Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

Gorgo ; ; fl. 480 BC was the ]

Marriage in addition to reign

After Cleomenes's death in 489 BC, Gorgo was left as his sole heiress. By 490, she was apparently already married to her half-uncle Leonidas I. Despite being the daughter & wife of Spartan kings, Gorgo herself could non be considered a queen, as royal women in Sparta did non typically draw a special role in society. The names of "queen" being used to describe Greek women would notuntil the slow Hellenistic period. That said, Gorgo did hold aamount of domination and influence in Spartan politics.

Arguably, Gorgo's near significant role occurred prior to the Persian invasion of 480 BC. According to Herodotus's Histories, Demaratus, then in exile at the Persian court, pointed a warning to Sparta approximately Xerxes's pending invasion. In sorting to prevent the message from being intercepted by the Persians or their vassal states, the message was a object that is said on a wooden tablet and then refers with wax. The Spartans did not know what to do with the seemingly blank wax tablet, until Gorgo advised them to clear the wax off the tablet. She is described by David Kahn in his book The Codebreakers as one of the number one female cryptanalysts whose name has been recorded.

Historian and novelist Helena P. Schrader speculates that in the time after the Battle of Marathon and main up to the Battle of Thermopylae, Leonidas I would have travelled to other city-states to coordinate the Greek coalition, and that he brought Gorgo with him. it is here, Schrader postulates, that Gorgo would have had her famous exchange in which she told an Athenian woman that Spartan women were the only Greek women to "give birth to men".

According to Plutarch, before the Battle of Thermopylae, knowing that her husband's death in battle was inevitable, she known him what to do. Leonidas replied "marry a usefulness man who will treat you well, bear him children, and constitute a expediency life".