es of
Armenia to occupy the city in 83, tried to unseat Antiochus XIII. in 65,
and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following year. Its
wish prevailed, and it passed with Syria to the Roman Republic in 64
B.C., but remained a _civitas libera_.

The Romans both felt and expressed boundless contempt for the hybrid
Antiochenes; but their emperors favoured the city from the first, seeing
in it a more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than
Alexandria could ever be, thanks to the isolated position of Egypt. To a
certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome. Caesar visited it
in 47 B.C., and confirmed its freedom. A great temple to Jupiter
Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the instance of Octavian, whose
cause the city had espoused. A forum of Roman type was laid out.
Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius. Agrippa
and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work.
Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. A
circus, other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new
aqueducts to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the
work of Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod, erected a long _stoa_ on
the east, and Agrippa encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of
this. Under the empire we chiefly hear of the earthquakes which shook
Antioch. One, in A.D. 37, caused the emperor Caligula to send two
senators to report on the condition of the city. Another followed in the
next reign; and in 115, during Trajan's sojourn in the place with his
army of Parthia, the whole site was convulsed, the landscape altered,
and the emperor himself forced to take shelter in the circus for several
days. He and his successor restored the city; but in 526, after minor
shocks, the calamity returned in a terrible form, and thousands of lives
were lost, largely those of Christians gathered to a great church
assembly. We hear also of especially terrific earthquakes on the 29th of
November 528 and the 31st of October 588.

At Antioch Germanicus died in A.D. 19, and his body was burnt in the
forum. Titus set up the Cherubim, captured from the Jewish temple, over
one of the gates. Commodus had Olympic games celebrated at Antioch, and
in A.D. 266 the town was suddenly raided by the Persians, who slew many
in the theatre. In 387 there was a great sedition caused by a new tax
levied by order of Theodosius, and the city was