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In Greek mythology, Cleoboea (/ˌkliːəˈbiːə/; Ancient Greek: Κλεόβοια, romanized: Kleóboia, lit. '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.

Mythology

Queen Cleoboea and King Phobius ruled over Miletus, an ancient Greek city-state on the western coast of Asia Minor. One day they received in their court a royal hostage from nearby Halicarnassus, a young man named Antheus. Cleoboea fell in love with the youth, and employed all means possible to make him return her affections.^[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.^[2] She accused him of arrogance and mercilessness, and seeing how her words fell on deaf ears, Cleoboea's passion grew for the worse, and swore vengeance against him.^[3]

For a time, she pretended to have fallen out of love with him, until one day she chased a particularly tame partridge down a deep well, or alternatively threw her golden cup down the well.^[4] She then asked Antheus to go down the well and fetch it out for her. Antheus, being none the wiser, agreed, not suspecting her ill intentions. When he was deep down the well looking for it, Cleoboea pushed down a large boulder on him, which crushed and killed the unfortunate Antheus instantly.^[5]^[6] She was immediately overcome with regret and remorse over her crime, and still deeply enamored with Antheus, took her own life by hanging.^[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]

Culture

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. Unlike the other women, Cleoboea does not falsely accuse Antheus of sexually assaulting her, but rather kills him in cold blood instead. Several versions of the Antheus and Cleoboea one seem to have existed in antiquity,^[6] the earliest of which might have been invented by Agathon, an Athenian tragic poet, in his lost work Anthus or Anthes.^[9]^[10] The story seems to have been local legend traditional to Miletus.^[6]