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Modern Description: Waterfalls, trees, and restaurants remain.
A suburb named Daphne developed 9 km S of Antioch on the first plateau overlooking the Orontes and the plain, built around the springs of Castalia and Pallas, next to which stood the Temple of Apollo. The water reached Antioch in underground aqueducts set at a calculated slope, which then crossed several valleys on arcades and ran in high galleries along the mountainsides above the city. Thus, as Libanius says, every house could have its fountain.
At Daphne itself the original villas were later included in an orthogonal city plan. The archaeological strata here were only 2-3 m below the surface, but olive groves, orchards, and fields prevented extensive exploration; thus only a few houses could be excavated, and many mosaics were removed.
The mosaics of both Antioch and Daphne have almost all been raised and dispersed; some are in the local museum in Antioch, some in Paris, some in museums in the United States. Only two mosaics of the 1st c. A.D. have been found. They consist of geometric patterns. Figured mosaics begin in the 2d c. and continue through to the end of the Classical period of Antioch in the 6th c. They form a most valuable series, illustrating the development of the art of the mosaicist through the Roman period.
Little sculpture and few inscriptions have survived, and the only monuments that have been thoroughly explored are the Theater of Daphne and the Martyrion of Qaoussié. The latter, with mosaics executed in A.D. 387, is cruciform in plan: four naves 25 by 11 m, set on the sides of a square 16 by 16 m. Instead of an apse there was a horseshoe-shaped Syrian bema at the center of the square. In one corner was the sarcophagus that had held the body of Babylas, bishop and martyr, which the emperor Julian returned from Daphne to Antioch (identified by inscriptions now at Princeton University). Another church at Machouka, N of the city, was a conventional basilica paved throughout with flowered mosaics (6th c.).
The monuments listed in the ancient texts—temples and baths, honorific monuments, fountains, two Hellenistic agoras, a forum of the 4th c. A.D., an amphitheater, civic basilicas, palaces, churches, the octagonal Church of Constantine, and the round Church of the Virgin built by Justinian—can probably never be brought to light. (PECS: J. LASSUS)
Wikidata ID: Q3015870
Trismegistos Geo: 3678

Info: Princeton Encyclopedia

(Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, from Perseus Project)

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