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Caesarea, also Caesarea Maritima, Caesarea Palaestinae or Caesarea Stratonis, was an ancient and medieval port city on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, and later a small fishing village. It was the capital of Roman Judaea, Syria Palaestina and Palaestina Prima, successively, for a period of c. 650 years and a major intellectual hub of the Mediterranean. Today, the site is part of the Caesarea National Park, on the western edge of the Sharon plain in Israel.
The site was first settled in the 4th century BCE as a Phoenician colony and trading village known as Straton's Tower after the ruler of Sidon. It was enlarged in the 1st century BCE under Hasmonean rule, becoming a Jewish village; and in 63 BCE, when the Roman Republic annexed the region, it was declared an autonomous city. It was then significantly enlarged in the Roman period by the Judaean client King Herod the Great, who established a harbour and dedicated the town and its port to Caesar Augustus as Caesarea.
During the early Roman period, Caesarea became the seat of the Roman procurators in the region. The city was populated throughout the 1st to 6th centuries CE and became an important early centre of Christianity during the Byzantine period. Its importance may have waned following the Muslim conquest of 640 when the city, then known in Arabic as Qisarya (قيسارية), lost its status as provincial capital. After being re-fortified by Muslim rulers in the 11th century, it was conquered by the Crusaders, who strengthened and made it into an important port, which was finally slighted by the Mamluks in 1265.
Qisarya was a small fishing village in the early modern period. In February 1948, during the 1948 Palestine war and Nakba, some of its population fled following an attack on a bus by the Zionist militant group Lehi, and the remainder were expelled by the Palmach, who subsequently demolished its houses. The ruins of the ancient city beneath the depopulated village were excavated in the 1950s and 1960s for archaeological purposes.
Whilst the name Caesarea was frequently used alone for the subject of this article, various markers were used to differentiate the location from these other locations; these include "Palaestina" ("of Palestine"), "Maritima" ("by the sea"; Greek: Παράλιος Parálios), "Sebaste" and "Stratonis". "Palaestina" is the most common term used in ancient sources, but, since the creation of Israel in 1948, historians in the West have tended to use the term less frequently.
The Latin name Caesarea also referred to several other cities in the region, notably Caesarea near Mount Hermon and Caesarea the capital of Cappadocia.
Stratonos pyrgos (Straton's Tower) was founded in the 4th century BCE by Abdashtart I, or Straton I king of Sidon. It was first established as a Phoenician colony and trading village. In 90 BCE, Jewish ruler Alexander Jannaeus captured Straton's Tower as part of his policy of developing the shipbuilding industry and enlarging the Hasmonean kingdom. Straton's Tower remained a Jewish settlement for two more generations, until the area became dominated by the Romans in 63 BCE, when they declared it an autonomous city.
Caesarea was built in Roman Judea under the Jewish client King Herod the Great during c. 22-10/9 BCE near the ruins of the small naval station of Straton's Tower. The site, along with all of Judea, was awarded by Rome to Herod in 30 BCE. The pagan city underwent vast changes under Herod, who renamed it Caesarea in honour of the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. Caesarea was known as the administrative, economic, and cultural capital of the Judean province from this time.
In 22 BCE, Herod began construction of a deep-sea harbour named Sebastos and built storerooms, markets, wide roads, baths, a temple to the goddess Roma and Emperor Augustus, and imposing public buildings. Herod built his palace on a promontory jutting out into the sea, with a decorative pool surrounded by stoas. Every five years, the city hosted major sports competitions, gladiator games, and theatrical productions in its theatre overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
Herod built the two jetties of the harbour between 22 and 15 BCE, and in 10/9 BCE he dedicated the city and harbour to Emperor Augustus (sebastos is Greek for augustus). The pace of construction was impressive considering the project's size and complexity. At its height, Sebastos was one of the most impressive harbours of its time. It had been constructed on a coast that had no natural harbours and served as an important commercial harbour in antiquity, rivaling Cleopatra's harbour at Alexandria. Josephus writes: "Although the location was generally unfavorable, [Herod] contended with the difficulties so well that the solidity of the construction could not be overcome by the sea, and its beauty seemed finished off without impediment."
When it was built in the 1st century BCE, the harbour of Sebastos ranked as the largest artificial harbour built in the open sea, enclosing around 100,000 m2.
The breakwaters were made of lime and pozzolana, a type of volcanic ash, set into an underwater concrete. Herod imported over 24,000 m3 of pozzolana from the name-giving town of Puteoli, today Pozzuoli in Italy, to construct the two breakwaters: the southern one 500 meter, and the northern one 275 meter long.
A shipment of this size would have required at least 44 shiploads of 400 tons each. Herod also had 12,000 m3 of local kurkar stone quarried to make rubble and 12,000 m3 of slaked lime mixed with the pozzolana.
Architects had to devise a way to lay the wooden forms for the placement of concrete underwater. One technique was to drive stakes into the ground to make a box and then fill it with pozzolana concrete bit by bit. However, this method required many divers to hammer the planks to the stakes underwater and large quantities of pozzolana were necessary.
Another technique was a double planking method used in the northern breakwater. On land, carpenters would construct a box with beams and frames on the inside and a watertight, double-planked wall on the outside. This double wall was built with a 23 cm (9 in) gap between the inner and outer layer.
Although the box had no bottom, it was buoyant enough to float out to sea because of the watertight space between the inner and outer walls. Once it was floated into position, pozzolana was poured into the gap between the walls and the box would sink into place on the seafloor and be staked down in the corners. The flooded inside area was then filled by divers bit by bit with pozzolana-lime mortar and kurkar rubble until it rose above sea level.
