When Herod, king of Judea, built a grandiose city 2000 years ago to please Ceasar, was he thinking he wanted to leave a legacy that would live on for centuries, to later benefit aging rock fans? Doubtful. But he'd probably be delighted to know what we found there on our visit.
The harbor town of Ceasarea (pronounced see-ZAR-ria in English, kay-SAR-ria in Hebrew) was a marvel of engineering and urban planning, constructed on the Mediterranean coast north of modern-day Tel Aviv. Rome awarded Herod the land to build on, and the Judean king wanted to show Caesar that the favor was well placed. He created a harbor by building wooden boxes, floating them out to sea, and filling them with ash to make them sink, becoming the foundation for breakwaters that formed the harbor. He built a palace, and an aquaduct to bring water to the city from a spring 7.5 km to the north. There was a lavish bathhouse complex, an oval-shaped amphitheater for Rome's famous (and ugly) gladiator games, and a regular round theater for performances.
Caesarea's story is a tale of one conquering after another: Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, and others, each one destroying part of what they found here and replacing it with something of their own creation. The variety of different types of stone columns here paints a picture of the string of conquests: one culture uses marble, another granite, another basalt, each stone obtained in a different way, illustrating different political and trade relationships.
Caesarea exemplifies the fact that history repeats itself, especially when it comes to power, politics, and warfare. The same stories that played out here ten and twenty centuries ago are the same as those we read in our daily newspapers today. One group holds a valuable and strategic parcel of land. Another group finds a reason they feel entitled to it, and the battle begins. Eventually, someone topples the group in control. They take over the area and make it their own, only to find themselves years, decades, or centuries later having the same battle with someone else. Two thousand years ago, it was happening here on this Mediterranean shore. Today, we see it in Kashmir, Tibet, Cyprus, and, some would say, right here in Israel.
Thankfully, we can also find other, less destructive and distressing human universals at Caesarea, too. Herod's grand theater, the oldest in Israel, seats about 4,000 people. In biblical times, crowds gathered to see plays performed, or hear musicians play. And so it remains. As we wandered into the theater, we were greeted by the sounds of a sound check, as roadies for the British 70s band Deep Purple stacked amplifiers and tuned their boss's instruments. Ironically, Deep Purple's biggest hit was a song about the destruction of a casino in Montreaux, Switzerland--accidentally set on fire by a fan--where the band was suppose to record an album.
And after the sun went down that night in Ceasarea, thousands of fans got their fill of smoke on the waters of the Mediterranean.
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