Timoclea

Timoclea or Timocleia of Thebes (Ancient Greek: Τιμοκλεία) is a woman whose story is told by Plutarch in his Life of Alexander, and at greater length in his Mulierum virtutes ("Virtues of Women").

She comported herself with great dignity and told him that her brother was Theagenes, the last commander of the Sacred Band of Thebes, who died "for the liberty of Greece" at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, defeated by Alexander's father Philip of Macedon.

Alexander, filled with admiration for her courage over her "daring deed" ordered her and her children be released and was not punished for killing the Thracian captain, as he had judged that justice had already been served.

[1][2] The story in the Mulierum virtutes is essentially the same, except that the captain is told that the treasure, of silver bowls, gold and some money, was at the bottom of a dry well, which he climbs down into.

[3] Plutarch's main source for the incident, as he mentions in passing elsewhere, was the account by Aristobulus of Cassandreia,[4] who knew Alexander well; this survives only in quotations by others, which may not all be accurate.

[7] The most influential image of Timoclea's story, judging by copies in prints for two centuries after,[12] was the painting by Domenichino of c. 1615, which was in the French royal collection from the time of Louis XIV, and then the Louvre.

A very different composition, showing only one and a half figures, with the Thracian disappearing upside down into the well, first appears in an engraving of 1629–30 by Matthäus Merian, a book illustration for a popular German world history by Johann Ludwig Gottfried.

"[14] Timoclea also appears in Gynaikeion or Nine Books of Various History Concerning Women by Thomas Heywood, 1624, and as a minor character in John Lyly's play Campaspe,[14] a comedy also performed by boy players.