ABSTRACT
Byzantine Antioch is usually mentioned in conjunction with the litany of disasters that contributed to the decline of the classical city. That Antioch looked at that point like post-World War II Dresden, as Gunnar Brands reminds us, is a real possibility. But not even renaming the city “Theoupolis,” the “City of God,” spared this community from more trouble ahead, for the Persians again invaded the city in 611 under Khosrow Parviz. As shown by the seminal surveys of Tchalenko and Tate and described in previous chapters, a growing rural settlement had populated the wadis, plateaus, and few pockets of land available since the second century ce. Successively, a baptistery and sacristy were added between 420 and 429 on the initiative of the patriarch Theodotus, while other annexes were added in the early sixth century, thus making this complex the quintessential template of the cruciform churches of Late Antiquity.
