Justinian I

@robinjojo, thanks for the elucidation!

 

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Antioch was one of the most important cities of antiquity and of great historical interest. Unfortunately, I can't think of any other important city that was as unlucky as this one. Most cities have one significant moment of bad luck (and it is usually the last one, see Carthage), but Antioch suffered everything bad that could ever happen to a city. Conquest, massacre, fire, earthquakes, plague... It is no wonder that Justinian decided to rename the city to Θεουπολις (Theopolis - City of God) to try to change its luck around. Didn't really work as 12 years later the Persians sacked the city and deported almost 300,000 of the population to Mesopotamia. It never fully recovered after that.