ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA. - A city of Asia Minor, founded by Seleucus I (312-280 B.C.) with colonists from Magnesia, on a site famous for the sanctuary of the Phrygian god Men. It stood at 1,200 meters above sea level, on a height on the southern slope of the mountains of Phrygia Paroreios, on the border of Pisidia (Strabo, XII, 8, 14). Declared a free city by the Romans, it was assigned to Pisidia (Pliny, Hist. Nat., V, 24). By Augustus, perhaps as early as 30-27 B.C., it was made an imperial colony (Colonia Caesarea A.); it was later the capital of Pisidia.
W. Ramsay discovered there, besides an early Christian basilica with a mosaic floor, in 1912 an inscription in honor of P. S. Quirinus (v.), and in 1914 the Latin text carved on stone (10 slabs) of the Res gestae divi Augusti (completed by the excavations of the University of Michigan in 1924), conforming to the text of the monument of Ancyra in Galatia and of Apollonia in Pisidia. Near the ruins of A. (arches of a Roman aqueduct that brought the waters of the Sultan Dagh to the city) now stands the Turkish village of Yalovač, in the district of Konia or Iconium (v.), about 120 km. east of it.
A. prospered on the great trade route that led from Ephesus, across Asia Minor, to the East, and had attracted many Jews, to whom the Seleucids had already granted civil rights (Flavius Josephus, Ant. Iud., XII, 3, 4). In their synagogue, between 45 and 47, St. Paul proclaimed, in a long discourse, Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, obtaining many conversions (Acts 13, 14-52). Paul and Barnabas (first apostolic journey) came from Perge, about 168 km. from A.
Prevented by Jewish hostility from preaching on the following Sabbath, Paul continued, "turning to the Gentiles," his apostolate in A. (for a year, according to J. Holzner), amid many dangers and harassments, until the intrigues of the Jews drove him out together with his companion. They departed for Iconium "shaking the dust from their feet against them." But they passed through A. again on their return, reviving and organizing the community hierarchically (Acts 14, 20-23). At the end of his life, Paul (II Tim. 3, 11) recalls the persecutions suffered there; in all likelihood, among these are to be included some of the 5 scourgings and 3 beatings mentioned in II Cor. 6, 5; 11, 23-25.
A see founded by the Apostle, A. had bishops known from the 3rd century. Among the earliest, M. Le Quien mentions Eudoxius, Optatus, Anthimus. At the Council of Nicaea (325) Antony of A. appears among the bishops of the province of Isauria, while at the head of the 14 bishops of Pisidia is the one of Iconium, Eulalius. Already before 381, however, A. was the seat of the metropolitan of Pisidia: at the Council of Constantinople (381), Optimius signs at the head of the 15 representatives of the dioceses of Pisidia (Mansi, II, p. 695; III, p. 570). In the following councils, down to the 7th century, various names of metropolitans of A. of Pisidia appear. The city was then overwhelmed by the Islamic invasion. Taken in 1097 by the crusaders of Bohemond of Taranto, the see was restored there by the Latins; since the Middle Ages it has been a titular archiepiscopal see. The Greek "Orthodox" metropolitan of Pisidia now resides at Isbarta.