During the reign of the same most divine Trajan
Antioch the Great, situated near Daphne, suffered for the third time in the month of Apellaeus and December 13,
the first day, after cockcrow ,in the Antiochene year 164, and two years after the arrival of Trajan in eastern parts. The Antiochenes who remained behind and survived
erected an altar in Daphne, on which they wrote, “The survivors erected this to their saviour Zeus."
On the same night as Antioch the Great suffered, the island city of
Rhodes,
being a city of the
Hexapolis, suffered under the wrath of God for the second time.
But the most pious Trajan, having founded it once already, erected the Median Gatenear the temple of Ares, where the Parmenius flows in winter, close to what is now
called Macellus; and above it he inscribed an effigy of the She-Wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, so that posterity might know that this was a Roman foundation.
He sacrificed there a beautiful Antiochene virgin called Calliope as an expiatory and cleansing sacrifice for the city, in whose honour he built the Nymphagoria.
And then he re-erected the two great architraves, and built many other things in Antioch, including a public bath, and an aqueduct, drawing the water from the springs of
Daphne to the so-called Agriae, giving his own name to the baths and aqueduct. And the Theatre of Antioch, which was not yet finished, he completed, and placed in it,
above, four columns; and in the middle of the Proscenium of the Nymphaeum he put a bronze statue of the virgin he had slaughtered, and on the upper side a bronze of the
Orontes river was placed, being crowned by the kings Seleucus and Antiochus.
The Emperor Trajan himself
was in the city when the earthquake happened.
St Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was martyred then during Trajan’s visit, for he incurred the emperor’s anger through abusing him.
