The second theater earthquake is believed to have tilted the scaenae wall about 8° to the north, with the upper two-thirds now gone. Al-Tawalbeh et al. (2020:8) argue this damage led to the theater’s final abandonment as extensive destruction remained unrepaired. A buttress wall built to shore up the tilting scaenae wall was incorporated into the city’s defensive system rather than functioning as part of the scaenae.

A terminus post quem of 260/261 CE is provided by a dedicatory inscription commemorating repairs after the first theater earthquake. A ~4th-5th c. CE terminus ante quem was taken from a combination of Mlynarczyk (2017)'s dating of the fifth phase of the city wall and the sediment infill that accumulated in the theater after it was abandoned. This infill contained Late Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad ceramics as well as ash bands dated by radiocarbon to 521–667 CE ( Al-Tawalbeh et al. 2020:10). Although evidence of seismic destruction is strong, the precise date of the causative earthquake remains poorly constrained.