Diagoras of Rhodes

According to another legend revived by Pausanias,[1] Diagoras' daughter Kallipáteira[2] ("she of the beautiful father") was the only lay woman to enter the Olympic Games.

She was discovered and brought before the Hellanodíkai (judges of the games) to be tried for sacrilege on pain of death; there she proclaimed that if any woman could ever be allowed to defy the ban, it was she, having had a father, three brothers, a son and a nephew achieve victory eight times.

Similarly, Chilon of Sparta also supposedly died of joy the day when his son gained the prize for boxing at the Olympic games.

[4] Pindar acknowledges his numerous boxing victories in Olympian 7 writing: "Diagoras has had himself crowned twice, and at the renowned Isthmus four times, in his good fortune, and again and again at Nemea and in rocky Athens".

[6] Nigel Nicholson argues that Diagoras may have wanted to avoid being passed down through moral tradition and replaced with some kind of god or hero that would take the credit for his achievements.

A pyramid-shaped structure on a hill near Turgut village south west of Marmaris, regarded by locals as the grave of a saint, was identified by unnamed archaeologists as his mausoleum.

Many Turkish young men would take a handful of dirt from the area around the tomb as good luck ahead of joining the army to complete their military service.

Known for decades, the inscription was not associated by previous scholars with the famous 5th century Rhodian, given its distance from the island of Rhodes and the post-Classical lettering of the text.

[8] Turkish newspaper, Milliyet, reported that an inscription in the tomb, stating “I will be vigilant at the very top so as to ensure that no coward can come and destroy this grave,” was transcribed by experts.