“Plato was the son of Aristôn, an Athenian, and Periktionê, or Pôtônê, who alleged her heritage went back to Solon. For he had a brother named Drôpides who was the father of Kritias, the father of Kallaiskhros, the father of Kritias, who was one of the Thirty. He was also the father of Glaukôn, the father of Kharmides and Perictionê. Plato, then, as the son of Aristôn and that Perictionê, was the sixth generation after Solon. And Solon claimed his family descended from Neleus and Poseidon. They also claim that his father descends from Kodros the son of Melanthos and, they are said to descend from Poseidon, according to Thrasylos.
In his work named “The Feast for Plato” Speusippus writes, as Klearkhos claims in his Praise to Plato and Anaxlaides records in his second book of On Philosophers, that there was a story in Athens that Aristôn raped Perictionê when she was an adolescent girl and failed to get her [as a wife?]. When he stopped assaulting her, Apollo came to him in a dream. For this reason, he left her untouched of marriage until she gave birth.”
Earlier, Cambyses marries one sister (3.31) and murders another. This one is unnamed.
Herodotus, Histories 3.32
“There are two stories regarding her death just as in the case of Smerdis. The Greeks report that Cambyses made a puppy fight with a lion cub and that this woman was watching. When the puppy was being defeated, another puppy—its sibling—broke its leash and was helping him. Together, the two puppies overpowered the lion cub.
Cambyses was pleased when he saw this, but she was crying as she sat alongside him. When Cambyses saw that she was crying and asked why she was, she responded that she cried upon seeing the puppy try to avenge his brother because she was thinking of Smerdis and realizing that there was no one who would avenge him.
The Greeks claim that she was executed for Cambyses for this response. The Egyptians, however, say that when the two of them were sitting at a table the woman took up some lettuce, plucked off the leaves, and then asked her husband if the lettuce seemed better plucked or with its leaves still. When he said he liked it more intact, she said that “but you must recall that you have stripped the house of Cyrus just like this lettuce.” In rage over this, he leaped on her even though she was pregnant. She died after miscarrying.”
According to just a few sources, Klytemnestra was married and had a child before she married Agamemnon. As one might expect, the story is not a happy one and includes many of the themes from the unhappy marriage between the two, including husband-killing and child-murder.
The most famous accounts of this come from the 12th Century CE Chiliades by John Tzetzes and the Epitome of Apollodorus (both of which are available on Perseus or in translation on Theoi.com).
Chiliades, 1.456-465
“The nurse took Agamemnon with Menelaos
To Polypheides who ruled Sikyon
and who sent them in turn to Aitolian Oeneus.
Not much later Tyndareus brought them back again
and they drove Thysetes away to live in Cytheria
after he fled to the altar of Hera and they took an oath from him.
They both became sons-in-law to Tyndareus:
Agamemnon made Klytemnestra his wife
after he killed her husband, Thyestes’ son Tantalos
along with their new-born child. And Menelaos married Helen.”
“Agamemnon ruled as king of the Mycenaeans and married Tyndareus’ daughter Klytemnestra—but first he killed her husband, Tantalos, the son of Thyestes, with their child. They had a son Orestes and daughters Chrysothemus, Elektra and Iphigenia. Menelaos married Helen and ruled Sparta after Tyndareus gave him the kingship.”
There’s little to ‘confirm’ this story apart from a few mentions in Pausanias:
Pausanias, 2.18.2
“I cannot say with precision whether Aigisthus began the wrongdoing or whether it was preceded by Agamemnon’s murder of Thyestes’ son Tantalos. For they say that he lived with Klytemnestra when she was a virgin, receiving her from Tyndareus. I don’t want to say that these men were wicked by nature….”
“Others maintain that the bones of Tantalos are in this bronze container. This would be Tantalus the son of Thyestes or Broteas—for both stories are common—who lived with Klytemnestra before Agamemnon. I won’t deny that this Tantalos is buried there. I know that the other Tantalos, the son of Zeus and Plouto, has his tomb in Sipylos because I saw it and it is worth seeing.”
“Similarly in Naples and many other places there are accounts that sudden changes like this happened—not that male and female were naturally built into a two-bodied type (for that is impossible) but that much to the surprise and mystification of human beings, nature forms some parts of the body deceptively.
