One of the more popular characters in my City of God series is Queen Berenike. She was an important member of the powerful Herod family.
In my novel Retribution, I said that Berenike’s ambition was to be “Queen of All the Earth.” That’s not just a slogan I made up. That very likely was her goal in life. And here’s a shocker—she almost achieved it. But more of that in due time. Who was Queen Berenike? What do we know about her?
One problem we have is that Berenike was a woman in an extremely patriarchal society. Information about women in antiquity is often hard to get. Most of the historical data mentioning them is not actually about them—it’s about their relationship to some man that ancient historians considered important. Luckily for us, Berenike was related to several powerful men.
So we know quite a lot about Berenike. Most of our information comes from the Jewish historian Josephus, who knew her and her brother very well. The three were nearly the same age and were all members of the Jewish aristocracy in the middle part of the first century.
But let’s start at the beginning. Berenike grew up in a very, very, very weird family—the Herod family…
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Herods
Berenike was born around the year AD 28. Her father was Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of the infamous Herod the Great.
Herod the Great is familiar to everybody from the Christmas story. The gospel of Matthew tells a tale in which Herod killed all the male children in Bethlehem, for fear one of them might be the new king. Josephus tells us that Herod executed his favorite wife because he thought she might be cheating on him. And he executed three of his sons, because he thought they might want to steal his place on the throne.
Herod the Great died in misery, an old, paranoid man who was hated by everybody. But he was an energetic builder. One of his greatest accomplishments was rebuilding the Temple Mount on a grand scale, a project that lasted for decades after his death. If you visit the Temple Mount today, you’ll see the amazing work he did.
Berenike’s father, Agrippa, born around 10 or 11 BC, was both a Jew and a Roman citizen. His grandfather was Herod the Great, and his grandmother came from the family of Macabean kings. Agrippa was educated in Caesar’s palace in Rome, where he developed a taste for fine living. He was a close friend of a member of the imperial family, Claudius, who later became Caesar.
Agrippa had no kingdom, but he wanted one badly. He wasted his entire inheritance on lavish parties in Rome, trying to buy influence that would get him a kingdom. After squandering all his money, he left Rome around the year AD 23, broke and in disgrace. And so, around the age of 33, he returned to Judea where he’d been born. There he married his cousin…
Berenike’s mother was Cypros, a granddaughter of Herod the Great. She was married off to Agrippa when she was in her mid-teens, somewhere between 13 and 16 years old. Cypros had a more famous sister named Herodias, who was married to her uncle, Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great. Cypros ultimately bore five children, 2 boys and 3 girls. The first child was a son, Agrippa Junior, born in AD 27. Berenike was next, about a year later.
Berenike’s earliest memories were probably of life in the city of Tiberias, where her father, Agrippa, worked as a sort of city manager. Tiberias was the capital city of Galilee, the seat of government for Berenike’s uncle, Herod Antipas. This was about the time John the baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth were making a name for themselves in Galilee. Jesus had his headquarters about six miles north of Tiberias, in Capernaum.
Herodias hated John the baptizer. When Antipas threw a birthday party for himself (probably his 50th birthday), Herodias used her 11-year-old daugher Salome to do a dance for the men. Antipas liked the dance so much, he asked the girl what she wanted. Herodias told the girl to ask for the head of John the baptizer. Salome did, and Antipas gave it to her. It’s very plausible that Berenike, aged maybe 3 or 4, was actually there. Because her parents certainly were.
A Con Man for a Father
When Berenike was about 4 or 5, her father and uncle had a massive fight. Agrippa lost his job, so he moved with his family to Antioch, the capital city of Syria. There, he found honest work as an influence-peddler, taking advantage of his friendship with the Roman legate to Syria, a Senator named Flaccus. When Berenike was 5 or 6, Flaccus learned that Agrippa was taking bribes. Agrippa and the family skipped town in the dead of night, moving on to Alexandria, the largest city in Egypt.
In Alexandria, Agrippa wangled a large loan from the leading Jew in the city, the “alabarch” Alexander. The alabarch had extreme doubts that Agrippa would ever pay back the loan, but Berenike’s mother, Cypros, played a crucial role in this deal. It’s not clear what persuasive arts she used, but Cypros got the deal done. Agrippa used this money to travel to Rome to seek his fortune, probably about the year AD 33 or 34, leaving his family behind in Egypt. Cypros was pregnant and bore a daughter there in Egypt, Mariamne. Berenike was now a big sister.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Agrippa spent a couple of years borrowing huge amounts of money from wealthy Romans while he tried to buy his way into favor with the emperor, Tiberius, so as to get the kingdom he had always dreamed of. But Agrippa said some treasonous things to the emperor’s crazy grandson, and wound up in prison. He could have died there, but instead…
In AD 37, the family’s luck changed. The old, pedophile emperor Tiberius suddenly died, and his crazy grandson, Caligula, became the new emperor. Caligula was a great friend of Agrippa, and gave him his longtime wish—a kingdom of his own.
Daughter of a King
Berenike and her family reunited with Agrippa in AD 37 or 38. They moved to Agrippa’s new domain, a territory in the current-day Golan Heights. It wasn’t much of a kingdom, but it was a start. It provided enough income that Agrippa could pay off the loans to his (very surprised) creditors. Agrippa was no longer a huckster and a con. He was finally a king. And Berenike, at the age of 9 or 10, had become a princess.
Over the next few years, Cypros bore two more children. One was a son, Drusus, named after one of Agrippa’s boyhood friends. Drusus died while still a child, but Cypros also bore a daughter named Drusilla, the female variant of Drusus. Drusilla was born about the year AD 38, and grew up to be a great beauty. Some said she was even more beautiful than Berenike, which did not contribute much to sisterly affection between the two.
Agrippa was keen to expand his kingdom, so he spent a fair bit of time in Rome. He was there in January of AD 41 when the young emperor Caligula was assassinated. For a brief moment, it looked like Caligula might be the last emperor of Rome. The Senate showed signs of wanting to return to a Roman Republic. But Agrippa persuaded his old friend Claudius to put himself forward as the new emperor. And Agrippa persuaded the Senate to accept him. This had major repercussions on the Roman empire for centuries, and we still feel the impact of this decision today.
By way of thanks, Claudius increased Agrippa’s kingdom massively. It now included Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Idumea, Perea, and the entire region known today as the Golan Heights. Agrippa had fully achieved his greatest ambition in life—to be king over the same domain as his famous grandfather, Herod the Great.
Berenike was now about 13 years old, a beautiful young princess, living the dream. But that was actually a problem for her…
(To be continued…)
