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In Cyrene, not long before the Roman era, a woman called Aretaphila became famous for her brave fight against two tyrants who were oppressing the city: her own husband Nicocrates and his successor Leander. In the ancient world, Aretaphila was considered as a model of a virtuous woman, because of her fight for her people’s freedom.
In 96 BCE, when the last king of Cyrenaica, Ptolemy Apion, died without a heir, his kingdom was bequeathed to the Roman Republic. However, this new territory was at first mostly ignored by the Romans. The first Roman governor was sent to Cyrenaica only in 74.
In these years, a tyrant called Nicocrates took power in Cyrene and brutalized the population. Nicocrates forced Aretaphila, a woman of the city, to marry him, after killing her first husband Phaedimus. Aretaphila was determined to free her people from the violence of this tyrant, and plotted to have him poisoned. Calbia, Nicocrates’ mother, suspected her plans, and convinced her son to have Aretaphila tortured.
Later, Aretaphila convinced her daugther to seduce Leander, the brother of Nicocrates, so that he would overthrow him. Leander managed to kill Nicocrates, and succeeded him.
Sadly, Leander showed himself to be just as tyrannical as his brother. Aretaphila then called on the Libyan Prince Anabus to come to free Cyrene.
In 87, the Roman general Lucullus, an ally of Sulla, visited Cyrene, as part of a naval expedition to gather a fleet from the Roman allies, in order to fight Mithridates. Civil war had been raging in the city for seven years, between Leander’s supporters and opponents. Lucullus ended the conflict, repressed the tyrant, and established a new Constitution. 13 years later, Lucullus would convince the Roman authorities to make Cyrenaica a Roman province.
After the fall of the tyranny, the citizens of Cyrene offered Aretaphila responsibilities in the new city government, but she refused. She reportedly spent the rest of her life in the women’s quarters of her house, working on her loom.
The Greek historian Plutarch mentions Aretaphila in his book On the virtue of women, for her aspiration to free her people from tyranny. There apparently was a cult in her honor among women of this time.
