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.