Some ancient lives start with core texts and move out from there.  The canonical gospels are obvious, as are Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Augustine’s Confessions.  But other lives take some historical work, some investigation and some retrieval from the corners of the sources.  Those lives, when people have done the work to assemble them, often surprise us, and women’s biographies remind me that I don’t really know how prominent women lived in the ancient world–I’m discovering their courses and their motives and their significance every time I study anew.  Bruce Chilton’s recent book Berenice: Queen in Roman Judea is precisely that kind of surprise and precisely that kind of discovery, and Christian Humanist Profiles is glad to welcome him back to the show.