Basileus Meets Imperator: Herod’s Evolving

Honors to Augustus

BARBARA BURRELL

This paper uses recent finds and reinterpretations (archaeological, epigraphic, and historical) to re-
examine and place in a wider context Herod the Great’s actions towards honoring Augustus in his
realm. As a king formerly allied with Antony, Herod needed to placate Augustus quickly after Actium.
At first he showered his new overlord with service, money, and supplies, but it may have been in im-
itation of cities like Pergamon in Asia that he established a festival in Augustus’s honor in Jerusalem.
We hear nothing of actual temples, however, until after Augustus granted Herod new territories; it was
there, in non-Jewish areas, that Herod founded cities (which was what kings did), named them in honor
of his sole superior, and built in them temples to Augustus and Roma, perhaps again on the model of
Hellenic cities of Asia or Bithynia, or of Alexandria in Egypt. Herod did this not for the sake of Helle-
nization or Romanization, but to reify his relationship with Augustus before his kingdom and the world,
enshrining him in the sole place in the hierarchy that a king could tolerate, and also, not incidentally, to
show his own magnificence.

Keywords: Herod the Great; Augustus; Sebaste; Caesarea Maritima; Paneion; Alexandria; impe-
rial cult; temples; festivals

S
tudies of Herod the Great’s actions and policies as-
sess them differently depending on the author’s opin-
ion of Herod’s own status. If one sees Herod as a
Roman client, all he did must be traced back to ardent
imitation of Roman models (Pažout 2015).1 If one sees
him as an Idumaean convert to Judaism or depends on
the works of the Jewish historian Josephus as a source
for his deeds and motives, one tends to concentrate on
his up-and-down relations with his Jewish subjects, and
his accomplishments in the land of Judaea (Wilker 2007;
Vermes 2014). Some understand him as one of the last
in the line of Hellenistic kings, a founder of cities and
master builder of royal palaces (Gruen 2016: 383–95;
Günther 2007; Lichtenberger 2009; Netzer 2006, 2013;
Japp 2000). And of course, modern psychological biogra-
phers cannot help but see him as a deeply flawed individ-
ual whose tortuous family problems dogged his every step
(Kasher and Witztum 2007).
1 also a Roman citizen) walking in procession from the Sen-
I will cite the most recent and relevant sources that contain previ-
ous bibliography throughout.
Barbara Burrell: Department of Classics, University of Cin-
cinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, United States of America;
barbara.burrell@uc.edu
Electronically Published September 29, 2020.
BASOR 384 (2020). © 2020 American Schools of Oriental Research. 0003-097X/2020/384-003$10.00. All rights reserved. DOI 10.1086/711078.
Doubtless, Herod was all those things. But he was also
a ruler who was widely traveled and knowledgeable about
the peoples and places of his world. His prosperity and
even his life depended on knowing his allies well and
his enemies better, from the Parthians to the east, to the
nearby Nabataeans and the Ptolemaic realm of Cleopatra
in the south, north to the “bandits” in the caves of Tra-
chonitis and the Hellenized cities of the former Seleucid
and Attalid kingdoms, westward to the Phoenician and
Syrian cities of the coast, and further to the Greek cities
and beyond, especially towards the world-dominating city
of Rome. So to understand his activities, we must see him
as not just one type or another, but a complex, widely in-
formed, and adaptable ruler. This was true from the very
beginning: as a young tetrarch expelled by Parthian parti-
sans in a familial war among the Hasmonean priest-kings
his family had worked for, he fled to Rome in 40 B.C.E. and
was declared by the Senate to be king of Judaea: a Jew (but
ate House up to the Capitoline Temple to sacrifice to Jupi-
ter, between Mark Antony and another young man who
would become the emperor Augustus (Josephus, B.J.
1.280–85, A.J. 14.379–89).2
2
For convenience’s sake, I will use the name “Augustus” throughout.
46 BURRELL
Fig. 1. Map of Herod’s Kingdom, with major cities and areas of expansion. (Map by J. Wallrodt)
In examining how Herod arrived at his eventual policy
of celebrating festivals and establishing temples to the liv-
ing emperor within the cities in his realm (Fig. 1), I would
like to introduce a slightly more nuanced view of Herod’s
world and the precedents available to him than the usual
contraposition of Jerusalem and Rome. I believe that he
chose his procedures from a broad range of options, in-
cluding not just what happened in Rome or in the realms
of other kings allied with it,3 but what Hellenized prov-
inces and cities, especially in the East, were doing to honor
Augustus. Nonetheless, he wisely adapted those precedents
to what was possible, i.e., what the inhabitants would tol-
erate, in each area of his expanding kingdom.
3
Compared with other “client” kings, see Jacobson 2001 and Wilker
2015.
BASOR 384
So this is not an essay about “the imperial cult,” a mod-
ern term encompassing a multiform series of institutions
and phenomena in both East and West (according to Cas-
sius Dio 51.20.7–8) and on many levels, whether personal,
familial, civic, ethnic, or empire-wide; the only aspect all
had in common was that a mortal ruler was treated as a
god in some way: enshrined in a temple, celebrated in a sa-
cred festival, or sacrificed to, rather than for, though the
distinction can be blurry. In many of his life’s activities
and in most of his realm, Herod could not establish direct
cult of any god but Jehovah, much less of any human be-
ing. Instead, this paper focuses on what Herod could pub-
licly do, and what he then chose to do, in dealing with the
Roman powers that reached beyond his own; it will say lit-
tle of his private relationships, where, at least according to
the words of Josephus (B.J. 1.400, cf. A.J. 15.361), he was a
closer friend to Augustus than anyone but Agrippa, and a
closer friend to Agrippa than anyone but Augustus.
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR
Prelude: The Triumvirate
Of the triumvirs who dominated his early career, it was
Antony whom Herod knew best and had worked with be-
fore, Antony who chose Herod as the Romans’ reliable man
in a tricky kingdom prone to Parthian influence and unrest,
Antony who was assigned to regulate and wage war in the
East. After that momentous walk to the Capitoline, it took
the newly-crowned Herod three years to fight his way back
into Jerusalem, working with Antony and his officers, pay-
ing them off when necessary. And, of course, he had to deal
with Cleopatra, who was eager to expand her power and
claim former Ptolemaic possessions. Antony allowed her
to usurp the famous balsam plantations of Jericho, and all
Herod could do was lease them back from her (Josephus,
B.J. 1.361–62, A.J. 15.92–96, 106).
In several Greek cities, Antony was being treated not
just as an overlord, but as a new Dionysos, with a temple
under construction in Alexandria, along with lavish pro-
cessions to celebrate his godhead.4 Herod doubtless knew
this, but in his mainly Jewish kingdom, honors to Antony
followed different precedents. As had probably been the
tradition since 63 B.C.E., when Pompey the Great con-
quered Jerusalem but then saw to the cleansing of Jeho-
vah’s Temple, there had been sacrifices for, not to, the Ro-
man overlords, on their great occasions (Philo Judaeus,
Leg. 232, 356–57). Doubtless such sacrifices were made
for Antony’s health and victory as well.
Then, when Herod built a great fortress palace to dom-
inate Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, he named it “Antonia” in
Antony’s honor (Josephus, B.J. 1.401, A.J. 15.409).5 Found-
ing and naming of cities was typical of Hellenistic kings,
especially in the neighboring Seleucid realm with all its
Antiochias, Seleucias, Apameas, etc. (Kosmin 2014: 208–
11). Herod himself had practiced it since his earliest days,
not just for his overlords but for his family: he named a
fortress Kypros after his mother, a city Antipatris after his
father, another city for his brother Phasael, and, of course,
Herodeion after himself.6 Thanks to Josephus (B.J. 5.161–
4
On Alexandria’s “large temple built for Antony, which was left
half-done, but finished for Augustus,” see Dörner 2014: 205–15 (quote
from Suda Eta 329), with an account of previous scholarship, and iden-
tifying the building as previously a heroon for Julius Caesar; see Hänlein-
Schäfer 1985: 203–16, as well as n. 13 below. On Antony as new Diony-
sos, descendant of Herakles, and imitator of Alexander, see Erickson
2018. See Voutiras 2011 on a possible cult for Antony in Thessalonike.
Ephesos and Athens: Plutarch Vit. Ant. 24, 60; Cassius Dio 48.39.2;
Velleius Paterculus 2.82; Seneca the Elder, Suas. 1.6; though note Appian,
Bell. civ. 5.76, with Antony “going native” like a private citizen while win-
tering in Athens with Octavia in 39 B.C.E.
5
For a description of the Antonia, see B.J. 5.238–46.
6
For the chronology of Herod’s foundations, see Netzer 2006: 302–
6; Josephus discussed the familial foundations as a group (B.J. 1.417–21,
A.J. 16.142–45), so exact dates are not clear, though it seems that Kypros
47
75), we also know how Herod named smaller emplace-
ments like the Antonia: for example, the three palatial tow-
ers he inserted into the fortifications of Jerusalem were
Phasael for his brother, Mariamne for his wife, and Hip-
picus for his friend.
Honoring Augustus: Precedents
and Possible Influences
Of course, everything changed in 31 B.C.E., after the
Battle of Actium. Herod had been kept away from the bat-
tle itself by local warfare, but all knew him to be Antony’s
man, and he wasted little time before rushing to Rhodes
and placing his diadem at the latest world ruler’s feet (Jo-
sephus, B.J. 1.387–93, A.J. 15.187–98; spring 30 B.C.E.).
