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The Jewish historian Josephus noted:
“At Caesarea he [Herod the Great] constructed a major port along a shore where there was none, enclosing a harbor larger than the Piraeus [the largest seaport in Greece]. Then he erected a whole city of white stone crowned with a temple to Rome and Augustus – all within a twelve-year period.” Regarding the temple's statue of Augustus, he wrote that it was "not inferior to the Olympian Zeus.” (Jewish Wars I.21.7)
We know exactly where that remarkable temple once stood: on the highest and most prominent part of Caesarea Maritima, overlooking the harbor and very close to the coastline of that day.
Little remains of that temple. It has either deteriorated, been carried away, been re-purposed, or remains yet to be excavated. What little that has been identified, has enabled scholars to surmise what the temple looked like originally.
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The photograph above is a close-up of the historical marker located on the temple’s foundation, scholarship’s proposal of the temple’s appearance.
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