Apamea (Phrygia)

Apamea Cibotus, Apamea ad Maeandrum (on the Maeander), Apamea or Apameia (Ancient Greek: Ἀπάμεια, Ancient Greek: κιβωτός) was an ancient city in Anatolia founded in the 3rd century BC by Antiochus I Soter, who named it after his mother Apama. It was in Hellenistic Phrygia, but became part of the Roman province of Pisidia. It was near, but on lower ground than, Celaenae (Kelainai).

The site is now partly occupied by the city of Dinar (sometimes locally known also as Geyikler, "the gazelles," perhaps from a tradition of the Persian hunting-park, seen by Xenophon at Celaenae), which by 1911 was connected with İzmir by railway; there are considerable remains, including a theater and a great number of important Graeco-Roman inscriptions. Strabo (p. 577) says, that the town lies at the source (ekbolais) of the Marsyas, and the river flows through the middle of the city, having its origin in the city, and being carried down to the suburbs with a violent and precipitous current it joins the Maeander after the latter is joined by the Orgas (called the Catarrhactes by Herodotus, vii. 26).

The original inhabitants were residents of Celaenae who were compelled by Antiochus I Soter to move farther down the river, where they founded the city of Apamea (Strabo, xii. 577). Antiochus the Great transplanted many Jews there. (Josephus, Ant. xii. 3, § 4). It became a seat of Seleucid power, and a center of Graeco-Roman and Graeco-Hebrew civilization and commerce. There Antiochus the Great collected the army with which he met the Romans at Magnesia, and two years later the Treaty of Apamea between Rome and the Seleucid realm was signed there. After Antiochus' departure for the East, Apamea lapsed to the Pergamene kingdom and thence to Rome in 133 BCE, but it was resold to Mithridates V of Pontus, who held it till 120 BCE. After the Mithridatic Wars it became and remained a great center for trade, largely carried on by resident Italians and by Jews. By order of Flaccus, a large amount of Jewish money – nearly 45 kilograms of gold – intended for the Temple in Jerusalem was confiscated in Apamea in the year 62 BCE (Cicero, Pro Flacco, ch. xxviii.). In 84 BCE Sulla made it the seat of a conventus, and it long claimed primacy among Phrygian cities. When Strabo wrote, Apamea was a place of great trade in the Roman province of Asia, next in importance to Ephesus. Its commerce was owing to its position on the great road to Cappadocia, and it was also the center of other roads. When Cicero was proconsul of Cilicia, 51 BCE, Apamea was within his jurisdiction (ad Fam. xiii. 67), but the dioecesis, or conventus, of Apamea was afterwards attached to Asia. Pliny the Elder enumerates six towns which belonged to the conventus of Apamea, and he observes that there were nine others of little note.

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