1. The city
Faustinopolis is located near the modern-day village of Başmakçi, on the road connecting the Cilician Gates and Tyana, at the place where the valley of the Çakıt Su meets the valley of the Kirk Geçıt Çay.1 It was a colonia (Roman colony), founded in 175/176 AD by emperor Marcus Aurelius on the location of the Cappadocian village of Halala in honour of his wife, Faustina, who died there while returning from Syria.2 In Hierocles’ Synecdemus,3 Faustinopolis is included among the cities of Cappadociae Secundae, apparently incorporated during Diocletian’s administrative reformation.
The acropolis occupied a 60-metre-high plateau with a maximum width of 400 m, at the confluence of the Kirk Geçıt Çay and one of its tributaries. The ruins of the settlement were found on level ground to the north and east of the acropolis. Roman pottery and ruins of buildings (a vaulted construction) were discovered there, whereas limestone blocks, possibly from the pedestal of a temple, were found at the northern foot of the acropolis. The cemetery of the city, or one of its cemeteries, was found on the eastern bank of the tributary of the Kirk Geçıt Çay.
According to literary sources, Marcus Aurelius built a temple in honour of Faustina. The temple was later converted into a temple of Heliogabalus, Syrian Zeus or Helios by Heliogabalus himself.4
1. Itin. Hieros. 578.2; Itin. Anton. 145.3. Several miliarii (milestones), indicating the distance between Faustinopolis and Tyana or the Cilician Gates, have been found. The findings date back to the period 218-238 AD. French, D., Roman Roads and Milestones of Asia Minor I: The Pilgrim’s Road (BAR 105, Oxford 1981), pp. 90-91, no. 60 A-C, pp. 122-123, table 11a-b, maps 2, 6.
2. SHA, Marcus Antoninus 26.4-9.
3. Hierocl., Synecd. 700.3. It was a catalogue of the cities of the eastern part of the Roman Empire per province, according to their geographical location. It was probably based on an official catalogue dating back to the mid-5th cent. AD. See Hornblower, S. – Spawforth, A. (ed.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford 1999), p. 705.
4. SHA, Marcus Antoninus 26.9, Caracal. 11.7, Heliogab. 1.5; Mattingly, H., “The Consecration of Faustina the Elder and the Daughter”, HThR 41 (1948), pp. 147-151; Winter, E., Staatliche Baupolitik und Baufürsorge in den römischen Provinzen der kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien (Asia Minor Studies 20, Bonn 1996), p. 116.