BERENICE

born AD 28 mistress of the Roman emperor Titus and a participant in the events leading up to the fall of Jerusalem. The eldest daughter of Herod Agrippa I by his wife Cypros, Berenice was married at a young age to Marcus, the son of Alexander the Alabarch. Before consummating the marriage, Marcus died, and Berenice then married Herod, king of Chalcis, with whom she had two sons. Following his death in AD 48, she lived with her brother, Herod Agrippa II. Suspicion that they enjoyed an incestuous relationship caused her to marry Polemon, priest-king of Cilicia, but she soon left him and returned to her brother. During a massacre of Jews at Jerusalem in 65, Berenice risked her life to intercede for them with the Roman procurator of Judaea, Gessius Florus. She and Herod Agrippa II worked at that time to dissuade the Jews from their planned rebellion. Titus had fallen in love with Berenice during the period that he was in Judaea (6770). After the Roman recapture of Jerusalem, Berenice and her brother went to Rome (c. 75). Titus took her as his mistress and lived openly with her for a time. He dared not marry her because of her foreign origins, and finally he sent her away. She returned to Rome in 79, but the love affair was not resumed. died c. 246 BC daughter of Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Arsinoe I of Egypt. She was married to the Seleucid ruler Antiochus II Theos, supplanting his first wife, Laodice, whose children she persuaded him to bar from the succession to the throne in favour of her own. Laodice, however, persuaded Antiochus to come to Ephesus (in Asia Minor), where he died in 246, perhaps a victim of her intrigues. The former queen then ordered her partisans to kill Berenice and her children, who had taken refuge at Daphne, near Antioch, in Syria. Aroused by the murder, Ptolemy III Euergetes, Berenice's brother, launched a successful war (the Third Syrian War) against Laodice and her son, Seleucus II.