DRUSILLA drōō sĭl’ ə (Δρούσιλλα, G1537). A diminutive or pet name for Drusa, chosen no doubt by Herod Agrippa I for his youngest daughter, who happened to be born in a.d. 38 when the mad Caligula, recently made emperor, was mourning the sudden death of his twenty-two-year-old sister Drusilla. Herod Agrippa, a companion of Caligula, was in Rome at the time. Drusus, son of Tiberius had also been a protector of the young Jewish prince. It was prob. in a.d. 53 that Drusilla, in her sixteenth year, was married to Azizus of Emesa, a small principality in the N of Syria, which included Palmyra. A year later, Felix, Claudius’ unprincipled freedman and that emperor’s notorious appointee to the procuratorship of Pal., persuaded Drusilla to leave her husband (Jos. Antiq. XX. vii. 2). She became Felix’ third wife (Suetonius, Claud. 28), and in that role appears briefly in the story of Paul’s imprisonment at Caesarea (Acts 24:24-27). According to Josephus, who was at the time a member of Vespasian’s household, Agrippa, Drusilla’s son by Felix, died in the eruption of Vesuvius on 24 August 79. Whether his widowed mother died with him is not known. Josephus’ account is ambiguous.