This is why we think it is right to describe these kinds of sex changes: not to entertain but so we can help those who are reading this. For there are many people who believe that these kinds of things are signs for the gods and not isolated individuals but even entire communities and cities. For example, at the beginning of the Marsian war, they say that there was an Italian living near Rome who had married, a hermaphrodite like the one we mentioned earlier and revealed this to his senate. The senate, overwhelmed by superstition and persuaded by the Etruscan interpreters, decided that they should be burned alive. In this case, a person who was like us in nature and was not in truth any monster died unfairly because of the ignorance about their affliction. When there was a similar case near Athens a little while later, they again burned a person alive through ignorance.
People also make up stories about hyenas, that they are female and male at the same time and that they take turns mounting each other annually when this is completely untrue. Each sex has its own kind of nature and they are not mixed up. But there is a time when something deceives when it is presented to someone who is merely glancing. The female has an appendage that looks something like a male feature; and the male has one which corresponds to the female’s.
This is generally the case for all living creatures. Although many monsters of all kinds are born, in truth, they cannot be nourished and are not capable of growing to maturity. Let this be enough said as a redress against superstitious beliefs.”
“In Haliartos in Boiotia, there was a certain girl of surpassing beauty whose name was Aristokleia. She was the Daughter of Theophanes. Stratôn the Orkhomenian and Kallisthenes the Haliartian were both wooing her.
Stratôn was wealthier and was somewhat more taken with the virgin. For he happened to see her once when she was bathing in the fountain Herkunêin Lebadeia. For she was making reading to carry a basket for Zeus the king. But Kallisthenes was closer to winning her, for he was related to her.
Theophanes was at a loss in the matter—for he was fearing Stratôn he stood apart from nearly all the Boiotians because of his family and wealth. He was planning on getting advice about the choice from Trophonios. Stratôn, however, was convinced by the girl’s servants that she was leaning towards him, so he considered it best to have the girl to be married make the choice. But when Theophanes asked his daughter in front of everyone, she chose Kallisthenes. It was clear that Stratôn took the dishonor badly.
After a period of two days, he approached Theophanes and Kallisthenes, saying he wanted to preserve their friendship, even if he had been denied the marriage by some envious god. They praised what he said and asked him to come to the feast for the wedding. But he, once he had gathered a mob of his friends and no small a retinue of servants which were distributed among the attendees unnoticed, waited until the girl wen to the Spring Kissoessa to make the customary sacrifice to the local nymphs. There, all the men who were in ambush rushed out and grabbed her. Stratos had gained a hold of the virgin. Kallisthenes, as one might expect, grabbed her in turn and those with him were helping. They all pulled on her until she died without them knowing, stretched to death in their hands.
Kallisthenes was out of sight immediately, either because he killed himself or left Boiotia as an exile. No one is able to say what happened to him. But Stratôn killed himself openty over the maiden.”
“Theano, when asked what number of days a woman was clean from her husband and is was right for her to go to the temple, said ” ‘on the same day from her own husband, but never from another.’ “
“Theano: from Metapontum or Thurii. A Pythagorean, daughter of Leôphrôn, wife of Karustos of Krotôn, or Brôtinos the Pythagorean. She wrote On Pythagoras, On Virtue to Hippodamos of Thurii, Advice for Woman, and Sayings of the Pythagoreans.”
The following is not really a single poem but rather a collection of lines cited in Athenaeus, Plutarch and others and attributed to Cleobulina
Cleobulina fr. 3.1
“I have seen a man fashioning bronze on another man with fire
Fitting it so well that he joined them in the blood.
I saw a man stealing and deceiving violently—
To accomplish this with violence is the most just thing.
A donkey corpse struck me on the ear with its horny shin.”
These lines are poetic riddles: the first one, according to Athenaeus, is about using a cupping glass to draw blood to the surface of the skin) the last one is about a Phrygian flute (which was made from a donkey bone)
“Beyond the theater is the shrine of Aphrodite. In front of the foundation is a stele on which Telesilla, a poet of lyric, is depicted. Her books are tossed near her feet while she looks at the helmet she holds in her hand as she is about to put it on her head. Telesilla was famous among women and especially honored for her poetry.
