More on the Hippodrome-Stadium of Caesarea Maritima: a response to the comments of Y. Porath

The Herodian multi-purpose entertainment structure under discussion is the earliest and largest of its kind to have been entirely excavated, and it will have far-reaching implications for our knowledge of the development of stadia and hippodromes at the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. The study and interpretation of its remains therefore deserve care and attention before definitive interpretations are presented and become ‘set in stone'. Unfortunately, Y. Porath's preceding remarks suggest that he will not change his ideas on the identification of the building. However, the chronology which I presented inJRA14, different from the one he offered in his preliminary report inThe Roman and Byzantine Near East(JRA Suppl. 14,1995) 15-27, is not a focus of his objections, and that is encouraging.

To name the structure a circus, as Porath is doing, reflects a misconception. A U-shaped entertainment structure of moderate size like this one is a stadium, not a circus. But we are dealing with a special kind of stadium, wider and provided with permanent carceres for chariot races, thereby adapted to serve as a hippodrome. Stadia, Greek in origin, underwent a profound evolution in structure and function during the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods. Conceiving stadia in their Classical Greek forms leads Porath to deny the affiliation of the Herodian structure to Hellenistic/Early Roman stadia. On the other hand, the Circus Maximus, the archetype of Roman circuses, attained its definitive form only under Trajan.