Cesareia Marítima: uma análise sociocultural do plano urbanístico de Herodes Magno no século I a. C.

Abstract

This historiographic production starts with the assumption that the domiciled individuals in the city of Caesarea in the 1st century b. C. besides the sociocultural diversity, religious and political that characterized the city since its founding, respected the demarcation of the cultural areas made by Herod on his urban planning, without damaging for the preservation of its identity or importation/exportation of new sociocultural elements. More than revealing King Herod, the city of Caesarea Maritima reveals his political choices, as well as the sociocultural relations that the king of the Jews wanted to preserve. The “Herod of Caesarea”, despite its cultural uniqueness, was as plural as any inhabitant of the city. The organization of the space problematizes its cultural formation, shows its identity link not only with Jewish society, but also with the other communities of Greeks, Syrians and Romans who lived in the region. Thus, knowing Caesarea does not only mean understanding Herod, but also realizing how these individuals related to the concrete space, combined identity and otherness and made the city planned by the king of the Jews an anthropological place. This is our quest. Through the sociocultural analysis of the urban plan applied to the city of Caesarea Maritima, we hope to cross these cultural communities to find King Herod, or rather, the “Herod by Herod”, the one who is not part of the Judeo-Christian discourse. We believe that the territorial survey and the comparison between some archaeological remains gathered in Caesarea Harbor National Park and the polemic speech of Flavius Josephus will make possible to deal with our research problematic as of a theoretical device and the methodological procedure that is able to handle all the documentation. The Caesarea Maritima city became one of the biggest cities of the Roman Orient and on the 1st century a, C. it took over Jerusalem as capitol of Syria et Palaestina and the seat of Roman government in the region. The city prospered even more in the succeeding years, increased its commercial relations, and became an important oriental center for the Christianity, Judaism and Islamism. Nevertheless, we sometimes wonder if we really could treat the initials confrontations related by Josephus as evidences that the urban planning of Herod was not well succeeded due to the sociocultural diversity.