Herodias was a Jewish princess famous for her beauty and love affairs, daughter of Aristobulus III of Judea.

She was first the wife of Herod Philip, her uncle. Later Herod Antipas, brother of Herod Philip, fell in love with her, rejecting his own wife and commanding his brother to give Herodias to him. Since that moment she became the lover of her other uncle, Herod Antipas. As John the Baptist had allegedly preached condemning this union, she got, by means of her daughter Salomé, the order for John's beheading from Herod Antipas.

There is another legendary version saying that John the Baptist refused sexual propositions from Herodias and Salome, and that contributed to his death.

Herodias in fiction

• Hérodiade , opera by Jules Massenet.
• Hérodias, story by Gustave Flaubert, one of the Three Tales (Trois contes), published in 1877.

See also

• Cult of Herodias