In one of the towers belonging to the palace, Diocletian is supposed to have been buried; and we are told that, about two hundred and seventy-five years ago, the body of the emperor was discovered there in a sarcophagus of porphyry.
The shafts of the columns of the temple of Jupiter are of oriental alabaster of one stone. The capitals and bases of the columns, and on the entablature, are of Parian marble. The shafts of the columns of the second order, which is composite, are alternately of verd-antique, or ancient green marble and porphyry, of one piece. The capitals and entablature are also of Parian marble.
All the capitals throughout the palace are raffled more in the Grecian than the Roman style; so that Mr. Adam[243] thinks it probable, that Diocletian, who had been so often in Greece, brought his artificers thither, in order to vary the execution of his orders of architecture in this palace, from those he had executed at his baths at Rome, which are extremely different both in formation and execution[244].
NO. XXXIII.—STRATONICE.
This was a town in Caria, where a Macedonian colony took up their abode; and which several Syrian monarchs afterwards adorned and beautified. It was named after the wife of Antiochus Soter, of whom history gives the following account. “Antiochus was seized with a lingering distemper, of which the physicians were incapable of discovering the cause; for which reason his condition was thought entirely desperate. Erasistratus, the most attentive and skilful of all the physicians, having carefully considered every symptom with which the indisposition of the young prince was attended, believed at last that he had discovered its true cause, and that it proceeded from a passion he had entertained for some lady; in which conjecture he was not deceived. It, however, was more difficult to discover the object of a passion, the more violent from the secrecy in which it remained. The physician, therefore, to assure himself fully of what he surmised, passed whole days in the apartment of his patient, and when he saw any lady enter, he carefully observed the countenance of the prince, and never discovered the least emotion in him, except when Stratonice came into the chamber, either alone, or with her consort; at which times the young prince was, as Plutarch observes, always affected with the symptoms described by Sappho, as so many indications of a violent passion. Such, for instance, as a suppression of voice; burning blushes; suffusion of sight; cold sweat; a sensible inequality and disorder of pulse; with a variety of the like symptoms. When the physician was afterwards alone with his patient, he managed his inquiries with so much dexterity, as at last drew the secret from him. Antiochus confessed his passion for queen Stratonice his mother-in-law, and declared that he had in vain employed all his efforts to vanquish it: he added, that he had a thousand times had recourse to every consideration that could be represented to his thoughts, in such a conjuncture; particularly the respect due from him to a father and a sovereign, by whom he was tenderly beloved; the shameful circumstance of indulging a passion altogether unjustifiable, and contrary to all the rules of decency and honour; the folly of harbouring a design he ought never to be desirous of gratifying; but that his reason, in its present state of distraction, entirely engrossed by one object, would hearken to nothing. And he concluded with declaring, that, to punish himself, for desires involuntary in one sense, but criminal in every other, he had resolved to languish to death, by discontinuing all care of his health, and abstaining from every kind of food. The physician gained a very considerable point, by penetrating into the source of his patient’s disorder; but the application of the proper remedy was much more difficult to be accomplished; and how could a proposal of this nature be made to a parent and king! When Seleucus made the next inquiry after his son’s health, Erasistratus replied, that his distemper was incurable, because it arose from a secret passion which could never be gratified, as the lady he loved was not to be obtained. The father, surprised and afflicted at this answer, desired to know why the lady was not to be obtained? ‘Because she is my wife!’ replied the physician, ‘and I am not disposed to yield her up to the embraces of another.’ ‘And will you not part with her then,’ replied the king, ‘to preserve the life of a son I so tenderly love! Is this the friendship you profess for me?’ ‘Let me entreat you, my lord,’ said Erasistratus, ‘to imagine yourself for one moment in my place, would you resign your Stratonice to his arms? If you, therefore, who are a father, would not consent to such a sacrifice for the welfare of a son so dear to you, how can you expect another should do it?’ ‘I would resign Stratonice, and my empire to him, with all my soul,’ interrupted the king. ‘Your majesty then,’ replied the physician, ‘has the remedy in your own hands; for he loves Stratonice.’ The father did not hesitate a moment after this declaration, and easily obtained the consent of his consort: after which, his son and that princess were crowned king and queen of upper Asia. Julian the Apostate, however, relates in a fragment of his writings still extant, that Antiochus could not espouse Stratonice, till after the death of his father.
“Whatever traces of reserve, moderation, and even modesty, appear in the conduct of this young prince,” says Rollin at the conclusion of this history, “his example shows us the misfortune of giving the least entrance into the heart of an unlawful passion, capable of discomposing all the happiness and tranquillity of life.”
Stratonice was a free city under the Romans. Hadrian erected several structures in it, and thence took the opportunity of calling it Hadrianopolis.
It is now a poor village, and called Eskihissar. It was remarkable for a magnificent temple, dedicated to Jupiter, of which no foundations are now to be traced, but in one part of the village there is a grand gate of a plain architecture. There was a double row of large pillars from it, which probably formed the avenue to the temple; and on each side of the gate there was a semicircular alcove niche, and a colonnade from it, which, with a wall on each side of the gate, might make a portico, that was of the Corinthian order. Fifty paces further there are remains of another colonnade. To the south of this are ruins of a building of large hewn stone, supposed to have belonged to the temple of Serapis. There is also a large theatre, the front of which is ruined; there are in all about forty seats, with a gallery in the middle, and another at the top.