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The Tyche of Antioch
About
A seated bronze goddess crowned with the city's own walls, one foot resting on the shoulder of a swimming youth who personifies the river Orontes, wheat sheaves in her lap. Sculpted around 296 BCE by Eutychides of Sicyon for Seleucus I, she became the most copied civic image in the Greek and Roman world — dozens of later replicas survive as far away as the Vatican and the Louvre. The earthquake of December 115 CE that flattened much of Antioch left her untouched, and she still stood as the city's icon on the day Trajan died.
What happened here
It was put up to be argued with. Public monuments carry an inscription at eye height naming who paid, what for, and by whose authority, because being read is the whole return on the investment. People meet at them, give directions by them, and shelter under them. Children climb them. The bronze fittings are stolen often enough that they are re-attached with lead. On anniversaries the base is garlanded and the local council makes a short speech nobody listens to. Monuments also date the town for you: a run of them along one street shows which families were rising in which decade, and which ones stopped. When a family falls out of favour, the name is chiselled out and the stone is quietly reused.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →