“The pearls of this rich woman and the silks of that foreign dame cannot be had or put on unless she that desires them buy them at a great price, whereas the adornments of Theano, Cleobulina, Gorgo wife of Leonidas, Timocleia sister of Theagenes, the elder Claudia, Cornelia daugther of Scipio, and all the admired and famous ladies of history, these a woman may bedeck herself with for nothing, and live her days in honour and happiness.”

Plutarch Conjugal Precepts

“1Anacharsis was seated in the porch, and there stood before him parting his hair for him a young girl, who ran up to Thales with a most ingenuous air. He kissed her and cried, laughing, ‘Pray make our host look his best; we would not have him appear to his guests a whit less gentle and refined than he is.’ When I asked him who the little maid was, he exclaimed ‘Why, don't you know the learned and much-talked-of Eumetis as her father names her, but called by the world, after him, Cleobulina?’ ‘You must be referring’ said Neiloxenus, ‘to the wit and skill she shows in the riddles she propounds, some of which have spread as far as Egypt.’ ‘Not I’ rejoined Thales; ‘these are but the astragals or playdice which she flings just to divert herself with any that may be her company. No, no; there's more in it than that. She has an admirable judgment, a political mind, and a sweet disposition, and her father's rule is the lighter for it.’ ‘Say no more,’ cried Neiloxenus; ‘one has only to look at her simple and unstudied behaviour. But why this affectionate tendance of Anacharsis? ‘For the reason’ he replied ‘that he is so wise a man and so learned, and has given her such full and generous knowledge of the regimen, the way of purification, which the Scythians use upon the sick. And as she treats him with all this tenderness, I make no doubt she is meanwhile learning something by disputation with him.’”

Plutarch The Seven Sages

“If we may believe Herodotus, Duris, and Democritus, Thales' father was Examyas and his mother Cleobulina.”

Diogenes Laertius Life of Thales

“But we will first enquire what is the definition of the term riddle, and what were the questions propounded by Cleobulina of Lindus.”

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on riddles]

“… Alexis in his comedy The Cleobulinas.”

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on riddles]

“The word paroywnei=n ‘to buy an additional relish’ is used by Cratinus in The Cleobulinas.”

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner [on riddles]

See also Plut. Pyth. Orac. 14 and Cleobulus （above）.

Many riddles are of the following kind:

I saw one man welding bronze to another man with fire, so tightly as to make them common blood.

The answer to this is ‘the applying of a cupping-glass.’2

Athenaeus Doctors at Dinner

I will turn to the arts and poetry. In the writing of tragedy and in painting, whoever is most deceptive in making things like the truth is the best. I propose to cite some poems too of the more ancient authorities:

Cleobulina: —

I saw a man steal and cheat perforce, and to do this perforce was most righteous.3

Anonymous Writer in Diels' Vorsokratiker [on right and wrong]

‘Quite so’ replied Anacharsis; ‘and because they understand human speech and are not like the Greeks who think that they converse so much better than the Scythians and yet believe that the Gods listen with greater pleasure to bones and sticks.’ ‘May I inform you,’ exclaimed Aesop, ‘that the flutemakers of the present day have discarded the leg-bones of fawns for those of asses, and declare that they thereby improve the sound?’ And that is why Cleobulina made the following Riddle on the Phrygian flute:

A dead ass boxed my ear with his horned shin-bone;

to make us wonder that a beast otherwise so stupid and unmusical as the ass should furnish the finest and most musical of all bones.

Plutarch Seven Sages [the Scythians]

1 the scene is of course fictitious

2 cf. Plut. Pyth. Or. 14 Sept. Sap. 10, Arist. Rh. 1405a. 35, Poet. 1458 a. 26, Demetr. Eloc. 102, Rh. Gr. 6. 200, 7. 949 W

3 the answer is prob. ‘a man stealing a dagger from a madman’; cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 1134 a. 17 ff and Sch. （ Hermes 5. 81, 82）