A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Artemisia I
ARTEMISIA I,
Daughter of Lygdamis, became queen of Caria, in Asia Minor, when her husband died. According to Herodotus, she was one of the most distinguished women of antiquity. She attended Xerxes in his expedition against Greece, B. C. 480, and furnished five ships, which were only inferior to those of the Sidonians. In the council of war before the battle of Salamis, she strongly represented to Xerxes the folly of risking a naval engagement, and the event justified her opinion. In the battle she displayed so much courage, that Xerxes exclaimed "The men behave like women, and the women like men!" To her Xerxes intrusted his children, that they might be safely transported to his kingdom, when, agreeably to her advice, he abandoned Greece, to return to Asia.
These great qualities did not secure her from the weakness of love; she was passionately fond of a man of Abydos, whose name was Dardanus, and was so enraged at his neglect of her, that she put out his eyes while he was asleep. This, however, instead of diminishing her passion, seemed to increase it. At length she consulted the Delphic oracle, to learn how to conquer her love; and being advised to go to Leucadia, the ordinary resort of desperate lovers, she, like the poet Sappho, took the fatal leap from that promontory, and was drowned and buried there. Many writers confound this Artemisia with the wife of Mausolus, who lived some time after.