So, Herodias’ granddaddy, Herod the Great, killed her father. But he was kind enough to arrange a marriage to his son, her uncle, Herod Phillip. Along with their daughter Salome they lived in Rome.
Antipas, another son of HG, was installed as a puppet by Rome to rule Galilee.
One summer he visited his half-brother, Phillip. Under his brother’s roof. Antipas began an affair with Herodias. The ratchetness can’t be overstated, as Antipas was Herodias’ uncle too. Phew!
After divorcing their respective spouses Antipas married Herodias and she and Salome now called Galilee home. It was good to be back. Herodias had missed the drama, danger and dysfunction that was the Herod brand. More importantly, she was with a man bound to go places and take her and Salome with him.
The only thorn in her side was that raggedy preacher John the Baptist who went around saying she and Antipas were a bad influence. But worst, Antipas had no better sense than to listen to him, thinking him holy.
But she’d fix that. If that preacher thought, he was going to break up their marriage and send her packing he had another thing coming.
She waited until Antipas’ birthday party. Once he was good and drunk, she served up her daughter to put John’s head on a platter.
Thinking her troubles were over, Herodias fanned Antipas’ ambition more than it already was. It can’t be said he wasn’t warned to slow his roll. But Herodias stayed in his ear with imperial dreams of her own. Well, Rome finally got sick of a puppet not knowing his place.
They banished him with Herodias and Salome in tow to France. By listening to a woman he wouldn’t do without, they both got everything they never wanted; power and prestige gone forever from their lives now ending in well-deserved humiliation and obscurity.
Reference – Mark 6: 17-28