Augustus was wise to return it and confirm Herod as king
of Judaea; he did the same for a number of Antony’s kings,
including Archelaos of Cappadocia, Amyntas of Galatia,
and Polemon of Pontus. Others were deprived of territories
Antony had given them, or deposed (Cassius Dio 49.32.3,
51.2.1–3, 53.25.1; van Wijlick 2015). Herod was likely not
alone in showering his new overlord with service, money,
and supplies for the endgame in Egypt, though as a close
neighbor he could be of greater use than most (Josephus,
B.J. 1.394–96, A.J. 15.199–201).7
Here, however, I would like to emphasize several as-
pects that are sometimes overlooked by historians. When
Josephus wrote about what Herod did and what Augustus
did in return, he wrote as if they had been alone in a room,
perhaps with Nikolaos of Damascus taking shorthand
notes. But a world victor’s court was rarely that private.
We must imagine that not just kings but embassies from
the entire Mediterranean world thronged Augustus wher-
ever he went, eager to offer fealty and golden wreaths to
the victor, along with eloquent excuses like Herod’s where
necessary.8 It is quite likely that they could see and hear
what honors were being tendered by others, and more im-
portantly, which ones were being accepted, and with what
degree of pleasure, by the honoree (Burrell 2004: 359–63).9
was early in Herod’s reign and Antipatris late, after the completion of
Caesarea.
7
Herod continued to support Roman military campaigns assidu-
ously and at large expense, as in Aelius Gallus’s expedition to annex
Arabia (Josephus, A.J. 15.317) and Agrippa’s naval campaign to the
Black Sea, in which Herod himself led a new navy from Caesarea (Jose-
phus, A.J. 16.13–26).
8
As Corey Brennan (2009: 186–87) noted, there was generally a
crowd of embassies from cities, peoples, factions, or individuals to the
victor after a major war. Antony had received a plethora of ambassadors
in 38 B.C.E. (Appian, Bell. civ. 5.76). See Fergus Millar (1977: 140–42) on
crown gold occasions. Even Cleopatra sent Augustus a gold wreath, along
with a scepter and her own throne, after Actium: Cassius Dio 51.6.5–6.
9
See Lozano 2011 for imperial honors as neither imposed nor spon-
taneous, but a “multiplex phenomenon.”
48 BURRELL
Scholars have tended to compare Herod’s subsequent
actions toward honoring Augustus mainly with those of
other kings, such as Archelaos or Juba II of Mauretania.
This is good procedure, insofar as only kings had the power
to found or refound cities and name them for the new over-
lord, as these monarchs did (Jacobson 2001: 28–30; Bernett
2007: 100–1; Kropp 2009a). Though often called “client
kings,” the rulers of the late Hellenistic period were actually
placed at a higher and closer relationship to the Roman peo-
ple and their leaders: they were often entitled “reges socii
atque amici,” allies and friends (at least for purposes of di-
plomacy) rather than clients serving a Roman patron.10
They were certainly in communication with each other and
often married into each other’s families, though it is ques-
tionable whether they collaborated on joint actions, as Sue-
tonius implied when he wrote of them not just (individ-
ually) founding cities named Caesarea after Augustus in
their own realms, but intending to finish the Temple of
Olympian Zeus in Athens and dedicate it to Augustus’s
Genius.11 Suetonius’s view of the kings’ acting as a group
comes from his later perspective, and though one Augustan
column capital has been found at Athens’s Olympieion,
one must not take Suetonius’s unverifiable statement
about unachieved plans too uncritically: worship of a Ge-
nius was a Roman tradition that found few followers in
the East, and the ability even of benefactor kings to trans-
fer a precinct in a city outside their realms from its dedi-
cation to an Olympian god to that of an emperor must be
doubted.12
But honors were indeed showered upon Augustus not
just by kings, but by cities, associations, and peoples, and
a wide range of their ambassadors and envoys mixed and
met as they spoke before their new ruler and each other.
An offer of great gifts, which could range from statues to
festivals to temples to cities in their name, would have had
little impact if no one but its object knew of it. Herod
would certainly have had his ears and eyes open, whether
he appeared in person before Augustus or got the news
10
On Herod’s roles and actions as “client king,” see Baltrusch 2015
and Wilker 2015.
11
Suetonius, Aug. 60: Reges amici atque socii et singuli in suo
quisque regno Caesareas urbes condiderunt et cuncti simul aedem Iovis
Olympii Athenis antiquitus incohatam perficere communi sumptu
destinaverunt Genioque eius dedicare: “Friendly and allied kings both
founded cities (named) Caesarea, each in his own realm, and at the same
time, as a group, intended to finish the long incomplete temple of Olym-
pian Zeus at Athens at common expense, and dedicate it to his Genius.”
12
For Suetonius’s anachronistic viewpoint, see Gruen 2016: 383–86;
cf. Gradel 2004: 100–1; Wardle 2012: 310; Wilker 2015: 108–9, all
accepting Suetonius’s statement at face value. According to Renate
Tölle-Kastenbein (1994: 153–54, 146, 172), very little Augustan period
work was done on the Temple of Zeus Olympios at Athens, especially
as compared to the amount finished by Antiochos IV and his architect
Cossutius.
BASOR 384
from ambassadors and useful men-about-court like Niko-
laos of Damascus. He would have learned not only what
was being offered and by whom, but how each offer was
accepted, modified with care, or (occasionally but signif-
icantly) rejected by the honoree. This would have given
Herod a range of options in devising honors for Augustus
in his own realm.
Alexandria and Nikopolis in Egypt
One of the earliest and most prominent honors was
the first temple to Augustus, in newly-conquered Alex-
andria: he was likely hailed as “Kaisar epibaterios,” patron
of seafarers, in its precinct as early as 30 B.C.E. (Dörner
2014: 205–7; McKenzie 2007: 173–78; Freber 1993: 184–
88; Levy 1982–1983; Hänlein-Schäfer 1985: 203–19, with
sources).13 As mentioned above (n. 4), its quick dedication
to the conqueror meant that the precinct had probably
housed the unfinished temple to Mark Antony, a cult
instituted by Cleopatra. Its prominent position, turned
askew from the city’s grid to face out over its great harbor,
has been clarified from the obelisks later placed before
it, though there are not enough remains to permit a full
reconstruction. It is best known through later words of
Philo of Alexandria (Leg. 151), who heaped patriotic praise
on the precinct he called the Sebasteion in his speech as
ambassador of the Jews of Alexandria to the emperor Calig-
ula: second to none, it included monumental propylaea,
porticoes, wide terraces, libraries, banquet halls, and even
groves of trees, and in its center, raised on a height, the
great temple of Augustus, full of offerings of paintings and
statues, gold and silver, “a source of hope to those who put
out to sea, and of safety to those coming into harbor.”
Augustus himself commemorated his taking of Egypt
by building a victory city named Nikopolis, the same name
as the better-known city he would build near the site of the
Battle of Actium. Egyptian Nikopolis stood thirty stadia
(over 5 km) east of Alexandria, past the hippodrome, and
was furnished with an amphitheater and stadium for a
quadrennial festival (Cassius Dio 51.18.1; Strabo 17.1.10
[Nikopolis in Egypt] and 7.7.6 [Nikopolis at Actium];
Dörner 2014: 202–5).14 Such festivals associated with
13
The building was noted by Strabo (17.1.9) as the Kaisarion, so was
already in existence by ca. 26–20 B.C.E. I differ with Stefan Pfeiffer (2012)
on two counts: first, his distinction between “emperor worship” and
“imperial cult” (what he describes as the former is usually called “impe-
rial honors”); second (p. 87), that the Kaisareion/Sebasteion must have
been built on Roman rather than Hellenistic models simply because it
had open space and (later) Roman officials erected obelisks there.
14
In discussing the Egyptian Nikopolis, Judith McKenzie (2007:
176) adduced a passage of Suetonius (Aug. 18) that refers to the one near
Actium instead. On the other hand, Dietmar Kienast (1999) stated that
Augustus designed the Egyptian Nikopolis to displace Alexandria,
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR 49

Augustus’s triumph would soon become influential, but it

is important to emphasize that that of Nikopolis in Egypt
was not necessarily named after or associated with the fa-
mous Actia founded, or rather aggrandized, by Augustus
in Epirus (Gurval 1995: 74–81; on the Actia, see Strasser
2000: 311–22, 368, 615–16; Pavlogiannis, Albanidis, and
Dimitriou 2009; Calomino 2012). Though often misper-
ceived as an “imperial cult” festival, the Actia celebrated
Actian Apollo, who had given the triumph to Augustus,
and was based on an older festival to that god, as Strabo
(7.7.6) makes clear. Though Augustus gave another festi- Fig. 2. Silver cistophorus of province Asia, 19/18 B.C.E.: Head of Augus-
tus/Temple of Roma and Augustus at Pergamon (BM Coins, Rom. Emp.
val to Nikopolis in Egypt, it would not have been for his 705–6). (ANS 1944.100.39187, courtesy of American Numismatic Soci-
own cult—that would have been an act of tyranny, not ety, accessed June 11, 2020, http://numismatics.org/collection/1944.100
of honor—but for the deity to whom he attributed his Al- .39187)
exandrian triumph, whether Apollo or some other.
rinthian columns, sometimes with the words “ROM SP
Pergamon in Asia, Nikomedia in Bithynia AVG” on its entablature, or with images of a draped em-
peror and a helmeted Roma, as well as other personifica-
Shortly after, while Augustus wintered on Samos in tions, inside (Burrell 2004: 147–51).
