Traitor or heroine? Pious Jew or harlot? Perhaps Queen Berenice is a mixture of all; the Jewish world’s own version of Cleopatra. And now the story of this intoxicating and most divisive of women is at the heart of an ambitious new TV show about ancient Rome.
Berenice is one of the ancient world’s best-drawn women. Not only do we meet her in her fellow Judean Josephus’s work, as well as other contemporary historians including Suetonius, Tacitus and Juvenal, but there are shadows of her in both the Midrash and Christian scriptures.
Thrice married, accused of incest, and yet also a brave Jew, her story is so extraordinary that if it wasn’t true you would struggle to believe it was real.
She was central to events that were to change our world for ever – the start of Christianity, the destruction of the Temple, the construction of the Coliseum. But you may have never heard of her.
Her appearance in the £130 million action-packed Prime Video television show Those About To Die, in which she is played by Swiss Iranian actress Lara Wolf, may change all that. As the lover of Titus, eldest son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, she takes a central role in the action, whioch takes place in 79CE. Titus, played by Victoria actor Tom Hughes, murdered and enslaved more than one million Jews from Judea. Having brought all the riches home with him from the sacking of Jerusalem, he uses the funds to build the Coliseum, which he has crafted by Jewish slaves and gifts to his grateful sports-obsessed subjects.
(l-r) Tom Hughes as Titus, Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vespasian, Jojo Macari as Domitian (Photo by: PEACOCK)
He is also in a private war with his brother Domitian to suceed their father, played by Anthony Hopkins, who is growing ever frailer. Domitian, played by Jojo Macari, aims to win the love of Rome’s populace through his job as the “master of the games”. He also aims to use Titus’s affair with Berenice against him.
Part Ben Hur and part Game of Thrones, the show introduces us to the cast of people at the core of one of the most important events in Jewish history: in particular the fascinating Berenice.
“She is one of the few women we see very clearly in this period of history,” says British historian Justin Pollard who worked as the show’s historical adviser. “It also tells us something extraordinary about Titus. Here is a man who has attempted to destroy the Jewish nation, has destroyed Jerusalem, and yet is in love with a Jewish princess, who he brings to Rome.
“That is where the trouble starts for him. Romans don’t like foreign women. They particularly don’t like Eastern women. The same happened when Julius Caesar and then Marc Antony became involved with Cleopatra. They had this idea of powerful Eastern women being suspicious, someone who will undermine the sensible male state.
Lara Wolf as Queen Berenice (Photo: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
“But the story shows how history is not just the black and white idea that a Roman goes and beats up these people and hates them. On a personal level there is a lot of interaction between Titus and the Judeans and we see that often women have this soft power. Women at the time weren’t fighting or legislating but they do engage in international diplomacy, which is exactly what is happening with Titus and Berenice. It has been brilliant to explore that relationship.”
Berenice was born around 28 CE to King Agrippa I, a descendant of the Herodian dynasty, and his wife Cypros, whose father could be traced back to the Hasmoneans. When she was ten, her father, a friend of Emperor Caligula, was made King of the then Roman province of Judea.
She was just 14 when she had her first arranged marriage – to Marcus Julius Alexander, who came from one of the most influential Jewish families in Alexandria. He died just two years later, leaving her a widow at 16.
Next, shortly before he died, her father arranged for her to marry his brother, her uncle Herod, who was to be given the kingdom of Chalcis in northern Syria. They had two sons, Berenicianus and Hyrcanus, but within just a few years he too had died – she was a widow for a second time at the age of 20.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE -- Pictured: (l-r) -- (Photo by: PEACOCK)
She is believed to have met her third husband, Polemon II, the King of Pontus, Colchis and Cilicia, when she was 22. Josephus has speculated that as well as her beauty, she was highly sought after because of her wealth. She agreed to marry Polemon only if he converted and underwent circumcision – which he did. But the marriage did not last for long, with Berenice leaving Polemon to rule Chalcis as a client Queen and co-rule Judea with her brother Agrippa II. Their close relationship – and the fact that he never married – led to rumours of incest.
It was later recounted in the Christian gospels that she was by his side when Paul the Apostle was brought in for punishment. It is recalled how Agrippa and Berenice said to one another: “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.”
It was a particularly tumultuous time in Judean history. In 66CE, the Roman in charge of Jerusalem, Florus, decided to steal some of the Temple’s treasures under the guise of imperial taxes, leading to the Great Revolt. Berenice was in the city having taken a vow of ascetism – she had shaved her head and eschewed her queenly attire – after a serious illness. When the Jews revolted, Florus had the ringleaders killed by his soldiers.
Berenice went to Florus to beg for lives of the Jews. In the process she was almost killed by the Roman soldiers and had to make a quick escape to her palace. This is how Josephus described the danger she put herself in: “Agrippa’s sister Berenice, however, who was at Jerusalem, witnessed with the liveliest emotion the outrages of the soldiers, and constantly sent her cavalry-commanders and bodyguards to Florus to implore him to put a stop to the carnage. But he, regarding neither the number of the slain nor the exalted rank of his suppliant, but only the profit accruing from the plunder, turned a deaf ear to her prayers. The mad rage of the soldiers even vented itself upon the queen. Not only did they torture and put their captives to death under her eyes, but they would have killed her also, had she not hastened to seek refuge in the palace, where she passed the night surrounded by guards, dreading an attack of the troops.”
The Jerusalem rebels managed to expel Florus and his soldiers out of the city but everyone knew that would not be the end of the matter. Berenice and Agrippa addressed the rebels in the centre of Jerusalem – asking for them to lay down their weapons, but they could not stop the Great Revolt.
Vespasian, a popular general from a well-to-do family, was sent to Jerusalem to quell the rebellion while Berenice and Agrippa escaped to his palace in Banias in the Golan Heights. They did not support the rebellion. It is likely Berenice met Titus at the Palace. He was then 30 – she ten years his senior. The age difference was no bar to what became a passionate love affair. When, after a tumultuous time in Rome, Vespasian was offered the position of emperor, he left Titus in Jerusalem to finish the job of quelling the rebellion.
Titus did it with total brutality, before returning to Rome triumphant with the riches of the Temple and thousands of Jewish slaves. Titus and Berenice, who still had her kingdom, did not see each other for five years until she visited Rome with her brother where, once again, she took up with Titus until he realised it could impact on his own prospect of becoming emperor.
Historian Cassius Dio wrote: “She expected to marry [Titus] and was already behaving in every respect as if she were his wife; but when he perceived that the Romans were displeased with the situation, he sent her away.”
University of London historian Kate Cooper says that royal women were watched closely and Berenice was no different. “They were expected to wield their womanly influence for a good cause or be blamed for influencing male leaders towards unpopular actions. When Berenice arrived in Rome as Titus’s consort, she was viewed with suspicion.”
The Judeans were just as suspicious of the woman who was literally sleeping with the enemy. The Midrash records their relationship: “This is the wicked Titus, who cursed and insulted heaven. What did he do? He grabbed a harlot in his hand, entered the holy of holies, spread out a Torah scroll and sinned [with her] upon it.”
After Titus became emperor in 79CE, Berenice returned to Rome although it is not known whether they resumed their relationship. Shortly afterwards, Titus died and Berenice disappears from history at that point.
Her story became particularly popular in the Renaissance era and she has inspired plays, novels, operas and is now at the centre of today’s version of high art, which will show some of the complexity of her story. Gone but not forgotten; the proud Jew who loved the man who destroyed Jerusalem.
Those About to Die is on Prime Video from July 19
