Page 47 - A Walk to Caesarea / Joseph Patrich

A Walk to Caesarea: A Historical-Archaeological Perspective 33

semicircular towers was erected on the site of the Roman theater that had ceased Fig. 35
to function apparently as early as the fifth century. This fortress (kastron) served
as a barrack for the army stationed in the city. Palace of the Byzantine
governor, proposed
The civil governor, responsible for finances, administration, and justice in the reconstruction of Phase II,
province, was no longer of senatorial rank; the Latin element in the administration view from the northeast
gave way to Greek-speaking, eastern bureaucracy. All the inscriptions from this
period are in Greek or in local Semitic languages or scripts: Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Samaritan. The title of the civil governor was praeses or hegemon, and he lived in
the palace that had previously served the financial procurator (Figs. 33, 34, 35).The
area of the government precinct was expanded and the number of those seeking its
services grew – as evidenced by the increase in the number of benches installed
in the waiting rooms of its “tax office.” This is an architectural expression of the
excessive bureaucracy that typified Byzantine administration everywhere.
One wing of the governor’s palace served as a reception hall and law
court, which now took the shape of an apsidal hall. On its
south were the offices of the law court clerks, and
on the north, a second apsidal hall was,
apparently, the archive or library,
used for the purposes of the court as
well as the needs of the tax office.
Nearby several fragments of a large
Greek inscription were found – a copy of
an imperial edict dealing with tax payments
and judicial services (Fig. 36).