29 B.C.E., at least two embassies from nearby associations
of Hellenic cities, one from the province of Asia, the other Xanthos in Lycia
of Bithynia, each offered him temples in which he was
to be worshipped as a god on rather similar terms (at least There may have been another early cult for Augustus
as Cassius Dio 51.20.6–9 transmitted them). Though Au- by a league of cities that was not yet a Roman province,
gustus made a show of promoting the cult of his adoptive Lycia in Anatolia. An inscription mentions a priest, tem-
father Julius Caesar for Romans living in both provinces ple, and peribolos (precinct) of Caesar (not named as Au-
ahead of his own, and further modified the terms of the gustus or Sebastos, so generally dated before 27 B.C.E.) at
gift by specifying that he share cult with the goddess Roma, Xanthos, chief city of the Lycian League; there may also
he ultimately accepted both proposals, permitting that have been a provincial isopythian contest dedicated to
temples to himself (and Roma, see below) be built in Per- Rome and Augustus, though this is only documented later,
gamon and Nikomedia (Burrell 2004: 17–21).15 and its foundation date is uncertain (Hänlein-Schäfer
Unfortunately, neither temple has yet been archaeolog- 1985: 16, 197; Burrell 2004: 254–55). This cult has often
ically identified. According to an inscription from Myti- been assumed to have been enshrined in the great Letoön
lene on Lesbos, that at Pergamon was under construction of the Lycians at Xanthos, which later is documented to
“by Asia” in 27 B.C.E. and, judging by its appearance on have had an ethnikon Kaisareion, or Caesareum for the
Asian silver cistophori in 19 B.C.E., was probably finished people of Lycia; but that is yet more uncertain, as the term
by then (Burrell 2004: 19–20). The coin type (Fig. 2) shows Kaisareion did not necessarily mean a temple for the im-
it as a six-columned Corinthian structure, identified by perial cult, but could also refer to a non-sacred building
“ROM ET AVGVST” on its entablature. Later cistophori built by (a) Caesar, such as the “basilica” dedicated by
(Fig. 3) abbreviate the number of columns to show the cult
statues within: Augustus in military dress at the left holds
a scepter and stands in contrapposto to be crowned by the
long-gowned Roma, who holds a cornucopiae like a Greek
Tyche.
We have even less and later information about Niko-
media. Hadrianic coins show it with as many as eight Co-

adducing Strabo 17.1.10 to show “dass die neuerrichteten Tempel in

Nikopolis solchen Zuspruch fanden, dass die alten Heiligtümer in
Alexandria vernachlässigt wurden;” the passage, however, mentions
no temple but only new buildings such as the amphitheater and stadium Fig. 3. Silver cistophorus of province Asia under Claudius: Head of
in Nikopolis. Claudius/Temple of Roma and Augustus at Pergamon with cult statues
15
On how such an offer of cult could be manipulated by the honoree, within (BM Coins, Rom. Emp. 228). (ANS 1955.21.4, courtesy of Amer-
see Burrell 2003. ican Numismatic Society, http://numismatics.org/collection/1955.21.4)
50
Julius Caesar at Antioch, only known from John
Malalas’s description written over five hundred years
after its foundation (Freber 1993: 185–87).
Mytilene on Lesbos
As well as provincial leagues, some individual eastern
cities dedicated temples to Augustus early enough to have
been noted by Herod or his informants. One was built at
Mytilene while Lesbos was part of the province Asia: the
same Mytilenean inscription of 27 B.C.E. that mentioned
Asia’s provincial temple at Pergamon as under construc-
tion noted a sacrifice at its own (presumably already com-
plete) temple of Augustus; and a seat of honor in the
theater of Mytilene was set up for its civic priest of Roma
and Augustus (IGRR 4.39a; Hänlein-Schäfer 1985: 16,
179–80). Unfortunately, the temple itself has not yet been
archaeologically identified.
A Festival to Roma and Augustus at Pergamon
Almost as an afterthought to his discussion of the pro-
vincial temples at Pergamon and Nikomedia, Cassius Dio
(51.20.9) mentioned that Augustus also allowed Perga-
mon to found a sacred festival in honor of his temple. This
was the Rhomaia Sebasta, first celebrated sometime be-
tween 27 B.C.E. (because its prize, an oakleaf crown, was
based on Augustus’s corona civica) and 20 B.C.E. at latest,
so perhaps in 26 B.C.E. Its president was the priest of Roma
and Augustus at Pergamon, who was inaugurated on Au-
gustus’s birthday, September 23. The date of the contest it-
self is less certain, but likely in October, according to the
Hadrianic Alexandria Troas dossier (Petzl and Schwer-
theim 2006: 77–79) that will be discussed below.16 The
Rhomaia Sebasta was later known as Koina Asias in Per-
gamon, and later still Augousteia. Remains of possible sites
of the festival, including a stadium, theater, and amphithe-
ater in the lower city of Pergamon, have been detected,
though not yet excavated or firmly dated (Krinzinger 2011:
122–23).
Kaisareia in Jerusalem
As well as Pergamon’s Rhomaia Sebasta, festivals were
also being fostered by Augustus at both his victory cities,
Nikopolis near Actium and Nikopolis in Egypt, though
these honored Augustus’s patron god(s) rather than the
emperor himself. With such a background, it is probably
not coincidence that Herod shortly thereafter founded his
first Greco-Roman festival in Jerusalem, built a theater
16
Strasser 2000: 541–50, 616 had placed it in late spring/early sum-
mer and believed it to be biennial.
BURRELL BASOR 384
and “amphitheater” (almost certainly a hippodrome) to
accommodate it, sent out word for participants from ev-
ery nation, and dedicated it to the conqueror, probably un-
der the name Kaisareia (Josephus, A.J. 15.268–75; Bernett
2007: 52–66; Patrich 2011: 181–82; Kokkinos 2015: 83–
85; Weiss 2014: 11–16, 32–34, 44–49, 2015).17 This festi-
val’s first celebration is dated as early as 28 B.C.E.; it is
not remarkable that a monarch should be quicker than
autonomous cities to build venues and institute games,
though it is also notable that, so far as is known, no allied
king but Herod founded a festival in Augustus’s honor. It
is likely that Herod’s Kaisareia even antedated the Actia
festival held at Augustus’s foundation near Actium, first
celebrated in September 27 B.C.E. (see below); Herod was
a generous donor of public buildings there, and presum-
ably knew Augustus’s plans for it well before they were
completed (Josephus, A.J. 16.147; Strasser 2000: 311–22,
368; Pavlogiannis, Albanidis, and Dimitriou 2009: 90–91;
Calomino 2012: 105).18
The Kaisareia at Jerusalem had Greek thymelic, musi-
cal, and gymnastic components, Roman ones of beasts
slaughtering both other beasts and condemned men, and
the horse and chariot racing common to both. The quick
foundation of such a festival was probably the best way for
Herod to deal with the great obstacle to typical divine hon-
ors in this particular kingdom and capital: the Jews who
were the main population in Jerusalem could not toler-
ate a temple to another god than Jehovah. For example,
it is most likely that Herod set the date of the Kaisareia to
allow the best international artists and athletes to travel
across the seas, but also to avoid the pilgrimage festivals
that brought Jews thronging to the Temple in Jerusalem;
so, for example, a celebration on Augustus’s birthday, Sep-
tember 23, though flattering to the ruler, would have fallen
dangerously close to Sukkot, 15–21 Tishri. Thus the Kai-
sareia, though quadrennial like sacred games elsewhere,
was noted by Josephus not for any cultic basis, but for
the valuable prizes that Herod offered to attract competi-
tors, while the new theater was only decorated with in-
scriptions and armored trophies, rather than statues.19
17
For the “amphitheater,” see Josephus, A.J. 15.268, and “hippo-
drome,” Josephus, A.J. 17.255. Remains of the buildings have not yet
been securely identified.
18
Éric Guerber (2009: 217, n. 8, 229) cites both 28 and 27 B.C.E. as
starting dates for the Actia. For Herod’s architectural contributions to
Nikopolis, see Zachos 2016: 546. See below for the assumed timing of
Caesarea’s Kaisareia to coincide with the Actia. Bieke Mahieu’s (2012:
161) alliance of the Jerusalem festival with the Olympiads, and dating
it to the anniversary of Herod’s conquest of Jerusalem on March 5,
has no real basis.
19
Peter Richardson and Amy Fisher (2018: 25, 146–47) thought that
the trophies that Josephus placed in the theater must have been in the
amphitheater, which need not have been the case; Pompey’s Theater
complex in Rome, founded earlier in the century, was noted for its
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR
Manfred Lämmer (1973: 31–32) called the festival “a
strange torso,” as it would have lacked the normal temple,
altar, images, and sacrifices.
