The higher classes, poisoned by the seductive arts of Rome, had become deaf to the voice of duty, and the wise and vigilant among the nation feared, with reason, that the whole body would be infused with the moral prostration of its highest members. The aristocratic families were, indeed, so deeply steeped in immorality that the middle classes could hardly escape its contaminating influence. The bad example was set by the last members of the house of Herod, who were educated either in Rome itself or in the small courts of the princely Roman vassals. Agrippa II (born 27, died 91-93), son of the last noble Judæan king Agrippa I, a mere stripling of seventeen years at the time of his father's death, drank in the poisoned air of the Roman court, where the Messalinas and Agrippinas openly displayed the most hideous vices. After the demise of Herod II, the Emperor Claudius gave Agrippa the tiny kingdom of Chalcis (about 50). It was whispered that this last scion of the Hasmonæan and Herodian houses led an incestuous life with his beautiful sister Berenice, who was a year younger than himself, and a widow on the death of her husband, Herod II. There was probably some truth in the rumor, as Agrippa found himself forced to silence it. He betrothed his sister to Polemon, king of Cilicia, who, perhaps allured by her wealth even more than by her beauty, adopted Judaism to obtain her hand. But impelled by her inconstant humor, Berenice soon left Polemon, and was free again to indulge in her licentious intrigues. Agrippa's second sister, Mariamne II (born 34), married to a native of Palestine, Julius Archelaus, dissolved that union, though she had borne him a daughter, and became the wife of the Judæan Demetrius of Alexandria, probably the son of the Alabarch Alexander, and in that case the brother of the apostate Tiberius Alexander. Still more depraved was his youngest sister, the beautiful Drusilla (born 38). Her father had promised her, when still a child, to the prince Epiphanes, the son of his friend Antiochus of Commagene, but only upon condition of his becoming a convert to Judaism. After Agrippa's death, however, Epiphanes refused to accept Judaism, and the young Agrippa gave his sister Drusilla to Aziz, king of Emesa, who declared himself willing to embrace her faith. Heedless, however, of conjugal duty, Drusilla soon abandoned her husband, married a Roman, the Governor Felix, and for his sake gave up her faith and became a pagan. The envy with which Berenice inspired Drusilla was supposed to have been the motive of the infidelity of the younger sister both to her husband and to her religion.