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Herod Antipas (born 20 BC) was an ancient leader
(Tetrarch) of Galilee and Peraea.  A son of Herod
the Great and Malthace, who was from Samaria,
Herod Antipas became Tetrarch in 4 BC upon the
death of his father.  His first task was to
restore order caused by the rebellion of the
Jewish Feast of Pentecost (Shavuot) in that year.

Herod Antipas followed in his father's footsteps
as a builder.  He rebuilt Sepphoris in Galilee and
Livia in Perea, but his most noted accomplishment
was the construction of Tiberias as his capital on
the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. The city
was named to honor his patron, Emperor Tiberius.
The city gave its name to the sea, and was for a
long time a great school and center of Jewish
learning.

He married Phasaelis, who was the daughter of
Aretas IV, king in Arabia. He divorced her and
married Herodias, the wife of his half-brother
Herod Philip; for which he and Herodias were
condemned by John the Baptist and blamed by
Flavius Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, v).
The union with Herodias brought him to ruin, for
it involved him in war with his original
father-in-law, in which he lost an army. A later
Christian interpolation inserted in Josephus'
Antiquities of the Jews|Antiquities moralizes the
calamity
:'as a punishment for what he did against John
that was called the Baptist; for Herod slew him,
who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to
exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards
one another, and piety towards God, and so to come
to baptism' (Antiquities, XVIII, v, 2).

Both Matthew and Mark give the reason why Herodias
sought the Baptist's head (Matthew xiv, 3-12; Mark
vi, 17-29), out of which much legend has been
spun, culminating in Richard Strauss' opera Salome
(opera)|Salome, to a libretto of Oscar Wilde.
(Josephus simply attributes John's execution to
Herod's uneasy jealousy over John's influence.) 

Herod Antipas is also famous as Tetrarch at the
time of the ministry and trial of Jesus Christ,
who appeared before him and was mocked (Luke,
xxiii, 7-13).

Herod Antipas was exiled by the Roman Emperor
Gaius Caesar Caligula to Lyons, in Gaul in 39 A.D.
according to Josephus (Antiquities) who says,
however, in the Jewish Wars (II, ix, 6) "So Herod
died in Spain whither his wife had followed him".

A much later spurious 'letter of Herod Antipas' is
sometimes naively cited as being in 'records of
the Roman senate.' The reference itself is equally
spurious; there are no such records of the Roman
Senate.