Despite Herod’s precautions, however, his festival was
anything but a hit. Religious conservatives, suspicious that
Herod was introducing graven images, protested the tro-
phies that stood around the theater, and were hardly sat-
isfied even when Herod cannily stripped off the golden
panoplies to show them bare sticks beneath. The backlash
was so fierce that it led directly to a plot to assassinate the
King in the theater itself (Josephus, A.J. 15.276–91; Weiss
2014: 52–54, with insight into later Rabbinic views).
In the face of this response, we must consider what
Herod intended by founding (and continuing, see below)
a festival that anywhere else would have honored the em-
peror as a god, within the capital of a Jewish land centered
on a Temple to Jehovah (which Herod himself would soon
expand and beautify to an unprecedented extent). It is a
scholarly tendency to emphasize one idea, one motive
above all others, and perhaps this paper does the same, in
dwelling on Herod’s manner of performing/demonstrating
his gratitude to Augustus (along with his own magnifi-
cence). But just as Herod’s motives were multifarious, the
Jewish population was multifarious. The more Hellenized
elements of that population, and especially the elite, prob-
ably appreciated Herod’s imperial festival greatly, just as
they followed the King’s taste in buildings, decor, furnish-
ings, and personal adornment. That element has been left
out of Josephus’s picture, however, as it was less relevant
to his retrospective portrait of the King as interpreted
through his vision of his own times.20
Foundation of Sebaste and the Temple
to Augustus
Yet Herod would have to find still more ways of hon-
oring Augustus than just a festival in his capital city, be-
cause Augustus found more ways of rewarding Herod
than just confirming his kingship. After Egypt had been
conquered in 30 B.C.E., Augustus had not only returned
parts of the kingdom that had been handed over to Cleo-
patra, but extended Herod’s realm, giving him full control
over non-Jewish cities both inland and on the coast (Fig. 1)
(Josephus, B.J. 1.396, A.J. 15.217). It was here that Herod
could offer his gratitude not just in the manner of kings—
by founding cities as well as festivals named for Augustus—
but could do what had already been started at Alexandria,
statues of the peoples Pompey conquered (Pliny the Elder, HN 36.41),
and for the inscriptions naming him (Aulus Gellius, Noct. att. 10.1.7-8).
20
See Gruen 2016: 21–75 on literary interactions. Berlin 2014 shows
Herod’s influence upon the material culture of Jerusalem’s elite, and its
waning by the time of Josephus.
51
and what the Greeks of Anatolian provinces and cities
were promising to do: build temples in which people would
worship the emperor.
The first was in the newly-acquired territory of Sa-
maria, in the city Herod named Sebaste for the Greek trans-
lation of the recently-granted name Augustus (Josephus,
B.J. 1.403, A.J. 15.292–93, 296–99).21 There Herod settled
six thousand colonists, including his faithful veteran sol-
diers, so it also served him as a bulwark against revolts, as
the suspicious Josephus noted. Since the new citizens were
neither Jews nor Samaritans, Herod could build their cult
center as “both a very large temple and around it a precinct
three half-stades long, dedicated to Caesar,” that is, Augus-
tus (Josephus, B.J. 1.403).
The site of Sebaste was excavated beginning in the early
20th century, and the foundations and stairs of the temple
that Herod built at the hill summit, dominating the view
in all directions, are still prominent (Netzer 2006: 81–93,
with previous bibliography). Though the approach to the
precinct from the city below and to its north has not been
found, Netzer restored it as an axial stair-bridge, on the
model of similar Herodian structures at Jerusalem and
Jericho (Fig. 4). The precinct itself was a bastioned plat-
form built out on massive fills and substructures to form
a double-porticoed courtyard of ca. 83 # 72 m, a circum-
ference even greater than Josephus’s estimate of three half
stades, or 270 m. The altar was set at the far end from the
presumed axial entry of the precinct, from which two
flights of stairs rose over 4 m up to the temple.
The proportions of the temple’s foundations suggest
that it had six columns. Some have compared it to the
Capitolium in Rome, and Netzer did restore the Sebaste
temple’s ground plan in that Roman fashion, peripteros
sine postico, with only a frontal approach. But the Sebaste
temple’s dramatic layout of huge porticate forecourt and
steep stairs leading up to the front view of the temple re-
call such Hellenistic sanctuaries as that of Asklepios on
Kos (where Herod endowed a gymnasiarchy, and where
an inscription commemorating him as “king Gaius Julius
Herodes” was found), rather than, for example, the actual
Capitoline Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or even
the new temple dedicated by Julius Caesar to Venus Gen-
etrix in his Forum in Rome.22 In fact, using orthagonality,
21
Ehud Netzer (2006: 303–4) set the construction of Sebaste in the
decade 30–20 B.C.E.; the name, of course, must postdate January 16,
27 B.C.E. For chronology, see Bernett 2007: 66–98 and Mahieu 2012: 132–38.
22
As a “Capitolium,” see Roller 1998: 211. For the Kos sanctuary,
see Wescoat 2016: 428–30; on the gymnasiarchy, Josephus, B.J. 1.423
and Wilker 2015: 106; on the inscription, see Haensch 2014: 102. Ac-
cording to Cassius Dio 51.8.3, the precinct of Asklepios on Kos included
a sacred grove, like the Sebasteion at Alexandria (see above), the
Porticus of the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine in Rome (see below),
and perhaps the Temple of Augustus and Roma at Caesarea (see below).
52 BURRELL BASOR 384

Fig. 4. Temple of Augustus, Sebaste: plan and reconstruction. (From Netzer 2006: 86, fig. 21, illustration by and courtesy of R. Chachy-Laureys)

axiality, and landscape to make sanctuaries into Gesamt- Around three sides of Sebaste’s temple complex was a
kunstwerke was intrinsic to Hellenistic design, and both fortified compound, including domestic structures, exten-
contemporary Roman as well as Herodian projects par- sive storerooms, and towers. Andreas Kropp (2009a: 103–
ticipated (Wescoat 2016: esp. p. 425; Townsend 2016). 7, 2009b: 50–52) has called this “Herod’s Palatine” for the
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR
close relationship between what has been presumed to be
the ruler’s house and the temple, though Netzer was doubt-
ful about whether this rather crowded area fit with the
grandiose and expansive nature of Herod’s other palaces.
In fact, our notions of where Augustus actually lived on
the Palatine, and what his house was like at the time of
Herod, need to be updated. Though literary evidence places
his domus near the Palatine Temple of Apollo, it cannot
have been the structure hitherto called the “House of Au-
gustus” on the Palatine: reassessments of the archaeolog-
ical evidence over the past decade show that that building
was buried 9 m deep between 36 and 28 B.C.E., before
Sebaste was even founded, by the erection of the Temple
of Apollo itself (Iacopi and Tedone 2006).23 That house
was likely one of the Palatine properties purchased by Au-
gustus for expansion of the space around his own house
(Velleius Paterculus 2.81.3), but one of them was struck by
lightning, and at its declaration as sacred by the haruspices,
he dedicated the space to Apollo (Suetonius, Aug. 29; Cas-
sius Dio 49.16.5). He could not have lived in that “House
of Augustus” as emperor, and despite previous assump-
tions, it never communicated or connected with the pre-
cinct of Apollo, whose construction in fact destroyed it.
On the other hand, the Palatine Apollo temple, iso-
lated on (at least) a 3.20 m-high podium with the newly-
revealed, squarer “Porticus of the Danaids” and its groves
arrayed before it, may have resembled the precinct at
Sebaste more strongly than any other temple in Rome.24
If Herod was imitating a Roman model for his first Tem-
ple to Augustus, it was the latest one; or both may have
been following an unknown Hellenistic model. But nei-
ther was slavish in imitating any other structure; both tem-
ples’ designs were in fact products of their landscape: that
on the Palatine by the crowd of domestic and sacred struc-
tures that hemmed it in, and that in Samaria by the hill-
top on which Herod chose to exalt the Temple of Augus-
tus and its expansive forecourt as the centerpiece of his
new city.
23
Though this was acknowledged by Kropp (2009b: 51, n. 63), some
of the criteria he cited in retaining the traditional Augustan date were
based on the presumption that this was the house Augustus lived in,
forming part of a circular argument. Now see Pensabene and Galloccio
2017, who call it the “House of Octavian.”
24
Pensabene 2017: pl. B, 452–54; Pensabene and Galloccio 2017:
172–75, 178, with fig. 42a on 198 showing round holes for tree-plantings
within quadrangular suspensurae in the Porticus before the building, re-
stored in close ranks in fig. 42b; also see Pensabene 2017: 95, 109, fig. 73.
Propertius 4.6.71 and Solinus 1.18 mention groves in Apollo’s Palatine
precinct. It is uncertain, however, whether the Porticus was level or had
terraces like those of the Asklepieion at Kos towards the south. It would
be intriguing to use modern techniques of garden archaeology at
Sebaste, to see if trees were planted in the temple precinct.
