Tiberius

Tiberius was born at Rome on 16 November 42 BC, by the date that Suetonius found in the public records (Suetonius, Tiberius 5). He was the son of the wife of Augustus and succeeded him (Josephus, Antiquities 18.32–33) when Augustus died on 19 August AD 14 (Suetonius, Augustus 100.1). He died at Misenum on 16 March AD 37, in the twenty-third year of his reign and the seventy-eighth of his life (Tacitus, Annals 6.50) (Suetonius, Tiberius 73.1).

The public life of Jesus falls within his reign. Luke dates the first preaching of John the Baptist to “the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (Luke 3:1); see John the Baptist Preaches at the Jordan. Tacitus writes that Christus was executed by Pontius Pilate while Tiberius was emperor (Tacitus, Annals 15.44). Herod Antipas named his new city on the Sea of Galilee Tiberias in his honour (Josephus, Antiquities 18.36).