She was six years old at the death of her father (AD 44), by whom she had been betrothed, about a year earlier, to Epiphanes, son of Antiochus IV of Commagene, on condition of his conversion to Judaism. But Epiphanes refused to submit to circumcision, and the marriage did not take place. Instead, Aziz, king of Emesa, submitted to it, and Drusilla married him at about fifteen years of age (Flavius Josephus, *Antiquitates Judaicae*, XIX, 9, 1; XX, 7, 1). Two years later, however, she yielded to the enticements of the procurator Felix, who, captivated by her extraordinary beauty, took her as his wife with the complicity of a Cypriot magician named Simon (or *Atomos*: variant in *Antiquitates Judaicae*, XX, 7, 2). By Felix, Drusilla had a son who perished either with her or with Felix’s own wife (Josephus’s expression is ambiguous) in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 (*Antiquitates Judaicae*, XX, 7, 2).
Drusilla, who, like other aristocratic Jewish women of the time, displayed an interest in religious matters, appears alongside Felix in a nearly confidential meeting with Paul during his imprisonment at Caesarea (*Acts 24:24–25*). The Apostle spoke “of righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment,” thus striking Felix to the quick. Since Suetonius (*Claudius*, 28) calls Felix “husband of three queens,” and Tacitus (*Historiae*, V, 9) states that Drusilla, Felix’s wife, was a granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, some have thought that the procurator had two Drusillas as wives. This is probably only an inaccuracy on Tacitus’s part.