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   View Categories Home > Catalog > |Roman Coins| > |The Adoptive Emperors| > |Hadrian| > RS66913
Hadrian, 11 August 117 - 10 July 138 A.D.
|Hadrian|, |Hadrian,| |11| |August| |117| |-| |10| |July| |138| |A.D.|, The destruction of Jerusalem in the First Jewish War made Caesarea, with a population above 125,000 and the hub of the road network, the economic and political hub of Palaestina. Caesarea was again the marshalling point for the Roman army during the reign of Hadrian for the Bar Kochba War, 132 - 136. Hadrian himself visited the city in 130 and again in 134. Hadrian, like Titus sixty-four years earlier, executed Jewish rebels in the city. By tradition, the condemned including Akiva, a leading Jewish sage and the rabbi who had greeted the rebel leader as the expected Messiah (Yer. Ta'anit, iv. 68d). By Hadrian's time Caesarea's outer harbor had deteriorated badly. The harbor had been wrecked by a tsunami in December 115. Tectonic activity had lowered the ocean floor and sunken parts of the breakwater were causing a hazard to shipping. Another earthquake struck in 132 when urban areas were again severely damaged. Much of the original city, including its celebrated harbor, had to be built anew by Hadrian and his successor Antoninus Pius. At its height the rebuilt city covered an urban area of nearly a thousand acres - almost five-times the size of Jerusalem. -- Kenneth Humphreys
RS66913. Silver denarius, RIC II-3 2223, RSC II 966, BMCRE III 680, Hunter II 223, Strack II 251, SRCV II 3507 var. (bare head, slight drapery), VF, Rome mint, weight 3.311g, maximum diameter 18.6mm, die axis 180o, 134 - 138 A.D.; obverse HADRIANVS AVG COS III P P, laureate head right; reverse MONETA AVG, Moneta standing slightly left, head left, scales in right hand, cornucopia in left hand; from The Jimi Berlin Caesarea Collection (surface find, Caesarea, Israel, 1972); SOLD












Caesarea began as Straton's Tower, a small naval station founded by the king of Sidon, c. 360 B.C. Alexander Jannaeus captured it in 90 B.C. The Romans declared it an autonomous city in 63 B.C.

Herod renamed the the pagan city Caesarea in honor of Caesar Augustus. He built there one of the most impressive harbors of its time, storerooms, markets, roads, baths, temples, public buildings and a palace. When Judea became a Roman province in 6 A.D., Caesarea Maritima replaced Jerusalem as its capital and was the residence of governors, including the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.

It was at Caesarea that Peter baptized Cornelius the Centurion, the first Christian baptism of Gentiles. Paul visited Caesarea several times and was a prisoner there for two years before being sent to Rome. In 70 A.D., after the Jewish Revolt was suppressed, about 2,500 Jewish captives lost their lives in gladiatorial games at Caesarea.

Caesarea became the capital of Byzantine Palaestina Prima in 390. It fell to Sassanid Persia in in 614, was re-conquered by Byzantium in 625, then lost for good by the Byzantines to the Muslim conquest in 640. The population fell and the harbor silted up and was unusable by the 9th century.

By 1047 the town was redeveloped, when Nasir-i-Khusraw described it as, "a fine city, with running waters, and palm-gardens, and orange and citron trees. Its walls are strong, and it has an iron gate."Caesarea was taken by Baldwin I in the First Crusade, in 1101. Saladin retook the city in 1187, but it was recaptured by the Europeans during the Third Crusade in 1191. In 1265, the Mamluks destroyed it completely to prevent its re-emergence as a Crusader stronghold.

In 1952, a Jewish town of Caesarea was established near the ruins. The ruins of the ancient city, on the coast about 2 km south of modern Caesarea, were excavated in the 1950s and 1960s and the site was incorporated into the new Caesarea National Park in 2011.

Catalog current as of Tuesday, March 19, 2024.
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