Thayer's Greek Lexicon

 Herod = "heroic"
1. the name of a royal family that flourished among the Jews in the
times of Christ and the Apostles. Herod the Great was the son of
Antipater of Idumaea. Appointed king of Judaea B.C. 40 by the
Roman Senate at the suggestion of Antony and with the consent of
Octavian, he at length overcame the great opposition which the
country made to him and took possession of the kingdom B.C. 37;
and after the battle of Actium, he was confirmed by Octavian,
whose favour he ever enjoyed. He was brave and skilled in war,
learned and sagacious; but also extremely suspicious and cruel.
Hence he destroyed the entire royal family of Hasmonaeans, put to
death many of the Jews that opposed his government, and proceeded
to kill even his dearly beloved wife Mariamne of the Hasmonaean
line and his two sons she had borne him. By these acts of
bloodshed, and especially by his love and imitation of Roman
customs and institutions and by the burdensome taxes imposed upon
his subjects, he so alienated the Jews that he was unable to
regain their favour by his splendid restoration of the temple and
other acts of munificence. He died in the 70th year of his age,
the 37th year of his reign, the 4th before the Dionysian era. In
his closing years John the Baptist and Christ were born; Matthew
narrates that he commanded all the male children under two years
old in Bethlehem to be slain.
2. Herod surnamed "Antipas", was the son of Herod the Great and
Malthace, a Samaritan woman. After the death of his father he was
appointed by the Romans tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. His first
wife was the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia; but he
subsequently repudiated her and took to himself Herodias, the wife
of his brother Herod Philip; and in consequence Aretas, his
father-in-law, made war against him and conquered him. He cast
John the Baptist into prison because John had rebuked him for this
unlawful connection; and afterwards, at the instigation of
Herodias, he ordered him to be beheaded. Induced by her, too, he
went to Rome to obtain from the emperor the title of king. But in
consequence of the accusations brought against him by Herod
Agrippa I, Caligula banished him (A.D. 39. to Lugdunum in Gaul,
where he seems to have died. He was light minded, sensual and
vicious.
3. Herod Agrippa I was the son of Aristobulus and Berenice, and
grandson of Herod the Great. After various changes in fortune, he
gained the favour of Caligula and Claudius to such a degree that
he gradually obtained the government of all of Palestine, with the
title of king. He died at Caesarea, A.D. 44, at the age of 54, in
the seventh [or the 4th, reckoning from the extension of his
dominions by Claudius] year of his reign, just after having
ordered James the apostle, son of Zebedee, to be slain, and Peter
to be cast into prison: Acts 12:21
4. (Herod) Agrippa II, son of Herod Agrippa I. When his father died
he was a youth of seventeen. In A.D. 48 he received from Claudius
Caesar the government of Chalcis, with the right of appointing the
Jewish high priests, together with the care and oversight of the
temple at Jerusalem. Four years later Claudius took from him
Chalcis and gave him instead a larger domain, of Batanaea,
Trachonitis, and Gaulanitis, with the title of king. To those
reigns Nero, in A.D. 53, added Tiberias and Taricheae and Peraean
Julias, with fourteen neighbouring villages. He is mentioned in
Acts 25 and 26. In the Jewish war, although he strove in vain to
restrain the fury of the seditious and bellicose populace, he did
not desert to the Roman side. After the fall of Jerusalem, he was
vested with praetorian rank and kept the kingdom entire until his
death, which took place in the third year of the emperor Trajan,
[the 73rd year of his life, and the 52nd of his reign] He was the
last representative of the Herodian dynasty.