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Salome (; , related to שָׁלוֹם, "peace"; ), also known as Salome III, was a Jews princess, the daughter of Herod II and princess Herodias. She was granddaughter of Herod the Great and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas. She is known from the New Testament, where she is not named, and from an account by Josephus. In the New Testament, the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas demands and receives the head of John the Baptist. According to Josephus, she was first married to her uncle Philip the Tetrarch, after whose death in AD 34 she married her cousin Aristobulus of Chalcis, thus becoming queen of Lesser Armenia.
The gospel story of her dance at the birthday celebration of her stepfather, who had John the Baptist beheaded at her mother's request, inspired art, literature and music over an extended period of time. Among the paintings are those by Titian and Gustave Moreau. Oscar Wilde's 1891 eponymous play and its 1905 operatic setting by Richard Strauss are among the literary and musical realisations which portrayed her. She also appeared in film, for instance in the 1953 film Salome starring Rita Hayworth.
The account in the Gospel of Mark reads:
But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias's daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you." And he vowed to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom." And she went out and said to her mother, "For what should I ask?" And she said, "The head of John the Baptist." And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother., ESV
The parallel passage in the Gospel of Matthew reads:
Some ancient Greek versions of Mark read "Herod's daughter Herodias" (rather than "daughter of the said Herodias").Taylor, V. (1966). The gospel according to St Mark, 2nd Edition. London: Macmillan (pp. 310ff.) To scholars using these ancient texts, both mother and daughter had the same name. However, the Vulgate translates the passage as it is above, and western Church Fathers therefore tended to refer to Salome as "Herodias's daughter" or just "the girl". Because she is otherwise unnamed in the Bible, the idea that both mother and daughter were named Herodias gained some currency in early modern Europe. The New Revised Standard Version follows this, translating Mark 6:22 as "When his daughter Herodiasa came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, 'Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it, with a footnote: "a Other ancient authorities read 'the daughter of Herodias herself.
Herodias's daughter is arguably not Salome the disciple, who is a witness to the crucifixion of Jesus in Mark 15:40. However, the apocryphal Book of the Resurrection of Christ, pseudonymically attributed to the apostle Bartholomew, names a "Salome the temptress" as among the women who went to the empty tomb, perhaps reflecting an early tradition that Salome, the daughter of Herodias, was at the tomb.
Herodias ... was married to Herod II, the son of Herod the Great, who was born of Mariamne, the daughter of Simon the high priest, who had a daughter, Salome; after whose birth Herodias took upon her to confound the laws of our country, and divorced herself from her husband while he was alive, and was married to Herod Antipas, her husband's brother by the father's side, he was tetrarch of Galilee; but her daughter Salome was married to Philip, the son of Herod, and tetrarch of Trachonitis; and as he died childless, Aristobulus, the son of Herod, the brother of Herod Agrippa, married her; they had three sons, Herod, Agrippa, and Aristobulus;According to William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities:William Smith (editor). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. 1870. , 4.
A tradition based on Joseph situates her birth in the Spanish city of Italica and her death in Lleida.
Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, notably in regard to the dance mentioned in the New Testament, which is thought to have had an erotic element to it, and in some later transformations it has further been iconized as the Dance of the Seven Veils. Other elements of Christian tradition concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John's death.(Mark 6:25–27; Matthew 14:8–11) David Flusser, a scholar of early Christianity, believes that her "biographical profile suggests a normal, moral personality". Nevertheless, a similar motif was struck by Oscar Wilde in his Salome, in which she plays a femme fatale, and by Ada L. Harris in her 1906 novel "The Sin Of Salome", who casts her as a predatory vampire seductress. This parallel representation of the Christian iconography, made even more memorable by Richard Strauss' opera based on Wilde's work, is as consistent with Josephus' account as the traditional Christian depiction; however, according to the Romanized Jewish historian, Salome lived long enough to marry twice and raise several children. Few literary accounts elaborate the biographical data given by Josephus.
Despite Josephus' account, she was not consistently called Salome until the 19th century when Gustave Flaubert (following Josephus) referred to her as "Salome" in his short story "Herodias".
Titian's version ( illustration c.1515) emphasizes the contrast between the innocent girlish face and the brutally severed head. Because of the maid by her side, this Titian painting, like others of the subject, is also considered to be Judith with the Head of Holofernes. Unlike Salome who goes nameless in the Christian bible, Judith is a Judeo-Christian mythical patriot whose story is perhaps less psychological and as she was a widow, may not be particularly girlish nor innocent in representations.
In Moreau's version ( illustration) the figure of Salome is emblematic of the femme fatale, a fashionable trope of fin-de-siecle decadence. In his 1884 novel À rebours, Frenchman Joris-Karl Huysmans describes the depiction of Salome in Moreau's painting:
No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles, – a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.Huysmans À rebours – Toni Bentley (2002) Sisters of Salome: 24
At the time, British law forbade the depiction of biblical figures on stage. Wilde wrote the play originally in French and then published an English translation by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (titled Salome). To this Granville Bantock composed incidental music, which was premiered at the Court Theatre, London, on 19 April 1918.
Shortly after the success of Strauss' opera, Antoine Mariotte created another opera based on Wilde's original French script. It was premiered on 30 October 1908 at the Grand Théâtre at Lyon. This opera was revived only in 2005 at the Montpellier Festival.
U2 recorded a song called "Salome" that was included as a b-side to their single "Even Better Than The Real Thing," which was released in 1991.
Philip Lane. Notes to Naxos CD 8555218 (2022)
In the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, the principal character Norma Desmond is portrayed as writing a screenplay for a silent film treatment of the legend of Salome, attempting to get the screenplay produced, and performing one of the scenes from her screenplay after going mad.
She was portrayed by Jayalalitha in the 1973 film Jesus.
Among the numerous art references in Dario Argento's 1977 film, Suspiria, we can see four of Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's 1891 tragedy, Salome.
Other Salome films include:
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