Rhodopis (hetaera)

Rhodopis (Greek: Ῥοδῶπις, real name possibly Doricha) or Rodopis was a celebrated 6th-century BCE Greek hetaera, of Thracian origin.[1] She is one of only two hetaerae mentioned by name in Herodotus' discussion of the profession (the other is the somewhat later Archidike).[2]

The Beautiful Rhodope, in Love with Aesop; engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi, 1782, after the painting by Angelica Kauffman.
For other uses, see Rhodopis (disambiguation).

Slavery

According to Herodotus, she was a fellow-slave of the fable teller Aesop, with whom in one version of her story she had a secret love affair; both of them belonged to Iadmon of Samos. She afterwards became the property of Xanthes, another Samian, who took her to Naucratis in Egypt, during the reign of Amasis II, where she met Charaxus, brother of the poet Sappho, who had gone to Naucratis as a merchant. Charaxus fell in love with her, and ransomed her from slavery with a large sum of money, so that henceforth all the money she made from her profession would be her own.[3] Sappho later wrote a poem accusing Rhodopis of robbing Charaxus of his property.[4]: 189  She also ridiculed her brother in one of her poems for getting himself entangled with Rhodopis.[5]

After liberation

Rhodopis continued to live at Naucratis after her liberation from slavery, and she tithed a tenth part of her income to the temple at Delphi. She converted this tithe into ten large iron spits for cooking oxen, and sent these to Delphi, where they were dedicated in her name. These spits were seen by Herodotus: "These lie in a heap to this day, behind the altar set up by the Chians and in front of the shrine itself." [6]

Tales and legends
King Psammeticus of Egypt in Love with Rhodope, engraving by Bartolozzi, 1783, after the painting by Angelica Kauffman.

Some 400 years after Herodotus, Strabo stated that Sappho called Rhodopis "Doricha". 200 years after Strabo, Athenaeus maintained that Herodotus had confused two separate women.[4]: 15  As "rhodopis" means "rosy cheeks", it was probably a professional pseudonym,[7] but it is unclear whether "Doricha" was her real name. It was the Hellenistic biographical tradition associated with Posidippus that followed the notion of Rhodopis and Doricha being the same individual.[8]

There was a tale current in Greece during Herodotus' time that Rhodopis had caused the construction of "the third pyramid," meaning the Pyramid of Menkaure.[9] Herodotus takes great pains to show the absurdity of the story, but it persisted, and is related by Pliny the Elder as an unquestioned fact.[10] A variant of this story is told by both Diodorus Siculus and Strabo: in it, the pyramid was supposedly built by Rhodopis's lovers to be her tomb.[11] The origin of this tale, which is unquestionably false, has been analysed by Georg Zoega and Christian Charles Josias Bunsen. Their theory is that as a consequence of the name Rhodopis, the courtesan was confounded with Nitocris, the Egyptian queen (and the heroine of many an Egyptian legend), who was said by Julius Africanus and Eusebius to have built the third pyramid.[1]

Another tale about Rhodopis, related by Strabo and Aelian makes her a queen of Egypt, and thus renders the likelihood of her being confounded with Nitocris still more probable. It is said that as Rhodopis was bathing at Naucratis, an eagle took up one of her sandals, flew away with it, and dropped it in the lap of the Egyptian king as he was administering justice at Memphis. Struck by the strange occurrence and the beauty of the sandal, he did not rest until he had found the fair owner of the beautiful sandal, and as soon as he had discovered her, made her his queen.[1] This story is considered the earliest surviving version of the Cinderella story.

References
  1. William Smith, ed. "Rhodopis" in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870), vol. 1, p. 268.
  2. McClure, Laura (2003). Courtesans at Table: Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaus. London: Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-415-93947-8.
  3. Herodotus. Histories. II.135.: Loeb Library / Harvard University Press. pp. 438–439.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  4. Campbell, David A. (1982). Greek Lyric I: Sappho and Alcaeus (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-99157-6.
  5. Ancient Greek Lyrics. Translated by Barnstone, Willis. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2010. p. 274. ISBN 9780253221216.
  6. "Herodotus: Book II: Chapter 136".
  7. Garland, Robert (2006). Celebrity in Antiquity. London: Duckworth. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-715-63448-6.
  8. Goldschmidt, Nora; Graziosi, Barbara (2018). Tombs of the Ancient Poets: Between Literary Reception and Material Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 158. ISBN 9780198826477.
  9. Kapparis, Konstantinos (2017-10-23). Prostitution in the Ancient Greek World. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 401. ISBN 9783110556759.
  10. Smith, referencing Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, xxxvi.(17).82
  11. Lidov, Joel B. (2002). "Sappho, Herodotus, and the Hetaira". Classical Philology. 97 (3): 215. doi:10.1086/449585. S2CID 161865691.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "The History and Amours of Rhodopi". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

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