APAMEA  , the name of several towns in western

Asia . 1 . A treasure city and stud-depot of the Seleucid kings in the valley of the Orontes . It was so named by Seleucus Nicator, after Apama, his wife . Destroyed by Chosroes in the 7th century A.D., it was partially rebuilt and known as Famia by the Arabs; and overthrown by an earthquake in 1152 . It kept its importance down to the time of the Crusades . The acropolis hill is now occupied by the ruins of Kalat el-Mudik . See R . F . Burton and T . Drake, Unexplored Syria; E . Sachau, Reise in Syrien, 1883 .

2 . A city in

Phrygia, founded by Antiochus Soter (from whose mother, Apama, it received its name), near, but on lower ground than, Celaenae . It was situated where the Marsyas leaves the hills to join the Maeander, and it became a seat of Seleucid power, and a centre of Graeco-Roman and Graeco-Hebrew civilization and commerce . There Antiochus the Great collected the army with which he met the Romans at Magnesia, and there two years later the treaty between Rome and the Seleucid realm was signed . After Antiochus' departure for the East, Apamea lapsed to the Pergamenian kingdom and thence to Rome in 133, but it was resold to Mithradates V., who held it till 120 . After the Mithradatic wars it became and remained a great centre for trade, largely carried on by resident Italians and by Jews . In 84 Sulla made it the seat of a conventus of the Asian province, and it long claimed primacy among Phrygian cities . Its decline dates from the local disorganization of the empire in the 3rd century A.D.; and though a bishopric, it was not an important military or commercial centre in Byzantine times . The Turks took it first in 1070, and from the 13th century onwards it was always in Moslem hands . For a long period it was one of the greatest cities of Asia Minor, commanding the Maeander road; but when the trade routes were diverted to Constantinople it rapidly declined, and its ruin was completed by an earthquake . A Jewish tradition, possibly arising from a name Cibotus (ark), which the town bore, identified a neighbouring mountain with Ararat . The famous " Noah " coins of the emperor Philip commemorate this belief .

The site is now partly occupied by

Dineir (q.v., sometimes locally known also as Geiklar, " the gazelles," perhaps from a tradition of the Persian hunting-park, seen by Xenophon at Celaenae), which is connected with Smyrna by railway; there are considerable remains, including a great number of important Graeco-Roman inscriptions . See W . M . Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. ii.; G . Weber, Dineir-Celenes (1892); D . G . Hogarth in Journ . Hell . Studies (1888); 0 . Hirschfeld in Trans . Berlin Academy (1875) . (D .

G . H.)

APATITE 159 3 . A town on the left bank of the Euphrates, at the end of a bridge of boats (zeugma); the Til-Barsip of the Assyrian inscriptions, now Birejik (q.v.) . 4 . The earlier Myrlea of Bithynia, now Mudania (q.v.), the port of Brusa . The name was given it by Prusias I., who rebuilt it . 5 . A city mentioned by Stephanus and Pliny as situated near the Tigris, the identification of which is still uncertain . 6 . A Greek city in Parthia, near Rhagae .