In ad 115 Antioch (Antakya) was destroyed, as today, by a huge earthquake, described dramatically by a historian 100 years later. In ad 178, Smyrna (modern Izmir, west Turkey) suffered the same fate. The next day one of its sons, Aelius Aristides, wrote to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius:

‘Smyrna, the jewel of Asia that beautifies your empire, lies low, wiped out by fire and earthquake. In the name of the gods, reach out your hand to the limit of your capacity. Smyrna, the greatest of today’s Greek cities – thanks to the gods, you emperors past and present and the senate – has now suffered the greatest disaster in living memory. Yet for all that, destiny has preserved for us one lifeline of salvation: you. You saw the city, you know what has been lost. Remember what you said when you came here and gazed upon it, remember your words when you entered, how you felt, what you did…

‘It is now a dust-heap. That harbour is inaccessible, the attractive agora gone, handsome streets disappeared, the gymnasium, man, boy and all, destroyed. Some temples have collapsed, others sunk into the ground. The loveliest of cities to the sight, the byword for beauty on the lips of all mankind, stands now as the ugliest of spectacles, a pile of ruins and corpses. The west winds blow through a wasteland.’ At this, Marcus Aurelius is said to have wept.

In the face of disasters, the ancients were resilient. They had to be. Apart from burying the dead, there was little they could do. That is why Aristides’s priority is not a rescue operation but the restoration of the city. Networks of cities, managed by their elites in close co-operation with the Roman governor and, via him, the emperor, ran the empire. Their investment in magnificent buildings – basilicas, temples, stoas, market-places, law courts, roads – and monuments, statues and inscriptions created a strong sense of identity, of civic pride and of what it meant to rule the world. The city was at the heart of civilisation and power. It was restored. And the cities of Turkey and Syria?