On the southern breakwater, barge construction was used. The southern side of Sebastos was much more exposed than the northern side, requiring sturdier breakwaters. Instead of using the double planked method filled with rubble, the architects sank barges filled with layers of pozzolana concrete and lime sand mortar. The barges were similar to boxes without lids, and were constructed using mortise and tenon joints, the same technique used in ancient boats, to ensure they remained watertight. The barges were ballasted with 0.5 meters of pozzolana concrete and floated out to their position. With alternating layers, pozzolana-based and lime-based concretes were hand-placed inside the barge to sink it and fill it up to the surface.
However, there were underlying problems that led to its demise. Studies of the concrete cores of the moles have shown that the concrete was much weaker than similar pozzolana hydraulic concrete used in ancient Italian ports. For unknown reasons, the pozzolana mortar did not adhere as well to the kurkar rubble as it did to other rubble types used in Italian harbours. Small but numerous holes in some of the cores also indicate that the lime was of poor quality and stripped out of the mixture by strong waves before it could set.
Also, large lumps of lime were found in all five of the cores studied at Caesarea, which shows that the mixture was not mixed thoroughly. However, stability would not have been seriously affected if the harbour had not been constructed over a geological fault line that runs along the coast. Seismic action gradually took its toll on the breakwaters, causing them to tilt down and settle into the seabed. Studies of seabed deposits at Caesarea have shown that a tsunami struck the area sometime during the 1st or 2nd century.
Although it is unknown if this tsunami simply damaged or completely destroyed the harbour, it is known that by the 6th century the harbour was unusable and today the jetties lie more than 5 meters underwater.
When Judea became a Roman province in 6 CE, Caesarea replaced Jerusalem as its civilian and military capital and became the official residence of its governors, such as procurator Antonius Felix and prefect Pontius Pilatus. The city was chiefly a commercial centre relying on trade.
Caeserea is described in detail by the 1st-century Roman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Josephus describes the harbour as being as large as the one at Piraeus, the major harbour of Athens. Remains of the principal buildings erected by Herod the Great as well as the medieval town are still visible today, including the Crusader city, the city walls, the ruined citadel surrounded by the sea, and remains of the cathedral and a second church. Herod's Caesarea grew rapidly, in time becoming the largest city in Judaea with an estimated population of 125,000 over an urban area of 3.7 square kilometres (1.4 sq mi). According to Josephus, Caesarea was the scene in 26 CE of a major act of civil disobedience to protest against Pilate's order to plant eagle standards on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem.
Emperor Vespasian raised its status to that of a Colonia, with the name Colonia Prima Flavia Augusta Caesarea. According to Josephus, the outbreak of the Jewish revolt of 66 CE was provoked by Greeks of a certain merchant house in Caesarea sacrificing birds in front of a local synagogue. In 70 CE, after the Jewish revolt was suppressed, games were held there to celebrate the victory of Titus. Many Jewish captives were brought to Caesarea; Kasher claims that 2,500 captives were "slaughtered in gladiatorial games".
A Samaritan tradition preserved in the Tolidah called Caesarea Deron and attributed its original foundation to Seth. It further related that Vespasian rebuilt the city and constructed waterworks that dammed streams and brought water into it.
In the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt Caesarea was changed to Syria Palaestina in 135. Caesarea was one of four Roman colonies for veteran Roman soldiers in the Syria-Phoenicia region. Caesarea is mentioned in the 3rd-century Mosaic of Rehob, with respect to its non-Jewish population.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Caesarea was first introduced to Christianity by Philip the Deacon, who later had a house there in which he gave hospitality to Paul the Apostle. It was there that Peter the Apostle baptized Cornelius the Centurion and his household, the first time Christian baptism was conferred on Gentiles. When newly converted Paul was in danger in Jerusalem, the Christians there accompanied him to Caesarea and sent him off to his native Tarsus. He visited Caesarea between his second and third missionary journeys. Paul was a prisoner in Caesarea for two years before being sent to Rome.
In the 3rd century, Origen wrote his Hexapla and other exegetical and theological works while living in Caesarea. The Nicene Creed may have originated in Caesarea. The Apostolic Constitutions says that the first Bishop of Caesarea was Zacchaeus the Publican, followed by Cornelius (possibly Cornelius the Centurion) and Theophilus (possibly the recipient of the Gospel of Luke). The first bishops considered historically attested are those mentioned by the early church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, who was the bishop of the see in the 4th century. He speaks of Theophilus who was bishop in the 10th year of Commodus (c. 189), of Theoctistus (216–258), Domnus, and Theotecnus, and Agapius. Among the participants in the Synod of Ancyra in 314 was the bishop of Caesarea named Agricolaus, who may have been the immediate predecessor of Eusebius, who does not mention him, or who may have been bishop of a different Caesarea. The immediate successors of Eusebius were Acacius (340–366) and Gelasius (367–372, 380–395). The latter was ousted by the semi-Arian Euzoius between 373 and 379. French historian Michel Le Quien gives much information about all of these and about later bishops of Caesarea. The Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem has a metropolitan see in Caesarea. The Latin archbishopric of Caesarea in Palestina was made a Roman Catholic titular see in 1432. The Melkite Catholic Church considers Caesarea a titular see.
Through Origen and especially the scholarly presbyter Pamphilus of Caesarea, the theological school of Caesarea gained a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came to study there. The Caesarean text-type is recognized by scholars as one of the earliest New Testament types. The collections of the library suffered during the persecutions under Emperor Diocletian but were repaired subsequently by bishops of Caesarea. The library is mentioned as late as 6th-century manuscripts, but it may not have survived the capture of Caesarea by the Muslim armies in 640.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Caesarea Maritima”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.