Caesarea

About

Herod the Great's palace on a promontory jutting into his artificial harbor became the praetorium, official residence and headquarters of Rome's governors, once Judaea turned into a province in 6 CE. A limestone block found reused as a stairway step here in 1961 carries the only inscription ever recovered naming Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judaea, who dedicated a Tiberieum on the site. Caesarea's fortifications and barracks housed as many as three thousand auxiliary troops, the backbone of Rome's garrison in the province. The city's harbor, Sebastos, linked that garrison directly to the sea lanes of the eastern Mediterranean. In 117 CE this promontory, not Jerusalem, remained the seat from which Rome governed Judaea.

What happened here

A legionary fortress holds five thousand men and is laid out to the same plan everywhere, so a transferred soldier knows his way around on the first day. Two main streets cross at the headquarters building, where the standards and the pay chest are kept in a sunken strongroom under guard. Around it: the commander's house with a courtyard garden, granaries raised on stone piers, a hospital, workshops, and long barrack blocks divided into rooms for eight men who cook and mess together. Training is daily, and building work is constant — soldiers make their own bricks, tiles and boots. A civilian town grows against the walls, with bars, traders and the unofficial families of men who are not legally allowed to marry.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarea_Maritima
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilate_stone
• https://www.academia.edu/640372/The_Promontory_Palace_at_Caesarea_Maritima_Preliminary_Evidence_for_Herod_s_Praetorium

Nearby

Temple of Roma and Augustus, Caesarea

49 m

Sebastos Harbor

107 m

Herod's Promontory Palace

391 m

Herod's Hippodrome, Caesarea

788 m

The Herodian Theatre of Caesarea

967 m

The High-Level Aqueduct of Caesarea

2.3 km