ABSTRACT
Place and identity are concepts often so closely linked that one may usefully be explored in terms of the other. This chapter aims to apply this approach to the city of Antioch on the Orontes, investigating aspects of its cultural identity in the Roman empire through some specific images of place – of rivers – that occur in its floor mosaics. Roman Antioch was a multicultural place, involving people and customs from many different backgrounds, elite and non-elite, local and immigrant. Because of its strategic position in relation to the eastern frontier of the empire, Antioch had an important role in Roman military and commercial expansion in the east particularly during the third century AD campaigns against Persia. In Antioch itself rivers and springs played an important part both in daily life and in the city's self-definition. Like other motifs in Antioch mosaic pavements, the river personifications belong to a repertory used across the Eastern Mediterranean area since Hellenistic times.