But a greater story about her comes from when the Argives were bested by Kleomenes the son of Alexandrides and the Lakedaimonians. Some Argives died during the battle itself and however many fled to the grove of Ares died there too—at first they left the grove under an armistice but they realized they were deceived and were burned with the rest in the grove. As a result, Kleomenes led the Spartans to an Argos bereft of men.
But Telesilla stationed on the wall of the city all the slaves who were unable to bear arms because of youth or old age and, after collecting however many weapons had been left in homes or in the shrines, she armed all the women at the strongest age and once she had armed herself they took up posts were the army was going to attack.
When the Spartans came near and the women were not awestruck by their battle-cry but waited and were fighting bravely, then the Spartans, because they reasoned that if they killed the women the victory would be ill-rumored even as their own defeat would come with great insult, yielded to the women.
The Pythian priestess had predicted this contest earlier in the prophecy relayed by Herodotus who may or may not have understood it (6.77):
But when the female conquers the male
And drives him away and wins glory for the Argives,
It will make many Argive women tear their cheeks.
These are the words of the oracle on the women’s accomplishment.”
Plutarch, On the Virtues of Women 245d-f6 reports a version of this tale; the Suda (s.v. Telesilla) likely takes its account from Pausanias.
“Telesilla, a poetess. On a stele her books are tossed around and she has placed a helmet on her head. And When the Lakedaimonians slaughtered the Argives who had fled to a shrine and were heading to the city to sack it, then Telesilla armed the women of the right age and set them against where they were marching. When the Lakedaimonians saw this, they turned back because they believed it shameful to fight against women whom it would be inglorious to conquer but a great reproached to be defeated by….” [the oracle is listed next”
Valerius Maximus, Memorable Words and Deeds 2.6.14-15
“But why must I praise the bravest men in this category? Take, for example, the women of the Indians, who by national custom are typically married to the same man. When that man has died they submit to a contest and judgment about who of them he loved the most. The winner, as she celebrates with joy and is led by her friends who have happy faces, casts herself upon the flames of her husband and is cremated with him as if the happiest women.
Those who lost persist in a saddened life of grief. Compare Cimbrian daring, add to it the Celtiberian loyalty, insert the Tracian spirit, and even weave in the cleverly developed Lycian method of rejecting grief, you will still find nothing superior to the Indian pyre, which the wifely devotion climbs onto as if it were merely a marriage bed.
To this glory, let’s compare the dishonor of the Punic women, so it may be more clearly foul. At Sicca there is a temple of Venus into which married women used to meet. They used to leave there for business, earning ‘dowries’ by bringing insult to their bodies, trying to arrange a clean marriage with so unclean a chain.”
Verum quid ego fortissimos hoc in genere prudentiae viros laudem? respiciantur Indorum feminae, quae, cum more patrio complures eidem nuptae esse soleant, mortuo marito in certamen iudiciumque veniunt quam ex iis maxime dilexerit. victrix gaudio exsultans, deductaque a necessariis laetum praeferentibus vultum, coniugis se flammis superiacit et cum eo tamquam felicissima crematur; superatae cum tristitia et maerore in vita remanent. protrahe in medium Cimbricam audaciam, adice Celtibericam fidem, iunge animosam Thraciae [potentiam]46 sapientiam, adnecte Lyciorum in luctibus abiciendis callide quaesitam rationem, Indico tamen rogo nihil eorum praeferes, quem uxor<ia>47 pietas in modum genialis tori propinquae mortis secura conscendit.
Cuius gloriae Punicarum feminarum, ut ex comparatione turpius appareat, dedecus subnectam: Siccae enim fanum est Veneris, in quod se matronae conferebant atque inde procedentes ad quaestum dotes corporis iniuria contrahebant, honesta nimirum tam inhonesto vinculo coniugia iuncturae.
“And there is also a notion older than this which seemed right to Lykourgos for Sparta. Because he meant to provide warrior-athletes for Sparta, he said, “Let the girls exercise and permit them to run in public. Certainly this strengthening of their bodies was for the sake of good childbearing and that they would have better offspring.
For one who comes from this training to her husband’s home will not hesitate to carry water or to mill grain because she has prepared from her youth. And if she is joined together with a youth who has joined her in rigorous exercise, she will provide better offspring—for they will be tall, strong and rarely sick. Sparta became so preeminent in war once her marriages were prepared in this way.”
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