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One of the most remarkable builds of the ancient world, the metropolis of Caesarea Maritima was literally built from the ground up. In the latter years of the 1st century BCE, as a port city, it served Rome’s purpose in extending its military and commercial presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. As Rome’s client king and point man in the East, Herod the Great accomplished this feat by constructing a whole city, complete with a temple, palaces, amphitheater, theater, paved streets, waterworks, and, fundamental to the city’s purpose, Herod's harbor.

As a favorite location for the stationing of troops by the Roman emperor Vespasian, and as a base of operations, military action out of Caesarea came when the Great Jewish Revolt of 66 CE was crushed with thousands of Jewish lives lost by Roman soldiers garrisoned at Caesarea. After this, Vespasian elevated the city to the status of a Roman colony. Then, when the Bar-Kochba Revolt (132-135 CE) ended with the destruction of Jerusalem, the provincial governor of Judea was raised to senatorial rank, and it was then that Judea’s name was changed to Syria-Palaestina, and Caesarea became the official capital of the Roman province. Finally, with added aqueducts fed by new water sources, the population of Caesarea, spilling past the original Herodian wall, during the Byzantine period, after the 4th century, is thought to have exceeded 100,000 residents.

Using archaeological reports by Ehud Netzer, Barbara Burrell, Kenneth Holum, Robert Bull, and others, along with Flavius Josephus' eyewitness descriptions, the image you see is part of the collaborative work of Lithodomos and Patrick Scott Smith.