p. 544).
143 Homily 95 (pp. 93–4).
144 Hollman 2003, pp. 67–82 (for the dating, see 68–9). For discussion of magic at the circus races, see Graf 2015, pp. 278–9; he suggests that even Christians used this kind of spell at hippodromes.
145 Homily 26 (pp. 546–50).
146 See e.g. Leyerle 2001, pp. 13–19; Webb 2008, pp. 201–2.
147 See also, for instance, debates among Antiochene Christians over baths and bathing: Schoolman 2017. Schoolman discusses evidence from the Life of Symeon Stylites the Younger at pp. 243–4, emphasizing that Symeon’s hagiographer deploys baths as a setting for various miracle stories. I am less convinced that the Life of Symeon displays an unambiguously positive attitude towards bathing, and would note that as a baby Symeon refused to be brought into the baths (Life of Symeon 6 (pp. 7–8), while a later, wealthy, unbelieving critic of Symeon is smitten with death shortly after bathing in the public baths (and refusing to speak to Symeon’s messenger because he was too relaxed after fasting and bathing) (ibid. 224 (pp. 195–6); see also below pp. 163–4)).
148 On varied conceptions of civic pride in the sixth century, see Saradi 2006, pp. 49–101.
149 e.g. Homily 1.10 (Coptic version) (p. 258); Homily 26 (p. 542); Homily 28 (p. 576); Homily 80 (p. 324); cf. also Homily 125 (p. 246).
150 e.g. Homily 51 (p. 376); Homily 35 (p. 448); Homily 75 (pp. 130–1); Homily 97 (p. 137).
151 
: Homily 28 (pp. 574–6, quote at p. 576); cf. Acts 13:4.
152 I cannot agree with Liebeschuetz (2004, p. 153) that Malalas was largely uninterested in civic pride; Antioch is at the heart of his chronicle. On Malalas’s treatment of the ancient past and classical mythology, see Jeffreys 1979, pp. 216–28.
153 Malalas 8.12 (pp. 151–2).
154 Ibid. 8.15 (p. 153, trans. pp. 106–7).
155 Ibid. e.g. 10.24 (p. 187), 11.10 (pp. 208–9), 12.35 (pp. 233–4).
156 Severos of Antioch, Letters 1.30 (I.I, pp. 103–4, trans. II.2, pp. 92–3). On this and Severos’s intolerance of classical learning, see Alpi 2009, pp. 245–6.
157 See e.g. A. D. E. Cameron 2007, p. 39.
158 See Bowersock 2006, pp. 31–63.
159 On Severos’s education, see Alpi 2009, pp. 40–1.
160 See esp. Leyerle 2001, pp. 20–31.
161 As we see with Symeon the Younger and his hagiographer; see below pp. 98–110, 162–7.
162 On the missions in Asia Minor from 541–2, see John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 40, 43, 47, 51 (II, pp. 650, 658–60, 681; III, p. 163); Pseudo-Dionysios (II, pp. 77–8).
163 For the former position, see for example Allen 1981, pp. 231–2; Déroche 1996, pp. 76–8. For the latter position, see Whitby 1991; Bell 2013, esp. pp. 235–46. The widespread survival of paganism is argued for even more emphatically by Trombley 1985b and Harl 1990. Kaldellis also has argued strongly for the persistence of paganism in the sixth century: see Kaldellis 2003, 2004a, 2004b, ch. 5, 2014c.
164 Bell 2013, p. 240.
165 Stathakopoulos 2004, p. 76; Millar 2006, pp. 120–2.
166 On the purges, see e.g. Maas 1992, pp. 69–78.
167 Justinian’s persecutions typified Byzantine society’s generally repressive approach to homosexuality. Scholars have nonetheless sought to recover queer voices and writings in Byzantine history: see for instance Smith 2019; Betancourt 2020.
168 Bell 2013, esp. pp. 306–7.
169 See above pp. 38–9.
170 It has been suggested that Amantios’s activities in Antioch could have followed on from his suppression of the Samaritan revolt in Palestine in 555/6: see PLRE 3a, ‘Amantius 2’, pp. 52–4.
171 ηὗρε τοὺς πλείους τῶν πρώτων τῆς πόλεως καὶ πολλοὺς τῶν κατοικούντων αὐτὴν ἑλληνισμῷ καὶ μανιχαϊσμῷ καὶ ἀστρολογίαις καὶ αὐτοματισμῷ καὶ ἄλλαις δυσωνύμοις αἱρέσεσι κατεχομένους: Life of Symeon 161 (p. 144).
172 Malalas 18.119 (pp. 417–18).
173 On Anastasios’s deposition, see Evagrios Scholastikos 5.5 (p. 201); Theophanes, AM 6062 (p. 243), with discussion by Allen 1981, pp. 214–17; Whitby 2000, p. 261 n. 17. On Gregory’s flight, see Evagrios Scholastikos 5.9 (p. 206).
174 For discussions of the two accounts, see Rochow 1976, esp. pp. 123–30; Allen 1981, pp. 230–2, 250; Whitby 1991, pp. 123–5; Liebeschuetz 2001a, pp. 263–9; Lee 2007, pp. 103–6. John’s account is found in his Ecclesiastical History 3.27–34, 5.17 (pp. 154–67, 267–8); Evagrios’s in Evagrios Scholastikos 5.18 (pp. 212–14), 6.7 (pp. 225–6).
175 Evagrios Scholastikos 5.18 (p. 213, trans. p. 278).
176 
177 
: ibid. 5.17 (p. 267).