53
The impressive torso of an armored statue found near
an altar in the Sebaste temple’s courtyard has been dated
close to the time of Herod’s foundation (Fig. 5). Though
Klaus Fittschen (2002: 16–17) doubted that it could have
represented Augustus, it is entirely possible that the pre-
cinct held images of him beyond the cult statue in the
temple.25 Even at 3 m tall, this would have been on too
small a scale to be that cult statue, but an image that stood
by an altar where sacrifices were made would have served
to focus the attention of the worshippers, who would not
have been able to see anything within the temple; such an
image might be called a proxy cult statue. There are good
precedents for cuirassed cult images, such as the standing
armed Augustus, crowned by Roma costumed as a city-
goddess, that the Hellenes of Asia placed within the coin
depictions of their temple at Pergamon (Fig. 3).26 But in
the end we know nothing certain about the image(s) within
the Temple of Augustus in Sebaste; for example, there is no
specific mention of Roma sharing this temple with him, as
Suetonius later said Augustus required.27
Some have speculated that Herod moved the Kaisareia
games from Jerusalem to Sebaste, where they would have
been more acceptable to the non-Jewish population (Ber-
nett 2007: 90–93).28 There is no positive evidence for this
argument from silence, which is particularly weak because
most inscriptional evidence for any festival at all comes
from the 2nd and 3rd centuries; for example, that was
when Hadrian was sending letters out to regulate the tim-
ing of worldwide festivals (see below). But at that very time
the Second Jewish Revolt was putting Jerusalemites in the
theater of war, not that of Herod; the city’s future was to be
as the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina, where Herod’s
festival would not have survived.
Further, it would have been extremely unusual, undip-
lomatic, and out of character for Herod to cancel a qua-
drennial festival to the Emperor in his capital, or even to
25
See also Laube 2006: 135–36, 235, no. 59, pl. 60. Weber 2008: 258–
62 even opined that the Sebaste statue could have represented Herod
himself.
26
Pace Andreas Kropp (2009a: 101, n. 23), there were cult statues in
cuirass, see Burrell 2004: 317–23; as well as Hänlein-Schäfer 1985: 199–
201; Laube 2006: 132–34; Bernett 2007: 80–82. A fragment of a male
head of similar scale but different marble was also found near the ar-
mored torso at Sebaste, but the exact findspots of both statues relate
to a later, Severan phase of the temple and precinct.
27
Suetonius, Aug. 52: Templa, quamvis sciret etiam proconsulibus
decerni solere, in nulla tamen provincia nisi communi suo Romaeque
nomine recepit: “Though [Augustus] knew it was the custom to vote
temples even to proconsuls, in not one province did he accept one unless
it was in the name of Roma as well as in his.” For the possibility that civic
temples might have been less strictly required to include Roma, see Bur-
rell 2003: 4.
28
Mahieu (2012: 177) opined that the games moved to Caesarea
Maritima, on her own particular calendar.
54
Fig. 5. Torso of cuirassed statue found at Temple of Augustus, Sebaste,
now on campus of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. (Photo by and
courtesy of D. Gurevich)
move it to another, lesser city. One only needs to consider
how he later punished the removal of his golden eagle over
the Temple gate (Josephus, B.J. 1.648–55, A.J. 17.149–67)
to realize that Herod would not have given up on his
Jerusalem festival on the basis of one religious faction’s
disapproval.
There is also little archaeological evidence for early fes-
tival structures at Sebaste: though Netzer (2006: 92–93)
believed that the stadium in the lower city could have dated
to Herod’s time, it was not long enough to accommodate
the Kaisareia’s horse or chariot races, and Sebaste’s the-
ater appears to postdate Herod (Weiss 2014: 20–22, 44).
This evidence does not preclude a festival to Augustus at
Sebaste, any more than it does his sharing cult with Roma
there, but positive evidence is still needed.
BURRELL BASOR 384
Foundation of Caesarea on Sebastos and the
Temple and Festival to Augustus and Roma
Sebaste was not to be the end, however; Herod had fur-
ther gratitude to manifest to Augustus. He had also been
given the coastal strip and its mainly Phoenician and Hel-
lenized settlements in 30 B.C.E., and it was here, sometime
between 22 and 9 B.C.E., that he chose to build a triple
dedication to his benefactor: an extraordinary artificial
harbor named Sebastos, a new city, Caesarea, around it,
and a temple of Augustus and Roma dominating both
(Fig. 6) (Burrell 2009; Netzer 2006: 103–6; Holum, Sta-
bler, and Reinhardt 2008: 17–21).29
Probably inspired by its Egyptian predecessor, the
Kaisareion/Sebasteion at Alexandria (above), Caesarea’s
Temple of Augustus and Roma was skewed off the city’s
grid to face the all-important harbor (Von Hesberg 1996:
11–16; Holum 2015: 57).30 So when Josephus remarked
(A.J. 15.339) that it was “conspicuous to those sailing in,”
that was part of its purpose: its broad facade proclaimed
safe haven to the traveler, much as Alexandria’s temple
to Kaisar epibaterios did. But it also dominated the center
of the city from atop a natural outcrop of rock, extended
with earth-filled retaining walls to make a high platform;
the city block that contained it was made wider north-
south to accommodate its expanse. This modification of
the natural terrain may have been inspired either by Helle-
nistic models, or by Italian sanctuaries on platforms sup-
ported by vaults, which permitted ideals of axiality and
symmetry not previously possible in sacred precincts. It
did not use their techniques, but adapted local ones to
accomplish Herod’s aim regarding the landscape of all his
projects: to “conquer nature” (Netzer 2006: 103; D’Alessio
2016; Josephus, B.J. 1.410, of the harbor of Caesarea). Ac-
cess from the city at the south (and perhaps also from the
north) was from a major crossroads, but the staircase
led up to a side view of the temple, not its impressive fa-
cade, which was approached from the harbor via a mas-
sive staircase.
Recent finds have shown how intimately the temple
connected to the harbor before it (Fig. 6). Two arms of
the precinct’s north and south colonnades reached 21 m
out from its high podium to frame a high central plat-
form, flanked by areas that Netzer postulated as gardens
(reminiscent of the groves that Philo mentions within
29
Kenneth Holum (2015) gave details and reconstructions that in-
form this account throughout, and emphasized its function as a harbor
temple; the final report is Holum et al. forthcoming. Lucinda Dirven
(2011) gave more space to Caesarea’s previous history as a Ptolemaic
foundation, Straton’s Tower, thus of Greek culture, and later a Roman
colony, than to Herod’s actions or intentions.
30
For imperial temples that were visible from and faced harbors, see
Hänlein-Schäfer 1985: 32–34 and Burrell 2004: 316–17.
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR 55

Fig. 6. Temple of Augustus and Roma, Caesarea Maritima: (a) in plan, (b) in reconstruction. (Plan from Netzer 2006: 104, fig. 23, by and courtesy of
R. Chachy-Laureys; reconstruction by and courtesy of A. Iamim, Combined Caesarea Expeditions)
56
Alexandria’s Sebasteion, or those of the Palatine temple of
Apollo, above). Such greenery would have further empha-
sized the platform that extended the full length of the tem-
ple’s facade, the perfect approach and arena for the tem-
ple’s altar, with room for a crowd of sacrificial animals,
officiants, and spectators.31 Leading up to it was a compli-
cated system of staircases that began almost at the lip of the
inner harbor; these were set on vaults, not just for support,
but to allow the daily traffic around the harbor to pass be-
neath the monumental stairs.
Caesarea’s temple of Augustus and Roma can be re-
stored as a six-by-nine-columned Corinthian structure,
centered in its broad platform edged with (perhaps Ionic)
colonnades. The precinct’s surface rose around 11 m above
sea level, and the apex of the temple loomed 30 m above
that. Though Josephus mistook all Caesarea’s buildings
as being made only of imported materials, specifically of
white stone (A.J. 15.331–32), archaeologists have long
known that they were mainly local kurkar sandstone (Fi-
scher and Stein 1994); the temple was no exception, and
fragments have been found that were coated with bright
white stucco, resembling smooth stone, with touches of red
and blue paint to emphasize details (Kahn 1996, 1998).32
On the other hand, parts of the western facade of the altar
platform also used hydraulic mortar containing volcanic
ash, pozzolana, imported from the Bay of Naples in Italy;
this same material was used in other major structures in
Caesarea’s first phases of construction, mainly in places
where its ability to set underwater was needed, such as the
harbor Sebastos itself, as well as in the Promontory Palace,
postulated to be Herod’s own palace within his city.33
Though generally restored as approached solely from
the front, in the Roman style, it is also possible that the
temple was set on a stepped crepidoma like a Greek tem-
ple, as Netzer saw it. Though its proportions were rather
31
The Israel Antiquities Authority team led by Peter Gendelman is
currently excavating and documenting the central platform and its sub-
structures, and has confirmed it as the site of the altar, as I postulated in
November 2012 in a lecture preliminary to this paper, “Basileus meets
Imperator: Worshipping Augustus in Anatolia and Judaea,” presented
at the ASOR annual meetings in the session “Basileus, Sebastos, Shah:
Archaeologies of Empire in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.”
32
Both the cited passage and Josephus, B.J. 1.408 describe the build-
ings of Caesarea as “white stone;” cf. Schwartz 2015.
33
Peter Gendelman personally communicated the use of pozzolana
in the temple’s altar platform, February 21, 2019. For its use in Caesarea’s
harbor structures, sourced from Bay of Naples, see Hohlfelder, Brandon,
and Oleson 2007, Votruba 2007, and Vola et al. 2011. It appeared in later
repairs to Caesarea’s seaside hippodrome (though not yet analyzed for
source): see Porath 2013: 117. According to a personal communication
of December 5, 2018 by Elizabeth Moss, buildings conservator, it was
used in hydraulic mortars in the Promontory Palace; report to be pub-
lished in Burrell and Gleason forthcoming.
