Hailing the first blush of returning day, I sat on the desolate shore and read the inspired history of Cæsarea. Excepting Jerusalem, no city in Palestine is more intimately connected with the early Christian Church. Coming from the interior, the apostles sought the great centres of commerce, where they preached to men of all nations their catholic faith. Having baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip the Evangelist followed the coast, and, preaching Jesus to the inhabitants of all the maritime cities thereon, he came to Cæsarea.[510] Thirty years thereafter, here, with his four daughters, he resided as one of the seven deacons of the infant church, when St. Paul and St. Luke were his guests. It was in his house that Agabus took Paul’s girdle, and, binding his own hands and feet, foretold the arrest and imprisonment of the apostle to the Gentiles.[511] Arrested in the Holy City, here Paul was brought a prisoner by order of Claudius Lysias, and somewhere amid these ruins was the dungeon in which he was confined two years. In obedience to Roman law, hither came Ananias the high-priest, with the orator Tertullus, to accuse him before the governor. Here stood the palace of the sordid Felix and his adulterous Drusilla, where he “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come;” and where he made that marvelous defense before Agrippa and Festus, provoking the taunt from the latter, “Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning hath made thee mad;” and extorting the concession from the former, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” And from this harbor, now the wreck of earlier grandeur, that apostle entered the ship Adramyttium, under Julius, a centurion of Augustus’s band, to prosecute his appeal before Cæsar, and at last to die a martyr at Ire Fontana, beneath the walls of Rome.[512] Here was the home of the devout Cornelius, to whom Peter came from Joppa on the coast, 33 miles to the south, with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to open its gates to the Gentiles and baptize the first heathen convert. Here, in the year 270 A.D., Eusebius Pamphili was born, and subsequently this was the birthplace of Procopius the historian.
Sending the baggage to Athlît, our party separated to explore the different parts of the city, agreeing to rendezvous at night at the above-named place. Riding down the coast with a single companion, we first examined Herod’s amphitheatre. Located a little south of the acropolis wall, it occupies a commanding position. Judging from the shape of the ground, it was originally semicircular in form. Much of the masonry has survived the waste of time, and among the broken granite columns is one nine feet in circumference. The arena has an eastern and western diameter of 69 feet, and a northern and southern diameter of 78 feet. The seats are of stone, arranged in tiers, and recede as they ascend, giving a slope from the bottom of the arena to the outside of the uppermost seat of 90 feet. The width of the eastern wall, from the highest tier of seats to its outer edge, is 75 feet, forming a grand promenade. It was not possible to determine whether this is an embankment of earth faced with masonry or a solid wall. It is penetrated with arched passage-ways, like those in the amphitheatres of Capua and Pompeii, which lead to the dens and stalls of the animals designed for the entertainment of the spectators. On the south side is one of the principal vomitories leading to the arena; it is 11 feet wide, 48 long, and is the only one now open. High up in the southeast part of the building is a solitary seat, just as it was left by the last spectator by whom it was occupied. The shape of the mounds on the south indicates that the southern wall of the theatre served as part of the city wall, as on its extreme western end are the remains of an old watch-tower containing a circular chamber, and not far to the north are the ruins of another, occupying a narrow neck of land commanding the approaches to the coast. It is evident, from the present appearance of the mounds, that originally the walls extended to the shore, agreeing with the description of Josephus that “it was conveniently situated for a prospect to the sea.”[513]