Procopius,de aedificiis,1.11.18–20: Caesarea maritima and the building of Harbours in late antiquity

Magnetic detection of ship ballast deposits and anchorage sites in King Herod's Roman harbour, Caesarea Maritima, Israel

“…Other historical sources also point to the poor state of repair of the harbour following this event. In the early 6th c. AD Procopius of Gaza, an early Christian orator, reported that the harbour was in disrepair, and that he watched ships wreck regularly on the harbour moles (Holum et al, 1988;Hohlfelder, 1988). Ships were no doubt wary of the harbour, with its ruined breakwater only shallowly submerged below the waves, a hazard which could rip the bottom out of a merchantman.…”

Deterioration of Israel's Caesarea Maritima's ancient harbor linked to repeated tsunami events identified in geophysical mapping of offshore stratigraphy

“…Caesarea Maritima: the ancient harbor, its deterioration and demise, and recent tsunami research When King Herod had the city of Caesarea built on the coastline of what is now Israel between 25 BCE and 9/10 BCE, he applied Roman city planning, organization and building techniques, including the costly installation of a state-of-the-art, artificial mega-harbor (Holum et al, 1988;Hohlfelder, 1988Hohlfelder, , 1996Raban, 2009;Votruba, 2007;Raban, 2008;Fig. 1).…”

Caesarea in Coastal Israel: A Benchmark for Sealevel Changes during the 1st-13th Centuries

“…Therefore, they suggested that these shards indicate that the western section of the Caesarea sandstone ridge was downfaulted several meters after the construction of the Herodian Harbor in the 1st Century CE, and then it was uplifted tectonically to its original elevation before the Crusaders' period in the 12th Century. However, subsequent assessment of those ceramic shards during the extensive archaeological excavations in Caesarea on land and at sea [6] found out that the Byzantine ceramics shards and the shells that stuck to them were probably dredged during the rehabilitation of Caesarea harbor in the 6th Century [24]. As for the suggestion of large vertical faulted offsets along the shore zone of Caesarea, the present geodetic survey of the high aqueduct, described above, shows that the aqueduct and its lithological foundation, were tectonically stable during the last 2,000 years.…”