Nicomedia

(İzmit)

A city of Bithynia (northwestern Asia Minor) at the head of the Gulf of Astacus (the name of an Athenian colony meaning `crayfish,’ that lay further south), now the Gulf of İzmit. Another Greek colony named Olbia had earlier been established (by the Megarians) on the hilly site later occupied by Nicomedia—rather than at Astacus, as has been sometimes supposed.

In 265/4, however, according to Memnon and Strabo, King Nicomedes I of Bithynia (not, probably, his father Zipoetes, as Pausanias believed) refounded Olbia under the name of Nicomedia, making it his capital in place of Zipoetium—which has not been located—and demolishing Astacus to supply the new settlement with its population. Nicomedia soon became an active port, prospering from its extensive and fertile territory and its situation on the principal route between Europe and the east. After the Bithynian kingdom had been bequeathed to the Romans (74), Nicomedia was the capital of their province of Bithynia-Pontus; and in 29 it became the headquarters of the provincial assembly and its imperial cult, when Octavian (Augustus) permitted the Greek population to dedicate a temple to Rome and to himself.

Nicomedia became an important naval headquarters, and Dio Chrysostom, in the later first and early second century AD, depicts a resplendent and flourishing city, although its community was by no means free of social discontents. Pliny the Elder (110–12) frequently consulted Trajan about problems affecting the maintenance of its buildings; and he also wanted to build a canal from the Propontis (Sea of Marmara) to the Euxine (Black) Sea via Nicomedia, but the project never materialized. A Roman imperial monetary issue celebrates Hadrian (117–38) as `Restorer of Nicomedia,’ the only city to be singled out in this series of `restoration’ coinages, which otherwise only name provinces and regions. A Nicomedian festival was known as the Severeia, after Septimius Severus (193–211). His son Caracalla spent the winter of 214/15 at the city, organizing his army for war against Parthia and entertaining himself and the inhabitants with Games and other shows. Elagabalus, too, spent the first winter after his proclamation (218/19) at Nicomedia, where his bizarre religious rituals caused widespread alarm. In 256/8 the city was captured and sacked by the Goths, but its inhabitants were able to get much of its wealth away.

When Diocletian (284–305) established the tetrarchic system of four rulers presiding over separate capitals and courts, he himself, the senior emperor, chose Nicomedia as his residence—because of its convenient location between the Danube and Euphrates frontiers. It is described as a colony in an inscription of 294/5 and it was then that the city's great period of magnificence began; it also became one of the major mints of the empire. It was at Nicomedia, too, that Diocletian formally abdicated in 305, in the presence of his soldiers. After the persecution of the Christians, initiated during his reign, had been reversed (311), Maximinus II Daia cancelled the reversal, in compliance with an appeal from the pagan community at Nicomedia. After his defeat by Licinius in 313, however, he professedly reconfirmed religious toleration by an edict from the same city, shortly before his death later in the same year. One of the most remarkable issues of its mint honored Licinius' puppet colleague Martinian in 324, just before both were suppressed by Constantine I the Great.

It was at Nicomedia that Constantine died in 337, but the eclipse of its pre-eminence had already been heralded by his foundation of Constantinople (324–30), destined to replace it as capital. Moreover, Nicomedia had often been afflicted by seismic disturbances, and an earthquake in 358 inflicted particularly serious damage; Ammianus Marcellinus, in the course of a vivid account, describes how the destruction was completed by a fire that raged for five days and five nights. Julian the Apostate, when he visited Nicomedia four years later, was distressed by the heap of ashes which was all that remained of the city. But he took steps to initiate its reconstruction; and it subsequently enjoyed something of a revival under Theodosius II (408–50).

Its local coinage, from Claudius (41–54) to Gallienus (253–68), emulated the issues of its rival Nicaea (İznik) in its insistence on honorific civic titles. Among the more unusual designs is a figure of Argus, the builder of the Argonauts' vessel the Argo. Representations of other ships also appear. The architectural remains of the city are disappointing. A shrine of Demeter stood within a large rectangular precinct on a hill linked to the harbor by a colonnaded street (of which a few fragments were once visible). A temple of Isis, an agora and a theater are also recorded, and there is numismatic evidence for the worship of Hera Lanoia (Juno of Lanuvium). The city's water supply, to which Pliny the Younger gave attention, is represented by the remains of three aqueducts, imposing drains (which were still in use until half a century ago), a large fountain building (nymphaeum), and a large domed cistern. This structure is of late imperial date, and so are stretches of brick and stone walls. But otherwise what must have been Diocletian's resplendent capital—including palace, mint, arms factories and new shipyards—has so far yielded scarcely a trace.