Jordan Pickett

The University of Georgia, Classics, Faculty Member

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Address: Department of Classics
University of Georgia
221 Park Hall
Athens, GA 30602-6205

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EARTHQUAKES AND STATE RESPONSE AT ANTIOCH: HELLENISTIC TO EARLY BYZANTINE [pre-print for Antioch on the Orontes: History, Society, Ecology, and Visual Culture, ed. A. de Giorgi (Cambridge: CUP, 2024), 433-450]

, 2023) 1 "A severe shock of earthquake was felt here at Antioch… Walls fell, the narrow streets ... more , 2023) 1 "A severe shock of earthquake was felt here at Antioch… Walls fell, the narrow streets (only about twelve or fifteen feet wide, and some less) being literally blocked up for long distances with the ruins of fallen houses, and a dense cloud of dust arose on all sides. Men, women, and children ran hither and thither, wailing their own hurts or the loss of relatives. I went down to the bridge…and saw many dead persons brought out of the city and laid out for burial. … Looking toward the town, ruins could be seen in all directions. Several aqueducts were broken… The church, a strong stone arched structure, built only a few years ago, and capable of holding 500 or 600 persons, was utterly ruined-one side and the entire roof are gone. … The number of killed and injured cannot be ascertained with any approach to accuracy, and of course, flying rumors are abundant, one man saying that he thought there must be 1,000 killed, while another said 500, and a third 250, which is, perhaps, within the truth. … The old Roman bridge of four arches is rent in several places until the water can be seen through it from above; a part of the parapet wall has also been shaken off, and the arch above the city door at its east end has been hurled down and lies almost whole. Much damage has been done to houses in the lower part of town, and many of the inhabitants are now to be seen encamping around in the fields or plain. It is nearly fifty years since the last similar visitation occurred to this city… when some thousands of lives were lost here. … In several places large cracks are visible in the ground, two or three inches wide, and on the hillsides several feet deep. The narrow roadways or tracks between the hills are in places filled with boulders from the hill or mountainside, and in or near the villages, where there were walls of boulders between the gardens, the fallen walls now fill the roads." This remarkable description of earthquake at Antioch could have come from John Malalas in the sixth century, but it does not. Rather, it may be found in a New York Times article of 13 May 1872, concerning an earthquake at Antioch on 3 April of that year. The article reproduces a letter by the English sailor, travel writer, and harbor chaplain Rev. W. Brown Keer, which he wrote a day after the earthquake, and sent to the London Times before it was widely reprinted throughout the United States. When we consider the driving question for this chapter-how might we describe state responses to historical earthquakes in the city of Antioch?-Keer's description of the 1872 earthquake should remind us of four preliminaries: 1) Earthquakes (often with long-lingering aftershocks) have been recurring features of Antioch's history since a seismic event recorded for 130 BC. The position of Antioch alongside the northern Dead Sea transform fault guaranteed its occasional suffering "Earthquakes and State Response at Antioch: Hellenistic to Early Byzantine" Jordan Pickett (University of Georgia) Accepted and Contracted with Andrea DeGiorgi, ed. Cambridge Companion to Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023) 2 from earthquakes, which have been severe perhaps once every century (and see above, Chap. 3 for geomorphology). 1 2) The destruction produced by earthquakes varies with local intensity and geology, but also with the materials and techniques of local building culture. Keer describes surface faulting and landslides, but also how houses of timber and tile got the worst of it, 2 when the city's public architecture stood stronger in stone and suffered less. 3 Aqueducts were cracked but not irreparable. A Roman bridge was torn apart but still stood on its foundations. Stone-arched churches suffered partial collapse. [INSERT Figure 1: A typology of Earthquake Archaeological Effects or EAE's (after Rodríguez-Pascua et al. 2011, courtesy of M. A. Rodríguez-Pascua.)] "Earthquake archaeological effects" or EAE's are the immediate products of ground deformation or shaking on architecture, and they are well-understood for stone construction, especially, which was a significant component of Antioch's built environment since the Hellenistic period. 4 EAE's include faulting and cracking or subsidence and liquefaction of the earth, tilted or folded walls and buckled pavements, displaced or fractured masonry, all besides the more readily conceivable collapse of structures, and the so-called secondary effects that can include spreading fires, before the eventual repair of buildings or neighborhoods. Though EAE's were not formalized for archaeology until Rodríguez-Pascua's work in the 2010s, some EAE's were understood by the Princeton excavators at Antioch in the 1930s: they appear in Princeton's records of the city's archaeology, besides in primary source descriptions of the city's earthquake events. 5 3) Mortality rates after catastrophes are difficult to assess in any period (including our own). Keer acknowledges contradiction and uncertainty, writing that "flying rumors are abundant, one man saying that he thought there must be 1,000 killed, while another said 500, and a third 250..." When Keer was writing in 1872, it should come as no surprise that ancient authors also struggled to confront death after a catastrophe. There

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