3 stories from this place.
In late May 526, during the crowds of Ascension week, an earthquake levelled Antioch — then among the greatest cities of the Roman East — and the fire that followed burned most of what stood. The chroniclers' toll of 250,000 is likely inflated but marks a catastrophe of extraordinary scale. The patriarch died; his successor was chosen from the rubble.
Read the story →Ammianus Marcellinus was a Greek-speaking Roman army officer who wrote, in his retirement at Rome in the 380s and early 390s AD, a thirty-one-book Latin history covering the years 96 to 378 AD. The eighteen surviving books are the principal narrative source for 4th-century Roman politics, religion, and military affairs.
Read the story →An earthquake struck Rhodes in approximately 226 BC, knocking down the Colossus, damaging substantial portions of the city walls, and producing widespread Aegean damage. The Hellenistic kings of Egypt, Macedon, Syria, and Pergamon all sent substantial financial and material aid — the first known case of coordinated international disaster diplomacy.
Read the story →