Citadel of Tiberias
The reason for the building at Tiberias by Herod Antipater of his citadel is very clear. It was not too much of a commercial town and the site was dominated by a hill where he could build a castle and yet be near the shore. And the neighboring baths made the place famous throughout the Roman world. The building of the citadel took place but a short time before our Lord began His ministry on the lake. The fact that the city was so new, artificial and unclean partly explains its absence from the records of Christ’s ministry. Our Lord avoided the half-Greek cities, and among the courtiers and officials He would have been less at home than among the common people of the country. In 1837, as we have already said in these notes, there was a great earthquake in Tiberias. There is little to be found of the remains of its former grandeur. Walter Besant says: “This town in the time of Herod was covered with beautiful villas, provided with winter and summer rooms, warmed by hot iron pipes, decorated marble pavements, columns, cloisters and porticos, having gardens round them. * * * This was the city upon which our Lord gazed from the lake before it. A pile of noble buildings rising from the level of the lake behind a low sea wall; theaters, amphitheaters, forums, temples, synagogues, baths, rich houses, all crowned by the lofty fortress looking down upon the city. In the streets wandered the Roman soldiers, the slaves ran about working, the gladiators lay in the shades, and the scholarly rabbi sat fiercely dividing the word.”
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