Salome

Salome (/səˈloʊmi, ˈsæləmeɪ/; Hebrew: שְלוֹמִית, romanized: Shlomit, related to שָׁלוֹם, Shalom "peace"; Greek: Σαλώμη), also known as Salome III, was a Jewish 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 Armenia Minor.
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 Salome starring Rita Hayworth.
Salome is commonly identified with the daughter of Herodias who, according to accounts in the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew, danced for Herod Antipas. In his Jewish Antiquities, Josephus mentions marriages and children of the daughter of Herodias named Salome.
According to the Gospel of Mark, Herodias bore a grudge against John the Baptist for stating that Herod's marriage to her was unlawful. Herodias's daughter had danced before Herod at his birthday celebration, and in return she was told she could ask for anything. After consulting with her mother, the girl asked for the head of John.
The account in the Gospel of Mark reads:
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"). To scholars using these ancient texts, both mother and daughter had the same name. However, the Latin Vulgate Bible 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 Herodias[a] 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.
Salome is mentioned as a stepdaughter of Herod Antipas in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews (Book XVIII, Chapter 5, 4):
According to William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities:
A tradition based on Joseph situates her birth in the Spanish city of Italica and her death in Lleida.
A few coins with portraits of Aristobulus and Salome have been found.
The story of her dance before Herod with the head of John the Baptist on a platter led medieval Christian artists to depict her as the personification of the lascivious woman, a temptress who lures men away from salvation.
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. 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".
This biblical story has long been a favorite of painters. Painters who have done notable representations of Salome include Masolino da Panicale, Filippo Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, Leonardo da Vinci followers Andrea Solario and Bernardino Luini, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Titian, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Fabritius, Henri Regnault, Georges Rochegrosse, Gustave Moreau, Lovis Corinth, Federico Beltran-Masses and Henry Ossawa Tanner.
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:
Salome appears as a character in Alessandro Stradella's oratorio S. Giovanni Battista [scores] (St. John the Baptist), composed in 1676, which includes "Queste lagrime e sospiri", an aria sung by the Salome character.
In 1877 Gustave Flaubert's Three Tales were published, including "Herodias". In this story, responsibility for John's death is given to Herodias and the priests who fear his religious power. Salome is shown as a young girl who forgets the name of the man whose head she requests as she is asking for it. Jules Massenet's 1881 opera Hérodiade is based on Flaubert's short story. Playwright Doric Wilson created a modern retelling of the Salome story in Now She Dances!, first produced off-off-Broadway at the Caffe Cino in 1961.
Salome's story was made the subject of a symbolist play by Oscar Wilde that was first banned in London in 1892 while rehearsals were underway and which subsequently premiered in Paris in 1896 under the French name Salomé. In Wilde's play, Salome takes a perverse fancy for Jokanaan (John the Baptist), and causes him to be executed when he spurns her affections. In the finale, Salome takes up Jokanaan's severed head and kisses it.
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.
The Wilde play (in a German translation by Hedwig Lachmann) was edited down to a one-act opera by Richard Strauss. The opera, which premiered in Dresden in 1905, is famous for the Dance of the Seven Veils. As with the Wilde play, it turns the action to Salome, reducing her mother to a bit-player, though the opera is less centered on Herod's motivations than the play.
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.
In 1907 Florent Schmitt received a commission from Jacques Rouché to compose a ballet, La tragédie de Salomé, for Loie Fuller to perform at the Théâtre des Arts. Another Salome ballet was composed by the Japanese composer Akira Ifukube in 1948. Danish choreographer Flemming Flindt's ballet Salome with music by Peter Maxwell Davies premiered in 1978.
In "Salome" (1896) by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, Salome instigates the death of John the Baptist as part of a futile effort to get the interest of "a young sophist who was indifferent to the charms of love". When Salome presents to him John's head, the sophist rejects it, remarking in jest "Dear Salome, I would have liked better to get your own head". Taking the jest seriously, the hopelessly infatuated Salome lets herself be beheaded, and her head is duly brought to the sophist, who however rejects it in disgust and turns back to studying the Dialogues of Plato.
A descriptive piano piece by Mel Bonis entitled Salomé (1909) is part of her series, Femmes de Légende. Archibald Joyce composed three 'valses orientales' throughout his career: Vision of Salome (1909), Passing of Salome (1912), and Phantom of Salome (1945).
Wilde's Salome has often been made into a film, notably a 1923 silent film, Salome, starring Alla Nazimova in the title role and a 1988 Ken Russell play-within-a-film treatment, Salome's Last Dance, which also includes Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas as characters. Steven Berkoff filmed his stage version of the play in 1992.
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: