The Bible never names Salome, and she wasn't consistently called that until the 1800s
The dancing girl who asks for John the Baptist's head is unnamed in the gospels; they call her only the daughter of Herodias. The name Salome comes from the historian Josephus, who records a far duller life: two marriages, three sons and a spell as a queen.
Salome was a Jewish princess, granddaughter of Herod the Great and daughter of Herodias, whose remarriage to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, made him her stepfather. Her name is related to shalom, the Hebrew word for peace. In the accounts of Mark and Matthew, John the Baptist had condemned that marriage, so Herodias held a grudge. When her daughter's dance delighted Herod at his birthday banquet, he swore to grant any wish; the girl consulted her mother and asked for John's head, and the reluctant king kept his oath.
Josephus, in his Jewish Antiquities, fills in her later life. She married her uncle Philip the Tetrarch, and after his death in AD 34 wed her cousin Aristobulus of Chalcis, becoming queen of Armenia Minor. The couple had three sons, and a few coins bearing both their portraits have been found. Some ancient Greek manuscripts of Mark even suggest the daughter was also named Herodias, an idea that gained ground in early modern Europe. She is distinct from another Salome, a disciple who witnessed the crucifixion.
Medieval artists turned her into the archetype of the seductive woman who leads men from salvation, and later tradition embroidered the dance into the Dance of the Seven Veils. The scholar David Flusser argues that the historical record instead suggests an ordinary, moral person. Gustave Flaubert helped fix the name Salome in his story Herodias, following Josephus.
Few biblical episodes have inspired so much art. Titian, Caravaggio and Gustave Moreau all painted her. Oscar Wilde's 1891 play cast her as a femme fatale, and Richard Strauss set it as an opera in 1905, while a 1906 novel went further and made her a vampire. Hollywood joined in with a 1953 film starring Rita Hayworth.
Source: Salome
