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CAESAREA and the HISTORY of the LIBRARY Herod the Great

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CAESAREA and the HISTORY of the LIBRARY Herod the Great CHAPTER ONE CAESAREA AND THE HISTORY OF THE LIBRARY Herod the Great established the city of Caesarea Maritima, named in honor of the emperor Augustus, between 22 and 9 BC on the foundation of Strato's Tower. The new city boasted an extraordi­ nary harbor, a fine palace, a large temple dedicated to Roma and Augustus, and other marks of Graeco-Roman urban culture: a the­ atre, amphitheatre, and aqueduct. Still more ornaments were added later, including a hippodrome and second aqueduct constructed by Hadrian. Caesarea was the official residence of the Roman imper­ ial prefects and legates of Judaea, became a Roman colony under Vespasian, and attained the status of metropolis under Alexander Severus. The population, approaching perhaps 45,000 in the mid­ dle of the first century, consisted of Greeks, Jews, and Samaritans, and a Christian community appears to have been established in apos­ tolic times. By any measure, Caesarea was a prosperous and sophis­ ticated city. I I On Caesarca see L Benzigcr, "Cacsarea (10)," RE IlL I (1897), cols. 1291-1294; R. Janin, "Cesaree de Palestine," DHGE 12 (1953), cols. 206-209; L. L Levine, Caesarea under Roman Rule, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 7 (Leiden, 1975); J. Ringel, Cesaree de Palestine: etude historique et archeologique (Paris, 1975); B. Lifshitz, "Cesarce de Palestine: son histoire et ses institutions," ANRW 11.8 (1977), pp. 490-518; K. Holum, et al., edd., King Herod's Dream' Caesarea on the Sea (New York, 1988); K. Holum and A. Raban, edd., Caesarea Maritima: a Retrospective qjier Two Millennia, DMOA 21 (Leiden, 1996). The American Schools of Oriental Research also publish the Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima Excavation Reports. The estimation of Caesarea's population as "at least fifty thousand" in AD 66 is a conjecture made by K. Holum, et al., King Herod's Dream, p. 75, on the basis of Josephus' claim at B.J. 2.18.1 (457) (and c£ 7.8.7 [361-362]) that more than 20,000 Jews, nearly thc city's entire Jewish population, were killed by pagans at the begin­ ning of the Jewish Revolt. Caesarea is accordingly ranked "among the twenty or so largest cities in the Mediterranean world." It is, however, too dangerous to rely on Josephus' numbers. A more reliable indicator of Caesarea's population is the city's area. According to the table that M. Broshi gives in "The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period," BASOR 236 (1979), p. 5, the area of Caesarea was only 95 ha, a figure drawn from M. Avi-Yonah, "Palaestina," RE Suppl. 13 (1973), cols. 373-374. If urban population density is estimated to be 400 people per hectare (Broshi, p. 5), then Caesarea's population should have been about 38,000. But from the recent site plan published in R. L. Vann, ed., Caesarea 2 CHAPTER ONE Apart from its political and economic importance, however, Caesarea should attract our attention because of the library that made it an intellectual center. It is possible that, when he planned his new city, Herod provided for a public library, and no doubt the Jewish com­ munity had a collection of its own Scriptures and rabbinic writings. 2 But the Christian library at Caesarea would surpass these foundations. I The first evidence of the library at Caesarea derives from a synodal letter that was drawn up somewhere in Palestine during the Paschal Controversy in ca. 190 and from which Eusebius quotes in his HE (V.25). Theophilus, the bishop of Caesarea at the time, attended the synod and participated in the drafting of this letter. Because of his role as bishop and co-author of the letter, Theophilus surely retained a copy of the letter and kept it with other such ecclesiastical docu­ ments. These documents, the records of synodal pronouncements and the bishop's correspondence with other churches, were proba­ bly stored in an archive, which may in addition have contained copies of the Scriptures and other books for liturgical use. 3 Because such ecclesiastical collections may have contained copies of the Scrip- Papers, JRA Supp\. 5 (Ann Arbor, 1992), p. 244, I would estimate that Byzantine Caesarea comprised ca. 110-120 ha. The population of Caesarea would thus have been ca. 44,000-48,000. By comparison, in the same article (p. 5) Broshi estimates the area of Jerusalem to be 120 ha, which would indicate a population of 48,000, although it should be noted that Broshi gives different numbers in "Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem," Biblical Archaeological Review 4 (1978), pp. 13-14: the population of Jerusalem in ca. 66 was approximately 80,000 people in an area of about 450 acres (180 hal. J. Patrich, "Urban Space in Caesarea Maritima, Israel," Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, T. S. Bums and J. W. Eadie, edd. (East Lansing, MI, 2001), p. 80 and note 10, reports the area of Caesarea as 124.5 ha and the population as 35,000. 2 On the Jewish libraries, see briefly C. Wendel, "Bibliothek," RAC II (1954), cols. 236-238; H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: a History !!I Early Glristian Texts (New Haven, 1995), pp. 189-196. 3 It is possible that such an archive included documents issued by the govern­ ment that related to the Church, but the evidence in Eusebius does not lend much support to this idea, since the few official documents quoted in the HE were found second hand in literary works: for example, Justin Martyr provided a rescript of Hadrian (HE IV.9); Melito of Sardis' apology provided a rescript of Antoninus Pius (HE IY.13 and see infia on Melito, pp. 272-275); Dionysius of Alexandria furnished a rescript of Gallicnus (HE VII. 13). But later Eusebius collected official documents, particularly those of Constantine. .
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