'renowned cattle'), also called Philaechme (Ancient Greek: Φιλαίχμη, romanized: Philaíkhmē), is the wife of Phobius and queen consort of Miletus who falls desperately in love with Antheus, a royal hostage of their court, an infatuation that leads them both to their doom.
Cleoboea's myth is known thanks to the works of Hellenistic and Roman-era Greek grammarian Parthenius of Nicaea, who attributes the story to Aristotle and authors of the Milesian tales.
[1] However Antheus kept rejecting her, appealing to the danger of them being discovered, and the fact that an affair between them would be unholy to Zeus, the god of hospitality, who would not look favourly upon a man who slept with his host's wife in his own house.
[7] Witnessing the tragedy that struck his palace and interpreting it as a bad omen, Phobius considered himself damned, and gave the Milesian throne over to another man named Phrygius.
[8] This story is one of the several variants of the tale of Potiphar's wife found in Greek mythology, in which a married woman fails to seduce a man and then tries to destroy him; other examples include Hippolytus and Phaedra, Bellerophon and Stheneboea, Tenes and Philonome.