I. A queen of Halicarnassus, in Caria, who, as a vassal of the Persian crown, joined the expedition of that monarch against Greece with a squadron of five ships, and shone by her valor and prudence in the battle of Salamis (480 B. C). According to a doubtful tradition, she became enamored of a youth of Abydos named Dardanus, who did not reciprocate her affection, whereupon she had his eyes put out. Afterward regretting her cruelty, she consulted an oracle as to how she should make atonement, and in obedience to the mandate of the divinity cast herself into the sea from the Leucadian rock.

II. The sister, wife, and successor of Mausolus, king of Caria, celebrated for the excessive grief which she manifested at his loss (352 B. C). She employed the most eloquent rhetoricians of Greece to pronounce panegyrics in his honor, and raised a monument to his memory at Halicarnassus, which was considered one of the seven wonders of the world, and from which the now general term mausoleum is derived. She survived him about two years.