Hi friends and Israel fans,
come and join me in another episode of
Israel with Moshe
We are seated here in this Roman theater.
We're going to talk a little bit about
public buildings for public use in the Roman culture.
See, when Romans built a city, they built
it exactly the same wherever they went,
in Rome, in Israel, in England, in France,
all Roman cities look the same.
there are two streets, one goes from east to west and one goes from north from south,
those are called Cardo, the main shopping streets.
In the center, in the meeting point of those two streets,
you have the public buildings,
because Romans thought if people have lots of time,
and all Roman citizens had a lot of
free time, because there were lots of slaves,
when people lost a war, they became your slaves,
so slaves were not a problem, you had
as many slaves as you wanted,
there were Roman soldiers to do all your wars,
and so as a citizen you had no responsibility
and if you have no responsibility,
you might start thinking why Caesar? why not me?
and that creates problems, so the concept of Rome was "bread and circuses, bread and entertainment"
keep people fed, keep them entertained,
they won't rebel against you! and to keep
them entertained, you have to build all
those public areas, so people will have
something to do, so when you look at the center
of the city, you'll see that the center has a bath house,
like a spa, it has shopping areas, it has a hippodrome
for horse racing, it has an amphitheater
for gladiator fights,
it has a theater, where we sit at right now, and people
would wake up in the morning, they would go
and visit all those facilities, and at
the end of the day, they will go home and say:
Wow, this was a really hard day, let's prepare for tomorrow, and this way,
you would keep people loyal to you,
people entertained, people fed, that keep them loyal,
but you also would give the people a sense of belonging
they belong to the Roman empire,
Roman empire wanted to create a global culture.
In our world today, when you want to be part
of a global culture, then you speak English,
you watch MTV you drink Coke,
you eat McDonald's, you think that you're part of a global culture, that's the same in Rome:
you spoke Greek or Latin, you had Latin names,
you built your houses in Roman style, and your whole culture was Roman,
and that's where you felt that you're part of Rome, and when you feel that you're part of Rome,
you paid taxes and you had no
problem with paying taxes,
so we'll talk later about the hippodrome,
we might mention the amphitheater for gladiator fights,
but a theater, this is where we sit now, is a
very very important part of
Roman culture, this theater was not only for entertainment purposes, it was educational,
people would come to this theater
and on the stage, there would be shows
played only by men by the way, who would change
their facial expressions holding masks, this is why the
Greek word for actors is hypocrite,
and those people would show you daily
situations and how it gets so complicated,
that it seems like there's no solution,
and the final scene, the god shows up
from stage, it solves all your problems and
you understand that the interference of
gods in your life is very very important.
that was gods in plural, because Romans were pagans and they believed in many many gods,
each god had a different role in Roman mythology,
and this is by the way the main reason why Jews were
not allowed to come into Roman theaters, because the
Rabbis, the leaders, did not want the Jews to be influenced by this idea of paganism.
This theater looks just exactly the same as
any other theater in the Roman empire.
Before it was excavated, it was covered to the top
with sand. When they excavated, they realized that
90 percent of the theater
is actually original, except for the sitting benches,
those were made from marble and they were taken by
the Muslims to build the city in Akko,
that's called secondary use in archaeology, and
we had to replace those marble seats since we us this today as an open air theater
in summer time for shows and performances on stage.
This theater sits somewhere between 3500 to 5000
people, and if you estimate one seat in the theater to
equal 10 or 15 people in the city, we're
talking about a city of 35,000 to 50,000 people,
that's a major city. 
Before, we mentioned that Caesarea was the capital
of the Romans, the headquarters of the Romans,
think about a very very big Roman city, with 50 000 people, with everything that you can
think about in a roman city,
and think that this was all built, this was a vision,
a dream, and built by King Herod the Great.
This theater, the acoustic here is amazing,
and when you stand in the middle
of the theater and speak softly,
your voice could be heard all over.
All Roman theaters had beautiful acoustic,
in fact there's a research done about
Roman theaters that shows that Romans
were masters in creating acoustic, it has
to do a lot with the arches that you see
and with the half circle shape of the theater.
Don't confuse this with an amphitheater,
because amphi means two, an amphitheater means
an oval building used for gladiator fights.
This is half a circle, this is a theater for
theological shows, entertainment
and definitely one of the most important
places in Roman culture, people would
come here every day at least a couple of hours a day,
to be influenced and get the idea of Roman culture
and Roman gods
