Queen Berenice: A Woman of Contrasts

Numbers 6:2 explicitly includes women (איש או אשה) in the laws of nazir.

His brother Tiberius would have a prominent career in the Roman government, including being head of Titus’s army at the time that it conquered Jerusalem. Marcus’s father, Alexander, was a customs official who oversaw imported goods being brought into Egypt by way of the Alexandrian harbor, one of the most important ports in the Roman Empire. Marcus’s uncle, Alexander’s brother, was none other than the great scholar and philosopher Philo of Alexandria.

Josephus, Antiquities, 19.5.1.

Berenice and Agrippa II are king and queen of Chalcis, but seem to have lived in a palace in Judea at least part of the time. They were prince and princess of Judea after all; their father, Agrippa I, was Judea’s last king.

This is one of the reasons that the persistent rumor about her and her brother being in an incestual relationship started. Josephus credits this rumor as the explanation for Berenice’s surprising and shortlived third marriage to the king of Pontus (Antiquities, 20.7.3):

But as for Berenice, she lived a widow a long while after the death of Herod [king of Chalcis], who was both her husband and her uncle; but when the report went that she had criminal conversation with her brother, [Agrippa, junior,] she persuaded Poleme, who was king of Cilicia, to be circumcised, and to marry her, as supposing that by this means she should prove those calumnies upon her to be false; and Poleme was prevailed upon, and that chiefly on account of her riches. Yet did not this matrimony endure long; but Berenice left Poleme, and, as was said, with impure intentions. So he forsook at once this matrimony, and the Jewish religion.

Even years later, when she was romantically linked with Titus, rumors about an incestuous relationship with her brother Agrippa II dogged Berenice. Part of the reason for this rumor is that Agrippa never married or had children, and we know from multiple sources, such as Josephus’s writings and the book of Acts, that Berenice shared political control with Agrippa. One reference to their relationship, which was intended to amuse Roman readers, is made by the Roman poet Juvenal in his Satires (6; Loeb’s Classics Library 91). Juvenal describes the misadventures of a high-maintenance wife who, to her husband’s chagrin, buys herself jewels. Among these is a “legendary diamond…once given by the barbarian Agrippa to his incestuous sister to wear.” The disdain in this line for both Agrippa II and Berenice is hard to miss.

On Agrippa’s and Berenice’s relationship with the early Christian Church, see Acts 12:1–5, 19–24, 25:13–26:30.

Tacitus, Histories, 2.2–4.

The scandal around Titus was not simply due to Berenice. Before becoming emperor, he was viewed—apparently by Romans and Jews alike— as a capricious and indulgent prince. The Roman historian, Suetonius, describes the rumors thus (The Lives of Twelve Caesars,Life of Titus 7; LCL 38):

Besides cruelty, he was also suspected of riotous living, since he protracted his revels until the middle of the night with the most prodigal of his friends; likewise of unchastity because of his troops of male prostitutes and eunuchs, and his notorious passion for queen Berenice, to whom it was even said that he promised marriage. He was suspected of greed as well; for it was well known that in cases which came before his father he put a price on his influence and accepted bribes.

Joseph Gedaliah Klausner, History of the Second Temple, vol. 5 (5 vols.; Jerusalem: Ahiasaf, 1949-1951), 265 [Hebrew].

Officially, the rabbis seem negative about the rebellion; see, for example, b. Gittin 56a. Nevertheless, although popular Jewish culture has imbibed the lesson of “pointless hatred destroying the Temple,” this is more about how Jews treated each other as opposed to any positive attitude towards Rome and their treatment of Judea. In fact, the rabbis’ attitude toward Rome is almost uniformly negative and hostile.