Image Details

Photo by J.J. Gottlieb, Combined Caesarea Excavations

ON THE COVER: Long before Seabiscuit, the Romans mastered the art of using horses as part of mass spectacles. The image shown here appears on a first-century A.D. ceramic oil lamp unearthed at Caesarea, the Roman capital of Judea, and depicts a desultor, a jockey whose specialty was leaping from one horse to another. Caesarea, not Jerusalem, was the most important city in Judea in the first century A.D.—at least in Roman eyes. Two articles in this issue explore this key site: “Vegas on the Med” describes the city’s vast entertainment facilities, and “Building Power” traces how architecture and city planning were used to project Roman muscle.