Berenice

Daughter of Costobar and Salome, sister of Herod I. Her marriage with her cousin Aristobulus was unhappy. The husband, being proud of his Maccabean descent by his mother, Mariamne, taunted his wife with her low birth. Berenice thereupon complained to her mother, and this fact intensified their mutual bitterness. When, shortly after the marriage (6 B.C.), Aristobulus was assassinated, Berenice was believed to have had a share in his death.

Being now free, Berenice married Theudion, the maternal uncle of Antipater, son of Herod I. Her second husband was put to death for participation in a plot against the life of Herod; and Berenice then married Archelaus. With him she went to Rome to solicit of Augustus the carrying out of her father's testament, and remained there until her death. During her sojourn at Rome she gained the favor of Augustus and the friendship of Antonia, wife of Drusus, who later paid the debts of Agrippa I., the son of Berenice, owed by him to the treasury of the emperor Tiberius.

Bibliography:

  * Schürer, Gesch. des Jüdischen Volkes, i. 456, ii. 151, 152;
  * Brann, Agrippa II., in Monatsschrift, 1870, pp. 333-444, 530-548, and 1871, pp. 13-28;
  * Grätz, Gesch. der Juden, 3d ed., iii. 232.



G. I. Br.