The pool was apparently built by Herod the Great during his construction of the Antonia and the renovation of the Temple Mount in the late first century BCE. The only pool known to stand in close association with the site of the Antonia, there is little doubt that it was constructed no later than the fashioning of the rock scarp above it, as the orientation of the pool conditioned a slight directional change in the rock podium's northeastern corner. It is therefore identified with the Struthius or "Struthion" ('sparrow') pool mentioned by Josephus in his description of Titus' siege of the Antonia during the Great Revolt (70 CE):