Berenice of Cilicia

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Berenice (b. 28) was the daughter of King Herod Agrippa I of Judea. Like her brother, Agrippa II, she was a client queen, allowed to rule parts of the Roman empire in present-day Syria. She was married first to Marcus, son of the Alabarch Alexander of Alexandria. On his early death, she was married to her father's brother, Herod of Chalcis, after whose death in 48 she lived for some years with her brother, Agrippa II. Her third husband was Polemon, king of Cilicia, but she soon deserted him, and returned to Agrippa, with whom she was living in 60 CE when Paul of Tarsus appeared before him at Caesarea (Acts xxv, 13).

During the devastation of Judaea by the Romans after the Great Jewish Revolt, she fascinated Titus Flavius, whom along with Agrippa she followed to Rome as his promised wife in 75. Her influence had been exercised vainly on behalf of the Jews in 66, but the burning of her palace alienated her sympathies. However, when Titus became emperor in 79, public opinion dictated that he should dismiss her to her own country; which he eventually, though reluctantly, did. Later in life she quietly returned to the court of Titus and was his lover.

For her influence, see Juvenal, Satire VI, and Tacitus, Histories ii. 2. She is also the subject of Bérénice, a tragedy by the French dramatist Jean Racine (1670), based on the story of her affair with the Roman emperor Titus Flavius and one by Pierre Corneille called Tite et Bérénice.