178 Evagrios Scholastikos 6.7 (pp. 225–6).
179 Ibid. 6.7 (trans. pp. 296–7).
180 See below pp. 162–7.
181 As suggested by Liebeschuetz 2001a, pp. 262–9.
182 For Antioch as Chalcedonian, see e.g. Van den Ven 1962–70, I, p. 170* n. 6; for Antioch as miaphysite, see Frend 1972, pp. 140, 166–7; Mayer 2009, p. 362.
183 Life of Severos of Antioch (pp. 241–2). It should be noted that the hagiographer’s main source for this passage, Zacharias Scholastikos’s ‘Life’ of Severos, contains no reference to spontaneous popular anathematizations of Chalcedon. Allen has claimed on the basis of the former passage that Antioch was ‘pro-monophysite’ (Allen 1981, p. 152).
184 The former position is argued by Allen 1981, pp. 42–4; the latter is suggested by Whitby 2000, pp. xl–xlvii, though he does also suggest that Evagrios’s silence suited Chalcedonian efforts to cooperate with miaphysites.
185 For Christological developments in the first decades of the sixth century, see Honigmann 1951, esp. pp. 7–25.
186 Evagrios Scholastikos 3.32 (p. 131, trans. p. 174). On the position of First and Second Syria, see e.g. Menze 2008, p. 45; Alpi 2009, pp. 103–6, with pl. III (p. 309). In both provinces, however, there were exceptions to this general trend.
187 Pseudo-Zacharias (II, p. 51, trans. p. 268).
188 Alpi 2009, pp. 286–7.
189 See the account by Severos’s hagiographer of his accession, Life of Severos of Antioch (pp. 241–2). So too Severos in his own homilies generally seems to assume the orthodoxy of his audience.
190 Homily 64 (p. 313). Cf. Mayer and Allen 2012, pp. 55–6, 204.
191 
: Homily 29 (pp. 588–606, quote at p. 592).
192 Homily 19 (esp. p. 26); Hymn 253 (II, pp. 701–2).
193 
194 
: Philoxenos (I, p. 80). See also Severos, Letters e.g. 1.54 (I.I, pp. 180–1); 4.8 (I.II, p. 302); 5.8 (I.II, pp. 361–5).
195 Malalas 18.64 (p. 391, trans. p. 273).
196 Pseudo-Zacharias (II, pp. 80–1). The expulsion of miaphysites from the monastery of Thomas is also recorded in the Life of John bar Apthonia 6–8 (pp. 21–4). On these persecutions and the relevant sources, see esp. Menze 2008, pp. 109–34, who emphasizes that the expulsions were often limited in scope (e.g. targeting abbots rather than entire monasteries).
197 For attacks on Chalcedonians, see ACO, 1st series, III (1940), pp. 106–9 with Menze 2008, pp. 46–7. For miaphysite criticisms of Ephraim, see Pseudo-Zacharias (II, pp. 174–6); Pseudo-Dionysios (probably John of Ephesus) (pp. 38–44, p. 53). Ephraim appears in the miaphysite Life of John of Tella, which describes him disputing with John and imprisoning him in Antioch: Elias, Life of John of Tella (pp. 65ff.); cf. Menze 2008, pp. 231–3.
198 Cf. Menze 2008, p. 47.
199 John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 46 and 52 (II, pp. 671–6, III, pp. 164–9).
200 On the personal focus of John’s work, see Harvey 1990a, pp. 31–3; Van Ginkel 1995, p. 41.
201 On Paul of Antioch, see esp. Brooks 1929; Honigmann 1951, pp. 195–205; Lontie 1997; Booth 2017, pp. 161–8. Surviving sources favourable to Paul include (as well as John of Ephesus), an apologetic dossier of documents, edited by Chabot, Monophysite Documents (Latin translation in Chabot 1933; English summary and discussion in Allen and Roey 1994, Part 3); documents hostile to Paul include a treatise published in Lontie 1997.
202 Honigmann 1951, pp. 173–4; Mayer and Allen 2012, p. 205; Booth 2017, p. 155.
203 
: John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History IV.15 (p. 201).
204 Ibid. IV.41 (pp. 221–4). On Damian’s travels to Antioch (and thence to Constantinople), see esp. Blaudeau 1997; on Damian, see also Booth 2017 and 2018, with further references.
205 John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History IV.42 (pp. 224–5). See Blaudeau 1997, pp. 151–2. On John’s positive attitude towards al-Mundhir, see e.g. Wood 2010, pp. 251–3.
206 
: John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History IV.31 (pp. 211–12).
207 Whitby 2000, pp. xl–xlvii.
208 Honigmann 1951, pp. 173–4; Mayer and Allen 2012, p. 205; Booth 2017, p. 155.
209 Cf. Whitby 2000, pp. xlv–xlvii, and see below pp. 128–9.
210 Allen 1981, esp. p. 49.
211 Evagrios Scholastikos 4.4 (p. 154, trans. p. 202).
212 Τὰ Χερουβὶμ καὶ τὰ Σεραφὶμ…ὑμνοῦσιν, οὐ πολυπραγμονοῦσιν, ὃν σέβουσιν: Gregory of Antioch, ‘On the Baptism of Christ’ (col. 1873).
213 Τί μαχόμεθα πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἰκῇ; Τί πολεμοῦμεν ἀλλήλους οἱ προστεταγμένοι καὶ τοὺς μισοῦντας φιλεῖν;…τί πληροῦμεν τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν τοῦ κοινοῦ δυσμενοῦς; ibid. (cols 1880–1).
214 See esp. Evagrios Scholastikos 2.5 (pp. 52–3), where Evagrios also claims that Christological conflict was caused by the Devil; Whitby 2000, pp. xxxvii–xlvii; Ginter 2001.