[1] She was born in Maroneia, but her family moved to Athens, where Hipparchia came into contact with Crates, the most famous Cynic philosopher in Greece at that time.

[4] Hipparchia fell in love with Crates, and developed such a passion for him, that she told her parents that if they refused to allow her to marry him, she would kill herself.

[6] We are told that they lived in the stoas and porticoes of Athens,[7] and both Sextus Empiricus[8] and the Latin-language writer Apuleius wrote accounts of their having sex, publicly, in broad daylight.

[9][10] Although this would have been consistent with Cynic shamelessness (anaideia), the mere fact that Hipparchia adopted male clothes and lived on equal terms with her husband would have been enough to shock Athenian society.

There is an epigram ascribed to Antipater of Sidon, as to what may have been written on her tomb: I, Hipparchia chose not the tasks of rich-robed woman, but the manly life of the Cynic.

Brooch-clasped tunics, well-clad shoes, and perfumed headscarves pleased me not; But with wallet and fellow staff, together with coarse cloak and bed of hard ground, My name shall be greater than Atalanta: for wisdom is better than mountain running.

she replied I, Theodorus, am that person, but do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom?

[16] Hipparchia's fame undoubtedly rests on the fact that she was a woman practising philosophy and living a life on equal terms with her husband.

After agreeing with her that she gave birth easily because of her Cynic training, Crates proceeds to give advice on how to rear the child: Let his bath water be cold, his clothes be a cloak, his food be milk, yet not to excess.

For Penn she was an example of puritan discipline and virtue:[25] I seek not the Pomp and Effeminacy of this World, but Knowledge and Virtue, Crates; and choose a Life of Temperance, before a Life of Delicacies: For true Satisfaction, thou knowest, is in the Mind; and that Pleasure is only worth seeking, that lasts for ever.Her marriage to Crates inspired Pierre Petit to write the Latin poem Cynogamia, sive de Cratetis et Hipparches amoribus in 1676.

[26] In the same century, Clemenza Ninci, an Italian nun, wrote a play entitled Sposalizio d'Iparchia filosofa (The marriage of Hipparchia the philosopher).

[29] Martha Nussbaum, in her speech to the University of Chicago Law School graduating class of 2010, presented Hipparchia'a life as an illustrative example of the benefits of continuing education beyond academic settings.