Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/87

Rh if to celebrate the feast of Cybele in an adjoining wood, which was consecrated to that goddess. The inhabitants abandoned the city to join in this act of devotion; and, in the meanwhile, her soldiers took possession of the place.

Artemisia is said to have been desperately in love with a young man named Dardanus, who slighted her, which enraged her to such a degree, that she commanded his eyes to be put out whilst he slept; and finding her passion unconquerable, soon afterwards flung herself from the top of the famous promontory of Leucas into the sea. 1em

herself by the honours she paid to the memory of her husband, to whom she erected, at Halicarnassus, a magnificent tomb, which was esteemed one of the seven wonders of the world; and from which all succeeding monuments have obtained the name of Mausoleums. Pliny and Aulus Gellius have given a description of it; and the latter adds,—"she put the ashes of her husband every day into her drink, that she might become his living tomb! and that she established grand prizes for the learned who should make the best panegyric on Mausoleus!" but died of grief before this magnificent edifice was completed, two years after the death of her husband.

The grief of Artemisia did not prevent her watching the safety of the state. The Rhodians had formed a design to dethrone her. She went to war with them, and drove