Strabo was a Greek geographer born in 64 BC in what is now Amasya, Turkey. Strabo was from an affluent family which afforded him a good education. When he was about 21 years old, Strabo continued his education in Rome where he studied grammar, writing, history, rhetoric, and philosophy. At some point, Strabo began writing a geography based on his extensive travels throughout the known world. He described the people, places, animals, and collected stories from the places he visited. He published his first edition of Geographica in 7 BC which included the story of a hetaira called Doricha. A hetaira was a highly educated female companion who often served a variety of roles including artist, entertainer, conversationalist, and some say, prostitute. Strabo wrote that Doricha “was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from her maid and carried it to Memphis; and while the king was administering justice in the open air, the eagle, when it arrived above his head, flung the sandal into his lap; and the king, stirred both by the beautiful shape of the sandal and by the strangeness of the occurrence, sent men in all directions into the country in quest of the woman who wore the sandal; and when she was found in the city of Naucratis, she was brought up to Memphis, and became the wife of the king.” In his story, Doricha became the queen of Egypt. I must stress that there is no evidence that there ever was a queen of Egypt named Doricha.
Strabo’s tale has been told and retold through the centuries. In 1634, Italian Giambattista Basile published a notable version called La Gatta Cenerentola in his book entitled Il Penatamerone. Cenerentola derived from the Italian word “cenere” which meant ash or cinder because the clothes of servants at the time were usually soiled by ash or cinder because of their cleaning duties. In his version, the first to be published in the Western world, Basile changed Doricha’s name to Zezolla. In 1697, Frenchman Charles Perrault published an even more embellished version of the tale in his book which translates to Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Histories, or Tales of Past Time). Perrault changed her name from Doricha to another name which was a reference to her clothes being dirty. It is Perrault’s embellished version of Strabo’s 2,000-year-old tale that we all know because he added a magic pumpkin, a fairy godmother, and a glass slipper. Perrault called her Cendrillon, but we all know Doricha as Cinderella.
Sources:
1. Strabo, The Geography of Strabo, trans., Boox XVII, P. 93, accessed August 16, 2026, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/
2. Giambattista Basile, Il Penatamerone, trans., Chapter VI, Gutenberg Project, accessed August 16, 2026, https://www.gutenberg.org/