BURRELL BASOR 384
Vitruvian, at 3:5 in breadth and length, it was unlike the
forum temples in Rome in standing isolated in its pre-
cinct, whose back Netzer restored as shallowly curved,
based on symmetry with an extant segment of its eastern
wall foundation.34 Temples set in curvilinear precincts
that are not parts of theaters do not seem to occur earlier
than this, but there are two other Augustan examples, one
eastern, one western. At the Roman colony of Antioch in
Pisidia, established by Augustus in 25 B.C.E., a Corinthian
tetrastyle prostyle temple, perhaps dedicated to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, Augustus, and the Genius of the col-
ony of Antioch, was framed in a two-story semicircular
colonnade, its back wall irregularly hewn from the rock
of the hillside, dominating, but at the level of a quadrangle
with porticoes on three sides; its mason’s marks were
Greek letters (Rubin 2011; Townsend 2016: 462–65). On
the other side of the Empire, in Provence, another four-
columned Corinthian temple, perhaps to gods of the wa-
ters at Château-Bas, Vernègues, and dated by the style of
the capitals to 30–20 B.C.E., was set at the front of a semi-
circular walled area 4 m higher than the rectangular
porticate precinct before it (Agusta-Boularot, Badie, and
Laharie 2009). Both of those precincts, however, were
formed using geometric semicircles; only Herod’s temple
at Caesarea is restored with a shallower curve, perhaps
in order to claim as much of the insula space as possible
for an expansive precinct, despite the temple’s 247 skew
off the grid. This solution would be typical of Herod’s gift
for setting his projects in recalcitrant settings with unusual
and creative results, though it is unknowable whether this
aspect of the design had any precedent at Alexandria’s
Kaisareion/Sebasteion.35
According to Suetonius (Aug. 52), Augustus refused to
be worshipped in the Empire’s provinces without Roma,
and we know that the personification of the City shared
the temple at Caesarea with Augustus. Josephus (B.J. 1.414)
wrote that the colossal statue of the emperor was “not in-
ferior to the Olympian Zeus, on which it has been mod-
elled,” and that of Roma “the equal of the Hera at Argos.”
The Zeus and Hera in question were two of the most fa-
mous cult statues in the Greco-Roman world, and Josephus
(or his source, likely Nikolaos of Damascus—for it is doubt-
ful that a Jew like Josephus ever went inside these temples)
could have simply been praising the new statues’ quality.
But if we take Josephus seriously, both statues could have
imitated those ivory and gold originals, perhaps as white
34
Kahn (1996, 1998) noted the temple’s Vitruvian proportions and
local materials. On the basis behind Netzer’s restoration, Kenneth Holum,
pers. comm., April 30, 2015; Ken made astute comments at the original
2012 lecture for this article (n. 31, above) and was always generous in shar-
ing his knowledge with other investigators.
35
On the daring landscapes of Herod’s palaces, see Gleason 2014.
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR
Fig. 7. Colossal foot now in theater area, Caesarea. (Photo by D. Jarvis, Wikimedia Commons)
marble and gilt bronze acroliths. Thomas Weber (2008:
253–58) has even identified a colossal marble foot at Caesa-
rea (Fig. 7) as possibly part of the original statue of Augus-
tus, though his date for it is purely stylistic, and its findspot
is not known.36 It is possible that Caesarea’s Augustus, like
Phidias’s Zeus, was enthroned and draped, while Roma
could have looked like Polycleitus’s enthroned and scep-
tered Hera; some have suggested that Roma even had the
features of Livia (Bernett 2007: 112–16; Koortbojian 2013:
164, 207–11, 214).37 This sort of assimilation might have
seemed a bit daring in Rome, but interpretations of the
emperor and Roma were peculiar to the place where they
stood, not necessarily based on Roman models. As we have
seen, coins illustrating the cult statues of Roma and Au-
gustus at Pergamon (Fig. 3), a temple probably finished a
few years before that at Caesarea, show Roma as a Greek
city-goddess, not the typical Roman armored figure, as
she crowns the emperor in military dress (Burrell 2004:
36
Rivka Gersht, pers. comm., June 13, 2016, who included the piece
in her unpublished dissertation on the sculpture of Caesarea for the de-
partment of Art History, Tel Aviv University.
37
Pausanias, Descr. 2.17.4, 5.11.1, described the Hera and the Zeus. I
was previously more skeptical about these statues (Burrell 2009: 222).
On assimilation at the time of Augustus, see Pollini 1990. Rivka Gersht
(2017: 70–71) illustrates a Julio-Claudian statue of Livia holding double
cornucopiae, found in the northwestern part of the precinct, as well as a
relief fragment of the head of a Julio-Claudian prince, also found in the
precinct.
57
19–20, 24–25). Indeed, as Herod had served as president
and perpetual sponsor of the ancient Olympic festival of
Zeus at just the time when Caesarea was being completed,
it is possible that he commissioned these statues from a
Peloponnesian sculptor or school, who would have been
familiar with the originals.38 Certainly the man who had
sacrificed to Jupiter on the Capitoline did not have reli-
gious qualms about fulfilling the duties of president of
Zeus’s festival at Olympia, and would have been able to
see Zeus’s chryselephantine statue, a wonder of the world,
for himself.
At Caesarea, Herod built another theater and another
hippodrome, both very well documented and excavated
(Frova 1966; Porath 2013; Weiss 2014: 13–42).39 They were
to be venues for the great festival “named after Caesar”
38
On the Olympics of 12 B.C.E., see Josephus, B.J. 1.426–27, A.J. 16.149;
Wilker 2015: 100–1; and Richardson and Fisher 2018: 28. Though to my
knowledge Herod is not recorded as personally going into any temple,
even the ones he built to Augustus, his willingness to sacrifice to Jupiter
on the Capitoline makes it not impossible.
39
Again, Josephus (B.J. 1.415, A.J. 15.341) called one of the major
spectacle buildings “amphitheater,” though excavation revealed it to be
a hippodrome. Pace Zeʿev Weiss (2014: 46–47), the theater was not
cut into a kurkar hill in the Greek fashion, but built up on vaults in
the Roman fashion; only its orchestra floor and the supports for the lower
cavea were rock cut, according to Frova 1966: 86–88 and Netzer 2006:
112–13; Richardson and Fisher (2018: 270–71) likely misinterpreted
Netzer loc. cit. when they stated that “the lower level of seats, from the
time of Herod, were cut out of bedrock.”
58
(Josephus, B.J. 1.415) that inaugurated the city and contin-
ued afterward as a quadrennial contest (Weiss 1996, 2014:
15–19, 24–28, 40, 182; Bernett 2007: 99–100; Patrich 2011:
179–81). Herod’s palace at Caesarea put the king in the cen-
ter of this Kaisareia festival and the city’s new public quar-
ter, unlike the situation in Jerusalem, where Herod built his
palace as a luxurious but heavily defended fortress control-
ling a gate at the edge of the city.
This “Promontory Palace” at Caesarea was probably
first built so that Herod could supervise the building of
his harbor city; it was placed out on a natural promon-
tory, accessible by land and by sea, with an excellent view
of the harbor Sebastos to its north (Gleason et al. 1998:
esp. pp. 36–48). The initial phase (“Lower Palace”) was do-
mestic and for elite entertainment, containing a luxurious
swimming pool circled by columns and banquet/reception
rooms looking out over it or out to sea, but no discernable
larger or public spaces. It was only in the second phase
(“Upper Palace”) that a great public courtyard with large
reception halls was added to its landward side.40 The new
public wing was accessed by a towered gate structure, and
that entry/exit debouched exactly in front of the southern
ceremonial entry of the new hippodrome, whose westward-
running support wall became the north wall of the pal-
ace’s new wing. This addition was previously dated to
15 B.C.E., when Agrippa visited Herod at Caesarea, and
its placement in Caesarea’s second phase of construction
is now confirmed by geological evidence. The building of
the initial and essential project of Caesarea, the harbor
Sebastos, diverted a great deal of sea-borne sand onto the
shore to its south, allowing the hippodrome to be con-
structed on a broad sandy beach between the harbor and
the promontory; it has been estimated that this deposit
would have taken three to five years to accumulate (Porath
2013: 31–33, 66).
For the inauguration of the city and its first Kaisareia
festival, Herod put up important guests in his own newly-
enlarged palace, from which he and they could enter the
two major festival buildings easily and in splendor; indeed,
not only is the southern entry to the hippodrome directly
outside the palace gates, the nearby theater is the only
other building besides the Temple of Augustus and Roma
to be skewed from Caesarea’s grid, with its cavea turned
toward the Promontory Palace (Gleason 1996; Gleason
et al. 1998: 36). Caesarea’s festival lasted fifteen days, accord-
ing to additional words in a 9th century Latin translation
of the major source for it, Josephus’s A.J. 16.139–40, and
its equipment cost five hundred talents, an extraordinary
amount if not exaggerated (Lämmer 1974: 136–38; Patrich
2011: 180, n. 10).
40
Eyal Regev (2012) used space-syntax analysis to show the distinct
styles of interactions in the Lower and Upper Palace.
