Acts 25:13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

King Agrippa and Bernice— This Agrippa was son to Herod Agrippa, whose tragical death is related ch. 12: He was by profession a Jew, had the power of the temple and the sacred treasury, and could likewise dispose of the high-priesthood as he thought proper. Bernice, his sister, was the eldest daughter of Herod Agrippa, and had been contracted in her infancy by Claudius Caesar to Mark, the son of Alexander Lysimachus, the Alabarch; but he dying before the marriage was consummated, her father married her to his own brother Herod, king of Chalcis, though that was contrary to the law of Moses. After his death she went and lived with her brother Agrippa, with whom she was suspected of an incestuous commerce; of which Josephus speaks, and to which Juvenal is supposed to refer, in a celebrated passage, Sat. 6: ver. 154, &c. To wipe off this aspersion, she endeavoured to marry again, offering herself to Polemon, king of Cilicia, upon condition that he would become a proselyte of righteousness to the Jewish religion. Polemon, who had more regard to the riches than to the character of the lady, consented to be circumcised, and actually married her. But Bernice did not continue long with her husband, which occasioned his castingoff the Jewish religion; and notwithstanding the scandal which she had formerly lain under, she went and lived where she pleased, not only continuing her criminal acquaintance (as there is too great reason to fear) with her brother Agrippa, but afterwards insinuating herself so far into the affections of Titus Vespasian, as to occasion much discourse; for she was of great beauty, and remarkably liberal: nay, she had even the prospect of being empress, had not the murmurs of the people of Rome prevented it. See Suetonius in Tito, 100: 7. Tacit. Hist. 50. 2: 100. 2 and 81. Joseph. Antiq. b. 19: 100. 5.