Herod's Amphitheatres
When we first visited the Middle East in 1958 we were pretty ignorant. Despite reading a number of books about Middle Eastern archaeology, we lacked that instinctive feel that tells you when something is ancient. Just outside Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana) we encountered a field of ruins - battered, crumbling walls that looked most dramatic. Although Kodachrome film was expensive, my father enthusiastically took five or six photographs of these ruins - only to discover some months later that they were the remains of British army barracks dating to the Second World War!
It was much the same story when we reached Tiberias on the shores of the lake of Galilee. There were dramatic old walls of black basalt standing out of the water, and black basalt buildings leaning picturesquely over the lake. The fact that they had the ends of Roman columns built into the masonry should have warned us, but my father snapped away with happy abandon, convinced that he was photographing buildings from the time of Christ.
Mind you, there was more excuse in the case of Tiberias, for there were no other remains to be seen and the place was as run-down a little backwater as you could wish to find. Although we didn't know it at the time, most of the buildings in the older part of town had been deliberately demolished in 1949 by the Israelis in a cynical move to stop the town's Arab residents returning, and these were the ruins we found so interesting. It is only in recent years that Tiberias has started to unearth ancient remains and put them on display.
Those remains only go back to the first century AD, for Tiberias was founded by Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, the bogeyman of the Christmas story. Rome was not willing to let Herod the Great's substantial holding in Palestine fall into possibly less friendly hands, so the territory was parcelled out between three of his sons: Archelaus got Judea with Jerusalem as capital, Antipas got Galilee with no obvious capital, and Philip got Ituraea, likewise with no obvious capital. Neither Antipas nor Philip were unduly put out by this lack, for both found life more congenial away from the stultifying atmosphere of Judaism.
When it came down to it, Archelaus had the worst of the deal, for he only lasted ten years before a chorus of complaints from his Jewish subjects (many of which were justified, for he proved to be highly incompetant as a ruler) led to his being dethroned and replaced by a Roman procurator. Antipas and Philip, however, ruled wisely and well; their first actions were to choose a place for a capital and both appear to have gone out of their way to ensure that they would not be bothered overmuch by their Jewish subjects.
Philip betook himself to a centre of pagan worship, a settlement dedicated to the god Pan and known by the god's name - Paneus. Renamed as Caesarea Philipii, Paneus was transformed into a thriving town with a huge palace cum administrative building next to the refreshing waters of the spring which is the main source of the Jordan River. Temples to the gods and an Asklepion ensured that no pious Jew would go near the place without a shudder.
Antipas, however, had no such pagan centre to which he could move, but he did have hot springs which provided all the Roman baths you could wish (as well as alleged medicinal benefits). Even better, when workmen started to dig the foundations for his palace, they encountered an ancient burial ground and the presence of human bones beneath the floors of the palace ensured that no pious Jew would go near the place without a shudder. (Jesus appears to have visited all the towns around the shores of Lake Galilee - with the exception of Tiberias!)
Neither man was anti-religion; both were observant Jews, but they appear not to have liked the Taliban-like fanaticism of the Jerusalem Jews. With the fanatics voluntarily keeping their distance, the two rulers could relax and indulge themselves in various modern amenities and luxuries which contribute so much to civilised life but which invariably draw down fierce denunciations from the long-bearded mullahs and rabbis of this world.
Among those amenities, it now appears, was a Roman amphitheatre. Back in 1990 archaeologists Professor Izhar Hirshfeld and Yossi Stefanski, in charge of excavations in the Tiberias area, discovered the circle of masonry buried some 45' below the modern ground level about 600 feet from the present shoreline, on the lower slopes of Mt Bereniki. They initially dated it to the second or third centuries AD, but as the work of excavation progressed they were able to move them back almost to the time when Tiberias was founded. In other words, Antipas himself was almost certainly among the patrons who sat in the royal box at the theatre.
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| The newly discovered building which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an amphitheatre. On the left you can clearly see the stage of a Greek-style theatre. |
Nineteen years after the first discovery, the amphitheatre has finally been fully revealed. Dr Valid Atrash, the present director of excavations, declares that "the theatre was enormous, and being so it attracted a lot of attention. It seated over 7000 people, and appears to have been a prominent landmark for the entire area."
So much for the press releases. The claims by the archaeologists are no less ridiculous. Back in 1990 Professor Hirshfeld solemnly declared, "The most interesting thing about the amphitheatre, is its Jewish context. Unlike Tzipori, which was a multi-cultural city, Tiberias was a Jewish city under Roman rule. The findings demonstrate the city’s pluralistic nature and cultural openness, a fact uncommon in those days."
As already noted above, Tiberias was anything but a "Jewish" city. Apart from the common people, who were more concerned with filling their bellies than worrying about ritual purity and who flocked into the place to provide goods and services to the royal court, Tiberias was thoroughly boycotted by the Jews. It was only as time went on that the more religious grudgingly accepted it - full acceptance only came in AD 145 when Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai performed some sort of a ceremony which, while not getting rid of the dead men's bones that underlay the site, at least rendered them kosher.
The Ha'aretz article which announced the discovery informed the world that "remnants of a Roman amphitheatre peak through the sand", which, if true, would indeed be remarkable. The word they want is "peek" (the mistake is reproduced in just about every report on the find, showing how little the editors of today know about English and reducing our confidence that they know much about anything) and if the photographs of the structure are to be believed, the building is not an amphitheatre, only a theatre.
The Greek word "amphi" means "around", so an amphitheatre is a complete circle surrounding a central area where gladiatorial fights and wild animal hunts were staged. The Colosseum is probably the best-known amphitheatre, though there were plenty of others in the Roman world. A theatre, however, is only a half-circle with the seats facing a stage. Instead of bloody combat, a theatre was used for staging plays and musical concerts. Instead of showing the Herod Antipas was a savage who catered to bread and brutal circuses to entertain the masses, the new discovery reveals a man who liked his culture and who appreciated a bit of Aeschylus and Euripides while he enjoyed the cool breeze of the lake.
Similarly ill-informed is the statement by Zohar Oved, the mayor of Tiberias, who managed to get into the press with the enthusiastic claim that the discovery of the "amphitheatre" is "undoubtely one of the most important findings in the history of the Jewish people". I presume that Mr Oved hasn't heard of Masada and is oblivious to the important new discoveries in the City of David. David? Who was he?
© Kendall K. Down 2010
