Rhodopis

"Rhodopis" (Ancient Greek: Ῥοδῶπις, romanized: Rhodôpis, lit.

[1] The origins of the fairy-tale figure may be traced back to the 6th-century BC hetaera Rhodopis.

[2] The story is first recorded by the Greek geographer Strabo (64 or 63 BC – c. 24 AD) in his Geographica (book 17, 33), written sometime between c. 7 BC and c. 24 AD: They tell the fabulous story that, when she was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from her maid and carried it to Memphis; and while the king was administering justice in the open air, the eagle, when it arrived above his head, flung the sandal into his lap; and the king, stirred both by the beautiful shape of the sandal and by the strangeness of the occurrence, sent men in all directions into the country in quest of the woman who wore the sandal; and when she was found in the city of Naucratis, she was brought up to Memphis, became the wife of the king.

[1] The same story is also later reported by the Roman orator Aelian (c. 175 – c. 235) in his Miscellaneous History, which was written entirely in Greek.

Herodotus, some five centuries before Strabo, records a popular legend about a possibly-related courtesan named Rhodopis in his Histories, claiming that Rhodopis came from Thrace, and was the slave of Iadmon (Ἰάδμων) of Samos, and a fellow-slave of the story-teller Aesop and that she was taken to Egypt in the time of Pharaoh Amasis (570–536 BC), and freed there for a large sum by Charaxus (Χάραξος) of Mytilene, brother of Sappho, the lyric poet.