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"). According to Plutarch's biography of Alexander the Great, when his forces took Thebes during Alexander's Balkan campaign of 335 BC, Thracian forces pillaged the city, and a Thracian captain raped Timocleia.^[1] After raping her, the captain asked if she knew of any hidden money. She told him that she did, and led him into her garden, and told him there was money hidden in her well.^[1] When the Thracian captain stooped to look into the well, Timocleia pushed him down into it, and then hurled heavy stones down until the captain died.^[1]

She was then seized by the Thracian soldiers and brought before Alexander. 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 was so impressed with Timocleia that he ordered her and her children released and she was not punished for killing the Thracian captain.^[1]

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. When Timoclea hears that he has reached the bottom, she throws down rocks on him. Alexander dismisses her without punishment but does not set her or her family free. He instead tells his officers to take special care of them and other renowned families, making sure there is no more abuse.^[2]

Plutarch's main source for the incident, as he mentions in passing elsewhere, was the account by Aristobulus of Cassandreia,^[3] who knew Alexander well; this survives only in quotations by others, which may not all be accurate. The taking of Thebes took place in the second year of Alexander's reign, and was otherwise a very bloody affair, as the city was the leader in a Greek revolt, taking advantage of Philip's assassination, against the treaties he had enforced. Perhaps 6,000 Thebans died, and 30,000 were enslaved, and the city virtually ceased to exist for some decades. The only other act of clemency recorded is that Alexander ordered the house and descendants of the poet Pindar (died c. 443 BC) to be left alone.^[4]