Herodias

Granddaughter of Herod the Great by his son Aristobulus whom he put to death in 7 BC, and sister to Herod Agrippa I.

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She was married, first, to her uncle Herod Philip, with whom she had a daughter, Salome. Strickened with one another during a visit by Herod Antipas to their villa, they divorced their respective spouces and married one another. This union was condemned by John the Baptist (Matt 14:3; Mk 6:17; Lk 3:19) as "unlawful." Feeling insulted and angered, Antipas wanted to "kill John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered him a prophet" (Matt 14:5). What Antipas dared not do, Herodias accomplished by way of her daughter who so pleased Antipas with her dance he offered to give her anything she asked; "Prompted by her mother, she said, "Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist" (Matt 14:8; Mk 6:24).

With this we hear no more of her in the Scripture. When Antipas was banished by Gaius-Caligula in 38 AD, the emperor offered to treat her as the sister of his good friend Agrippa rather than the wife of his new enemy Antipas, and gave her the choice of keeping her properties and living in her current style or joining her husband in exile. To her credit she chose to join her husband, and we hear of them no more.