Herod's Hippodrome, Caesarea

About

Stretched about 315 meters long with seating for 12,000, its stone starting gates built on the same design as the Circus Maximus in Rome. Herod opened it for the city's grand inauguration with the Actian Games, a festival he founded in Augustus's honor and held every four years with chariot racing, athletics, and combat sport on one program. In 117 CE it was still running in its original Herodian form — its later conversion into a dedicated gladiator arena was still years away.

What happened here

Two hundred thousand people can watch, and on race days most of them do. Four stables — Red, White, Blue, Green — supply the teams, and supporters wear the colour, bet on it, and brawl about it. Seven laps, twelve chariots, the tightest turns at either end of the central barrier where the crashes happen. Between races there are acrobats, and the barrier itself carries obelisks, statues and the lap-counting eggs and dolphins that are tipped one by one. Seating is mixed, unlike the theatre, which makes the circus the best place in the city to meet someone. Drivers start as slaves and the successful ones die rich and famous. The track is watered and raked constantly; the smell is horse, dust and food.

Sources

• https://www.worldhistory.org/image/18991/hippodrome-of-caesarea-maritima/
• https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-archaeology/article/abs/the-carceres-of-the-herodian-hippodromestadium-at-caesarea-maritima-and-connections-with-the-circus-maximus/B202649D2D3C539A415635987C4FEE4D

Nearby

The Herodian Theatre of Caesarea

225 m

Herod's Promontory Palace

553 m

Sebastos Harbor

754 m

Temple of Roma and Augustus, Caesarea

775 m

The High-Level Aqueduct of Caesarea

2.9 km

Fortress of Legio VI Ferrata (Legio/Caparcotna)

27 km