BERNICE
(Ber·niʹce) [victorious].
Daughter of Herod Agrippa I by his wife Cypros; born about 28 C.E.; sister of Drusilla and Herod Agrippa II. (See HEROD.) Bernice and her brother Agrippa visited Governor Festus at Caesarea in 58 C.E., where the two of them, at the invitation of Festus, “came with much pompous show and entered into the audience chamber together with military commanders as well as men of eminence in the city.” The prisoner Paul was then brought in and allowed to make his powerful and eloquent defense before all these dignitaries.—Acts 25:13, 23; 26:1-30.
Secular history tells of the immoral life of this shameless woman. She was engaged to a certain Marcus at a very early age, but he died before the marriage, and at the age of thirteen she married her uncle. By him she had two boys before he died in 48 C.E. She then incestuously lived with her brother until public scandal pressured her into marrying Polemon the king of Cilicia. Soon, however, she deserted him and again became her brother’s consort, and it was during this time that she and Agrippa visited Caesarea. Though Bernice attempted to defend the Jews in 66, she did not hesitate in taking an oath of allegiance to the Romans with whom she had at least two affairs, first as the mistress of Vespasian and then as the mistress of his son Titus. The latter would have married Bernice except for Roman anti-Semitism.