Jewish and Roman period
Tiberias was founded sometime around 20 CE in Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and Peraea by the Roman Jewish client king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. Herod Antopas made it the capital of his realm in the Galilee. Tiberias had a Jewish majority, living alongside a heterogeneous population. It was named in honour of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. There is a legend that Tiberias was built on the site of the Israelite village of Rakkat, mentioned in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 19:35). A discussion of Tiberias as Rakkat appears in the Talmud. In The Antiquities of the Jews, the Roman-Jewish historianJosephus states that a village with hot springs named Emmaus was located near Tiberias. This location is repeated in The Wars of the Jews.
In the days of Antipas, the more religious (as opposed to Hellenized) Jews refused to settle there; the presence of a cemetery rendered the site ritually unclean. Antipas settled many non-Jews there from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains in order to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the acropolis. The prestige of Tiberias was so great that the sea of Galilee soon came to be named the sea of Tiberias; however, what would now be called Jewish zealots continued to call it 'Yam Ha-Kinerett', its traditional name. The city was governed by a city council of 600 with a committee of 10 until 44 CE when a Roman Procurator was set over the city after the death of Agrippa I.
Under the Roman Empire, the city was known by its Greek name Τιβεριάς (Tiberiás, Modern Greek Τιβεριάδα Tiveriáda), an adaptation of the taw-suffixed Semitic form that preserved its feminine grammatical gender. In 61 CE Agrippa II annexed the city to his kingdom whose capital was Caesarea Phillippi. During the First Jewish–Roman War Josephus Flavius took control of the city and destroyed Herod's palace, but was able to stop the city from being pillaged by his Jewish army. Where