BURRELL BASOR 384
Josephus (A.J. 16.136) gave the date of the inaugural
festival as Herod’s 28th year of reign (after he captured Je-
rusalem in 37 B.C.E.), and in the 192nd Olympiad (be-
tween midsummer 12 B.C.E. and 9 B.C.E.). Standard chro-
nologies interpret that date as 10 B.C.E., and Josephus
specified that the inaugural festival occurred twelve years
after Herod began construction of Caesarea and its har-
bor Sebastos (Josephus, A.J. 15.341, 16.136; see below).41
Recently Mahieu (2012: 165–82) redated the Kaisareia to
begin precisely on March 5, 8 B.C.E., but that would have
been dangerously early in sailing season to gain many
of the international ambassadors and competitors that
Herod aimed for, which would have risked the glory he
wanted for his new foundation. Her date, moreover, was
based on a misunderstanding of Josephus A.J. 16.136, as
referring to ten years after Augustus’s gift of the territory
in 30 B.C.E.; it more likely refers to the time for construc-
tion of the city, which according to that passage came to
completion two years before the designated time for the
festival. Only Herod was capable of getting his city built
two years ahead of schedule.42
Another piece of evidence that is sometimes adduced
in trying to pin down the date of the inauguration of Cae-
sarea are later “spectacles in honor of Caesar . . . on behalf
of his well-being” (Josephus, A.J. 19.343) celebrated by
Herod’s grandson Agrippa I, who made a splendid, if ul-
timately fatal, appearance in Caesarea’s theater for these
performances. If the Kaisareia had been endowed for per-
petuity by Herod the Great, it would be natural that a ruler
descended from him should also preside over subsequent
festivals.43 Mahieu (2012: 172–74) offered recent evidence
that Agrippa I died in summer 44 C.E. at the earliest, which
would mean that, if he had presided at the fourteenth qua-
drennial Kaisareia only days before, the first celebration
would have fallen in summer 9 B.C.E. But Josephus’s de-
scription of Agrippa I’s ceremony and death states that
the spectacles (theoria) he presided over were understood
as a kind of feast or festival (heorte) for the ruler’s preser-
vation (soteria), implying that they were for the living em-
peror, Claudius; this is language that is distinguished from
his earlier passages on Caesarea’s inaugural Kaisareia, B.J.
1.415 and A.J. 16.138, which describe it specifically as a
quadrennial contest (agon). This makes it possible that the
festival that Josephus described Agrippa I celebrating in
41
On earlier theories, see Patrich 2011: 28, n. 96 and, most recently,
Richardson and Fisher 2018: 29.
42
For a new translation and re-evaluation of A.J. 16.136, confirming
Caesarea’s construction in ten out of a designated twelve-year span,
which culminated in the first Kaisareia festival, see Burrell in Burrell
and Gleason forthcoming, Part I, Chapter 1.
43
On endowments, see Ng 2015: 111–16. Herod’s endowments in-
cluded an annual gymnasiarchy at Kos and the Olympics at Elis, above.
On the occasion, see the theories in Patrich 2011: 28, n. 96.
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR
the theater at Caesarea was for some other imperial occa-
sion or vow-taking, such as Claudius’s birthday (August 1),
and need not have been allied with the contest founded
by Herod the Great.44 There is no direct proof whether
or not Agrippa I’s fatal appearance was at the Kaisareia,
and therefore it cannot necessarily be used to count back
and prove the date of the inaugural festival, and thus the
construction period, of Caesarea on Sebastos.
The calendrical date of Herod’s Kaisareia at Caesarea is
also the subject of debate. Though many scholars have as-
sumed that it coincided with the great Actia at Nikopolis,
and that that festival fell on the anniversary of the battle of
Actium, September 2, a letter of Hadrian to the interna-
tional union of theatrical artists, part of a dossier recently
found at Alexandria Troas (letter 2, lines 65–66), now con-
firms the Actia as beginning on the ninth day before the
Kalends of October, that is, September 23, Augustus’s birth-
day (Suetonius, Aug. 5).45 That festival’s inaugural celebra-
tion likely began on September 23, 27 B.C.E.
Schwartz (1992: especially pp. 175–76) stated that it
was “obvious” that an “isactian” festival at Caesarea, men-
tioned in a far later inscription dated to 221 C.E., was that
founded by Herod and would have been celebrated on the
same date as the great Actia, and other scholars have fol-
lowed him (Patrich 2011: 184; Weiss 2014: 180–82). But
“isactian” refers to the type of competitions, age range
of participants, and prizes to be awarded by the compet-
itors’ home city, not to the date of the festival (Remijsen
2011; Slater 2012; Pleket 2014). In fact, new contests had
to be carefully timed to avoid coinciding with others, es-
pecially the most prestigious, as that would have prohib-
ited the best athletes and performers from participating;
for example, if all the “isolympian” festivals of the high
Empire had to be timed to coincide with the calendar dates
(much less the quadrennial occurrence) of the Olympic
games at Elis, there would have been at least twenty festivals
competing with each other over a four-year period (Aneziri
2014: 428–29).46 Even in the late 1st century, the year was
already crowded with athletes and other competitors mak-
ing their tours: there was a regular procession of them
traveling from Rome’s Capitolia to Neapolis’s Sebasta to
the Actia in Nikopolis, and the formerly great Nemea
games suffered as a result of being scheduled for that time
(Pavlogiannis, Albanidis, and Dimitriou 2009: 90–92, sup-
44
On vows on behalf of the rulers’ preservation, health, and safety,
see Price 1980: 31–33.
45
September 2: Strasser 2000: 321–22; Pavlogiannis, Albanidis, and
Dimitriou 2009: 91–100. The Alexandria Troas correspondence: Petzl
and Schwertheim 2006: esp. p. 76 on the date of Actia, which the authors
thought might be Hadrianic; Jones 2007; Gouw 2008.
46
Pavlogiannis, Albanidis, and Dimitriou 2009: 85, n. 22 put the
number of known agonistic festivals in the Roman East at around five
hundred, but many more remain unknown.
59
ported by Statius, Silvae 2.2.6–8). Indeed, according to the
Alexandria Troas inscriptions mentioned above, the em-
peror Hadrian himself had to decree a four-year calendar
that would allow contestants to reach the major sacred fes-
tivals (as confirmed by the Senate), mainly in Italy, Greece,
and Asia, with care to schedule sea crossings with plenty
of time and in the proper season, though the dates of the
multitudinous local ones could be locally determined (Petzl
and Schwertheim 2006; Jones 2007; Gouw 2008; Guerber
2009: 228–31).47
Though Herod’s Kaisareia at Caesarea could have at
some later point been categorized as isactian, any such
classification was likely made after the time of Nero, when
the Actia became integrated among the western sequence
of major festivals; Strabo (7.7.6), who was more or less
contemporary with Herod, classed the Actia festival as
“Olympic.” In any case, the status of the Caesarea festival
says nothing about the date it was celebrated. Caesarea
had several sacred festivals as well as the Kaisareia, judg-
ing by the “Caesarea Cup” in the Louvre; in the 4th cen-
tury, when it was likely made, there were perhaps as many
as five, if one is to be alloted to each of the five busts below
the inscribed words agones hieroi, “sacred contests,” on
the cup’s lip (Patrich 2011: 78–79). Considering all the ev-
idence (or lack of it) above, we are currently no closer to
pinning down the exact date of Herod’s inaugural festival
for Caesarea, beyond that it was likely to have been during
sailing season, perhaps in 10 B.C.E.
By the time of the establishment of Kaisareia in Caesa-
rea, Herod was very familiar with the organization of both
his own and others’ festivals. Like Jerusalem’s, Caesarea’s
Kaisareia included musical and athletic contests, horse
racing, and beast hunts. As in the contests at Jerusalem,
the king gave valuable prizes, this time not just for the
winners, but for those who came in second and third
(B.J. 1.416), a practice more typical of epic funeral games.
But giving gifts in addition to the victor’s crown and set
prize was the privilege of the agonothetes who funded
and presided over the festival, and an advance announce-
ment of this unusual policy would have encouraged over-
seas competitors to risk the expense of coming to Judaea
to try their luck (Lämmer 1974: 101; Slater 2012: 151).48
Unlike the festival at Jerusalem, however, Josephus (A.J.
16.136–41) specified that Herod’s inaugural Kaisareia at
Caesarea also included gladiator fights, Roman spectacles
outside the scope of Hellenic agonistic festivals, his own
47
Jean-Yves Strasser (2000) divided the quadrennial festival cycle
that developed under the Empire into a relatively empty pre-Olympic
year, a crowded Olympic year, a year for major contests in Italy, and
a Pythian year.
48
See Guerber 2009: 220–22, 232 on valuable and cash prizes even
for “sacred” games.
60 BURRELL
previous contests, and Jewish preferences. They were also
extraordinarily expensive, which might be a reason for Jo-
sephus’s figure of five hundred talents, mentioned above.
Both Augustus and his wife Livia sent gifts and equipment
to Herod for the celebration, perhaps including gladiatorial
gear, which may have been hard to get locally. This may ap-
pear to be the ultimate in direct imitation of a contempo-
rary Roman institution, but gladiator troupes had been
brought to eastern cities like Ephesos and Kyzikos earlier
in the 1st century B.C.E.49 Starting under Augustus, the chief
priests of the emperors in provincial organizations and cit-
ies of the Greek East regularly put on gladiatorial combats
as part of imperial cult festivals (Carter 1999: 62–65; Mann
2009; Krinzinger 2011: 111–14; Edelmann-Singer 2015:
230–32). Thus, ironically, they became a part of Hellenic
festival culture, with Herod among the leaders in their
introduction.
