Antipas as Tetrarch

Now Herod the tetrarch, who was in great favor with Tiberius, built a city and called it Tiberias. He built it in the best part of Galilee, at the lake of Gennesareth, which is near a village called Emmaus, where there are warm baths. Foreigners came and moved into the city. A large number of the inhabitants were Galileans, and many were forced by Herod to move there from his territory. Some of them were magistrates. He also admitted poor people who came from all over to live there. Some of them were not quite free men, and he acted as benefactor to them and freed them in great numbers, but he encouraged them not to leave the city by building them very good houses at his own expense and by giving them land as well. For he knew that it was a transgression of the ancient Jewish laws to make that place a habitation, since many tombs had to be removed to make room for the city Tiberias, and our laws state that inhabitants of such a place are unclean for seven days.

Translated by William Whiston, adapted byAaron Samuels.