ANTIOCH OF PISIDIA ăn’ tĭ ŏk, pĭ sĭd ĭ ə (̓Αντιόχεια τῆς Πισιδίας, the city of Antiochus by [?] Pisidia). Roman colony near Yalvac in S-central Turkey.

Lying strictly in Phrygia beyond the limits of Pisidia, which, as Acts 14:24 correctly implies, comes between it and Pamphylia, Antioch is, nevertheless, in a controlling position “near” Pisidia (so Strabo, xii 577). To distinguish it from the other Antioch in Phrygia it is popularly said to be “of” Pisidia, or, as in the reading of the oldest codices of Acts 13:14, “Pisidian.” A great wedge of mountain ranges, based to the W on Lycia and to the E on Cilicia Tracheia, embraces Pamphylia, and converges in Pisidia to its N. E-W traffic is here ruled out by the terrain, but routes, such as that followed by Paul, run N into the interior up the river valleys. Where they emerge into the lake-studded plateau that marks the limit of Pisidia, stands Antioch, astride the southernmost of the great E-W highways of Asia Minor, that was to carry Paul on to Lycaonia (Acts 14:6). Immediately to the N again is the range now known as Sultan Dag, which in antiquity gave to its “slopes” on either side the name of Phrygia Paroreios. This tract, which centers on Antioch, was incorporated in the new Rom. province of Galatia in 25 b.c. Thus, on the “South Galatian” theory, Antioch is one of the places to which the epistle to the Galatians was addressed.

As a Gr. city, Antioch was founded, prob. on the site of a Phrygian temple-village of the god Mên, within twenty years of the Seleucid assumption of power over the region in 281 b.c. Its name honors Antiochus I, the son of Seleucus, one of the successors of Alexander. Settlers were brought in from Magnesia on the Maeander, and the city was one of several designed to pin down the difficult mountain peoples of Pisidia to the S. Two and a half centuries later the same problems led Augustus to make Antioch (under the name Colonia Caesarea) one of a chain of Rom. colonies (including Lystra) with which he surrounded Pisidia. The fact that Antioch alone was already a considerable town may suggest that the objective was not only military, but extended to grafting a specifically Rom. civilization on to a region where the Greeks had not flourished. The new settlers were veterans from central and northern Italy. Some 3,000 of them may have been planted as the new élite of Antioch. By Paul’s time the military problem had faded into the background; inscrs. and coins attest a rich amalgam of Greek, Latin and Phrygian traditions, to which the evidence of Acts adds a strong Jewish element, itself thoroughly accepted by the others (Acts 13:43). It is noteworthy that the writer of Acts chooses the synagogue of Antioch as the setting for his fullest account of Paul’s preaching to the Jews (13:14-41). At the same time it represents the first occasion on which Paul is shown preaching to a mass audience of Gentiles (13:44), over and above those God-fearers who had been in the synagogue audience already. The eminence of the Jewish community is shown by their ability to appeal against Paul to the leading men of the city, the husbands no doubt of those women of high society (13:50) who were God-fearers. These people must have included many Lat. speakers. (Among them could have been the young C. Caristanius Fron to, who was to marry into the family of Sergius Paulus [13:7] and become the first citizen of Antioch to enter the Rom. Senate.) Yet, like the Jews, they heard Paul and Barnabas in Gr. Whether or not the action against the apostles took an official form, it is intriguing in the light of later events at Philippi, that Paul did not invoke his Rom. citizenship to insure his protection in this key center. In spite of the persistence of his opponents (14:19), Paul twice returned to Antioch to support his converts (14:21; 16:6).

Bibliography B. Levick, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor (1967).