Motives and Megalopsychia
Like the city and harbor named after him, and the tem-
ple designated for his worship, Caesarea’s festival was
meant to honor Augustus as a god. Further, the place-
ment of the festival venues on either side of the palace
of the ruler who endowed and presided over it was typical
of Hellenistic kings. For example, the palace district of the
Ptolemies in Alexandria included a theater and stadium,
while that of the Seleucids at Antioch had a racecourse,
well before the building of the Flavian Palatine complex
that looked down upon, and could be looked at from,
the Circus Maximus (Nielsen 1999: 112–13, 272–74 [An-
tioch], 130–33, 282–84 [Alexandria], 174–80, 293–95
[Palatine], 214–15 [see the chart of palaces with “public”
functions including theaters and hippodromes]).50 Thus
Greek and Roman traditions were melded with the new-
est trends in honoring the world’s newest leader; this
choosing and innovating is as typical of Herod’s honors
to Augustus as it is of his cities and palaces.
Evidently Herod’s purpose in building cities, temples,
and giving festivals (at least as his persona was represented
by Josephus) was to show not just gratitude but his own
megalopsychia, a word which goes beyond “magnanimity”
49
The troupe in Kyzikos was assembled to celebrate Antony’s victory
over Augustus, and when it did not happen, fought their way across Asia
Minor and into Syria to join and defend him. The governor of Syria,
Quintus Didius, with the help of troops sent by Herod even before his
meeting with Augustus in Rhodes, intercepted and settled them in
Daphne near Antioch, after which they were disposed of in various ways,
see Josephus, B.J. 1.392, A.J. 15.195, and Cassius Dio 51.7.2–7.
50
On the new chronology of the Flavian palace complex and its vis-
ibility from the Circus Maximus, see Wulf-Rheidt 2012; the part of the
“House of Octavian” most likely to have a view toward the Circus was
never completed or lived in (see above, n. 23).
BASOR 384
to verge on “greatness,” with connotations of lavish gener-
osity. Herod showed off this trait as soon as he had met
Augustus, when he risked giving his new overlord and his
friends “gifts beyond his power” (Josephus, A.J. 15.196)
in order to secure their esteem and his position. When
Josephus (A.J. 16.141) was specifically discussing the
magnificence of the opening festival at Caesarea, he wrote:
“both Caesar himself and Agrippa said many times that the
properties of Herod’s kingdom were not equal to the great-
ness (megalopsychia) that was in him: for he was worthy
even to have the kingship of all Syria and Egypt.” Erich
Gruen (2016: 383–95) has even interpreted Herod as por-
traying himself as Rome’s partner and the equal of Agrippa,
if not Augustus; that is a long way from others’ emphasis on
Herod as “client” king. It is certainly true that the Roman
rulers equated Herod’s megalopsychia with the ability to
rule widely and well. Indeed, when he manifested it with
gifts of money, service, dedications, and worship, they re-
warded him with more honors, gifts, and lands.
The Temple of Augustus Near the Paneion
Herod was granted the unruly regions of Trachonitis,
Batanea, and Auranitis to subdue in 23 B.C.E., and in
20 B.C.E., while on a trip with Augustus through Syria,
was also given Gaulanitis at the foot of Mt. Hermon, the
former tetrarchy of his enemy Zenodorus, who had recently
died. It is not a coincidence that as soon as he had ac-
companied the emperor to shipboard, he immediately
started to build a temple to Augustus in Zenodorus’s old
territory, “near the Paneion” (Josephus, B.J. 1.404–6, A.J.
15.359–64; Cassius Dio 54.9.3). It is in direct correlation
with his gratitude to his benefactor and friend Augustus
that he celebrated and built so magnificently; “greatness”
brought him more lands, and more opportunity to demon-
strate his greatness.
Excavations at the site of the Paneion (modern Baniyas)
have led to claims that Herod’s temple to Augustus, made
of “white marble” (Josephus, B.J. 1.404) or “white stone”
(Josephus, A.J. 15.363), has already been located there
(Fig. 8) (Maʿoz 2009: 40–60, 2015).51 We need not be sur-
prised that, contrary to both of Josephus’s accounts, the
construction materials used on this site were again local,
though there could have been marble revetment. But the
foundations that Zvi Maʿoz believed to be those of the
Temple of Augustus are of an assymetrical, internally-
niched, and essentially backless structure without remains
of columns, leading into the cavern that was the sanctuary
of Pan. It is more likely to be connected with Pan’s cult
than with Augustus’s (in agreement, Nelson 2015: 78).
51
Though I disagree with some aspects of Berlin 2015, it is a subtle
interpretation of events and buildings in the region.
2020 BASILEUS MEETS IMPERATOR
Fig. 8. Paneion, Baniyas: Plan of the sanctuary with supposed Temple of Augustus. (After Maʿoz 2009: 41, fig. 5.1, plan by J. Wallrodt)
On the other hand, Netzer (2006: 218–22) believed
that the temple was on a terrace about 100 m to the west
of Pan’s sanctuary, where he had explored remains of
Italian-style opus reticulatum walls, generally only found
in Israel in association with Herod’s works. The area has
not been thoroughly excavated, however, nor have re-
mains identifiable as a temple been found there.
More recently, the excavators of a sacred building at
Omrit, about 4 km southwest of Baniyas, postulated that
this was Herod’s Temple of Augustus near the Paneion
(Overman 2011; Overman and Schowalter 2011: 101–3;
Berlin 2015; Nelson 2015: 73–81). Not only is there no
solid evidence for this, the first proper temple at Omrit
(Phase T1) was found to enclose a small earlier shrine
(ES) of local style, and the temple was certainly built for
(and respected) the same cult practices of that shrine,
which perhaps dated to the mid-1st century B.C.E. For
Herod to have repurposed a pre-existing rural shrine as
a temple to Augustus is completely outside anything we
know of his persona and purposes. In fact, it would have
been the reverse of megalopsychia: it would not only have
slighted whatever god was previously worshipped at this
shrine, but would have been a shabby honor for Augustus,
for whose cult Herod had previously founded magnificent
new temples in the center of entire new cities (Sebaste and
Caesarea) whose populations were intended to worship the
61
Emperor. It is possible that one phase of the temple at Omrit
was built in Herod’s time, or even under Herod’s or his son
Herod Philip’s patronage, but it is most likely that its cult
was the same as the earlier shrine’s; a block with an inscrip-
tion to Gaia has been found but not yet published (Nelson
2015: 73, n. 2). So, until more solid evidence is found, we
should admit that we cannot yet be certain where Herod’s
Temple of Augustus near the Paneion was.
Some wonder why Herod didn’t found a city as well as
a temple near the Paneion, as he had at Sebaste and Cae-
sarea; the answer is likely that he was still in the midst of
constructing Caesarea and its harbor, an expensive proj-
ect. Perhaps Herod would have built more extensively
at the Paneion had he lived longer, but, sickened and em-
bittered, he died in 4 B.C.E., less than a decade after the in-
auguration of Caesarea on Sebastos. It was not long after
that, in 3/2 B.C.E., that his son, the tetrarch Philip, built a
city at the Paneion that he named Caesarea Philippi (Jo-
sephus, B.J. 2.168, A.J. 18.28), and made Augustus and his
temple prominent images on his coins (Meshorer et al.
2013: 261–63, pls. 211–12).
Summary
Simon Price noted how difficult it was for the Greek
cities to get their minds around kings who dominated
62 BURRELL
them from beyond the polis; it was this, not flattery or po-
litical expediency, that led them to deify Hellenistic mon-
archs (Price 1984: 23–40). It must have been similarly dif-
ficult for kings to deal with monarchs over them, except
as gods. Herod, as a Jew, should have been unable to con-
ceptualize the situation in this way, but his eyes and ears
told him that the cities and peoples of the world, not just
in the East but in Italy and the West, were worshipping
Augustus with temples, altars, sacrifice, and festivals
(Hänlein-Schäfer 1985). His practical and adaptable na-
ture made him realize that those who were backward in
this respect would be viewed, not as circumspect or scru-
pulous, but as ungrateful. With a reputation for greatness
to uphold, Herod was never that.
So long as Herod ruled over mainly Jewish terrain, he
honored Augustus in every way possible short of worship,
by founding a great festival and constructing spectacle build-
ings for it in his capital, Jerusalem. Then, when Augustus
gave him territories with significant non-Jewish popula-
tions, he founded cities like Sebaste and Caesarea and had
them worship Augustus with temples he built and festivals
he endowed for the purpose; his last temple for Augustus
was near the Paneion, and perhaps more would have fol-
lowed had he lived.
Whether Herod himself held to Jewish beliefs, or wor-
shipped Augustus as a god, or was a cynical master of po-
litical manipulation are not questions that can be an-
swered. We can only judge him by what we read of his
accomplishments and what we find of his monuments;
the latter add much-needed nuance to the pictures that
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Acknowledgments
I’d like to commemorate two individuals who deeply influ-
enced my thinking in this matter, both of whom died before their
time: Simon Price, whose Rituals and Power (1984) is still the best
thing written in our time about the imperial cult, and Ehud
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