Alabanda or Antiochia of the Chrysaorians was a city of ancient Caria, Anatolia, the site of which is near Doğanyurt, Çine, Aydın Province, Turkey. The city is located in the saddle between two heights. The area is noted for its dark marble and for gemstones that resembled garnets. Stephanus of Byzantium claims that there were two cities named Alabanda (Alabandeus) in Caria, but no other ancient source corroborates this.

History

According to legend, the city was founded by the Carian hero Alabandus. In the Carian language, the name is a combination of the words for horse ala and victory banda. On one occasion, Herodotus mentions Alabanda being located in Phrygia, instead of in Caria, but in fact the same city were meant. Amyntas, son of the Persian official Bubares and grandson of the Macedonian King Amyntas, received control of the city from King Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BC). In the early Seleucid period, the city was part of the Chrysaorian League, a loose federation of nearby cities linked by economic and defensive ties and, perhaps, by ethnic ties. The city was renamed Antiochia of the Chrysaorians in honor of Seleucid king Antiochus III who preserved the city's peace. It was captured by Philip V of Macedon in 201 BC. The name reverted to Alabanda after the Seleucid defeat at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. The Romans occupied the city shortly thereafter. According to Cicero in Greece they worshiped a number of deified human beings, at Alabanda there was Alabandus. In 40 BC, the rebel Quintus Labienus at the head of a Parthian army took the city. After Labienus's garrison was slaughtered by the city's inhabitants, the Parthian army stripped the city of its treasures. Under the Roman Empire, the city became a conventus (Pliny, V, xxix, 105) and Strabo reports on its reputation for high-living and decadence. The city minted its own coins down to the mid-third century. During the Byzantine Empire, the city was a created a bishopric. The ruins of Alabanda are 8 km west of Çine and consist of the remains of a theatre and a number of other buildings, but excavations have yielded very few inscriptions.

Ecclesiastical history

The names of some bishops of Alabanda are known because of their participation in church councils. Thus Theodoret was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Constantine at the Trullan Council in 692, another Constantine at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and John at the Photian Council of Constantinople (879). The names of two non-orthodox bishops of the see are also known: Zeuxis, who was deposed for Monophysitism in 518, and Julian, who was bishop from around 558 to around 568 and was a Jacobite. No longer a residential diocese, Alabanda is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.

Notable people

Bishops

Sources