On February 6, two powerful earthquakes struck south-central Turkey and northern Syria.
The damage was especially catastrophic in the Turkish city of Antakya, where thousands
of lives were lost and more than three-quarters of all buildings were damaged beyond repair.
Fifteen centuries ago, Antakya was Antioch, one of the most important cities in the Roman
world.
It was here that the emperors staged their campaigns against the Persians, here that
the followers of Jesus were first called Christians, and here – again and again – that earthquakes
caused devastation reminiscent of last month’s disaster.
In 115 AD, while the emperor Trajan was visiting the city, Antioch was levelled by an earthquake
with an estimated magnitude of 7.5.
The devastation seems to have been almost total: archaeologists found the disaster marked
by a thick layer of rubble, upon which new streets were constructed.
Although a Roman consul traveling with Trajan was killed, the emperor himself escaped by
crawling out a window.
For several days, as aftershocks rattled the city, the imperial retinue was forced to camp
in the open racetrack of the Hippodrome.
Four centuries later, in 526, an even more devastating earthquake tore Antioch apart,
reportedly killing 250,000 people.
Fires raged over the rubble, destroying almost everything spared by the tremors.
The city’s vast octagonal cathedral, begun by Constantine himself, was one of the last
buildings to burn.
Many pages of classical history were torn by earthquakes.
In 464 BC, a severe earthquake struck Sparta, killing so many citizens that the helots – Sparta’s
repressed serf class – seized the opportunity to rise in rebellion.
It took the Spartans years to put down the uprising, and the political fallout contributed
to the tension between Athens and Sparta that culminated, a generation later, in the Peloponnesian
War.
In 373 BC, a tsunami and earthquake destroyed the Greek city of Helike, leaving many buildings
underwater.
The submerged ruins became a tourist attraction, and may have inspired Plato’s telling of
the story of Atlantis, inundated by a terrible disaster.
A century and a half later, an earthquake snapped the Colossus of Rhodes – the gargantuan
bronze statue famous as a wonder of the world – at the knees, leaving a pile of shattered
limbs that would dominate the city’s harbor for eight centuries.
The most destructive of all classical earthquakes took place in 365 AD.
Centered near Crete – where parts of the coast were uplifted by 30 feet – this tremor
sent tsunamis roaring across the Mediterranean.
The whole harbor district of Alexandria was destroyed, along with – according to some
scholars – the famous library and the tomb of Alexander the Great.
Years later, ships could still be found miles inland, where the tsunami had swept them.
Some of the most iconic classical sites were shaped by earthquakes.
In the Roman Forum, the ancient frescoes of Santa Maria Antiqua were preserved by landslides
triggered by a ninth-century earthquake.
At Scythopolis – Beit She'an in modern Israel – visitors can still see the broken columns
of the arcades along the Roman city’s main street, lying where an earthquake felled them.
Visitors to the ancient Greek city of Selinus – modern Selinunte, in western Sicily – can
clamber over the shattered columns of a colossal temple, reduced to ruins by a medieval earthquake.
At Pompeii, finally, traces of the earthquake that rattled the city seventeen years before
the eruption of Vesuvius are visible everywhere.
The Temple of Jupiter overlooking the city’s forum, for example, was still under restoration
at the time of the eruption.
The Temple of Isis, likewise, had just been reconstructed when it was buried by volcanic
debris.
Two reliefs discovered in the atrium of the house of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus show the
Forum of Pompeii mid-quake, the buildings leaning and collapsing.
The Mediterranean owes its seismic volatility to the vagaries of plate tectonics.
For millions of years, the African and Eurasian plates have been colliding along and beneath
the Mediterranean Sea, pushing up mountain chains, sparking volcanoes, and generating
earthquakes at their points of contact.
Several minor plates – the Aegean, Anatolian, and Arabian – complicate and multiply the
fault lines.
Lacking anything like a theory of plate tectonics, the Greeks and Romans attributed seismic activity
to Poseidon, god of the sea, who was known as the “earth-shaker” from the time of
the Homeric epics onward.
To stay the god’s wrath, sacrifices were made and hymns raised to Poseidon as “restrainer
of the earth” and “the stabilizer.”
During the early fourth century BC, an earthquake struck the day after a Spartan army marched
into the territory of a neighboring city.
To appease Poseidon, the officers and men sang a hymn for the god.
Some of the soldiers, regarding the quake as a sign of divine disapproval, wanted to
retreat.
But the Spartan king, reasoning that an earthquake was at least as likely to be a sign of approbation,
simply sacrificed to Poseidon and continued forward.
After the classical world became Christian, earthquakes continued to be interpreted as
signs of divine wrath.
Jesus himself, after all, had said that earthquakes would presage the end of days.
The liturgy of the Greek Orthodox church still marks the anniversaries of seven ancient earthquakes.
Over the centuries, ancient scholars produced a wide range of proto-scientific theories
about the causes of earthquakes.
Thales, the first Greek philosopher, believed that the earth floated in a universal sea,
whose motions were felt as tremors.
Anaximenes, another early philosopher, proposed that variations in the wetness of the soil
produced subterranean cracks, contractions, and convulsions.
Anaxagoras thought that earthquakes were caused by ether effervescing upward; Democritus,
by rainwater percolating downward.
Aristotle declared that earthquakes could only be generated by winds entering the earth.
Centuries later, the Roman philosopher Seneca – inspired by the recent tremor at Pompeii
– wrote an entire book on the subject of earthquakes.
After dismissing the idea that the gods were responsible and reviewing various hypotheses,
he endorsed a Stoic variant of Aristotle’s explanation: currents of air flowed through
cavities in the earth, producing earthquakes wherever they were obstructed.
Whatever their opinions on the causes of earthquakes, the Greeks and Romans knew from experience
how devastating their effects could be.
Although cities stricken by earthquakes could expect nothing in the way of immediate medical
assistance, they could and did appeal for help in rebuilding.
In the wake of an earthquake that rattled the province of Asia, for example, Tiberius
sent relief funds to the hardest-hit places and excused other afflicted cities from direct
taxation.
During the second century, likewise, when the city of Smyrna was damaged by an earthquake,
Aelius Aristides – a famous orator – immediately sent an appeal to Marcus Aurelius for financial
assistance.
Despite his many other obligations, including the ruinously expensive wars with the Quadi
and Marcomanni, Marcus obliged.
Perhaps the most impressive example of ancient disaster relief followed the terrible earthquake
of 526, which – along with a subsequent sack by the Persians – completely destroyed
Antioch.
With a vast infusion of imperial funds, Justinian reconstructed the entire city – walls, houses,
streets, and churches – making special provision for the health and security of the residents.
Now, fifteen hundred years later, Antioch – Antakya – needs to be rebuilt again,
along with many other cities and towns in the Turkey and Syria.
I hope that you’ll consider using the link onscreen to donate to Direct Relief, a charity
currently providing emergency medical assistance to victims of the recent earthquake, and dedicated
more generally to alleviating the effects of disasters and poverty worldwide.
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