Herod's Circus at Caesarea: a response to J. Patrich (JRA 14, 269-83)

Over the last decade, a Herodian facility for chariot racing has been excavated at Caesarea Maritima by two different teams. A team of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) under my direction has been responsible for excavating thecaveaand most of the arena (fig. I), while the Combined Caesarea Expedition under J. Patrich has excavated thecarceresand a small portion of the arena. Patrich recently published (JRA14, 269-83) the archaeological evidence for the carceres, but some of his conclusions about how the facility as a whole operated, especially those relating to the larger area excavated by the IAA, are misleading, and I would like to discuss and correct them.

Patrich calls the stone-built facility for chariot racing a “hippodrome/stadium”, although that is not a commonly accepted term among the types of ancient entertainment buildings. The sources and archaeological evidence make it clear that an entertainment building belonging to a particular building type could house a wider variety of performances than just those chiefly associated with that type. Thus, in addition to chariot races, a circus could legitimately hold athletic contests typical of the stadium in front of the longitudinal sections of thecavea, and it might even hold performances typical of theatre and amphitheatre in its semicircular end opposite the start.