The twelfth-century AD lai of Le Fresne ("The Ash-Tree Girl"), retold by Marie de France, is a variant of the "Cinderella" story : 41 in which a wealthy noblewoman abandons her infant daughter at the base of an ash tree outside a nunnery with a ring and brocade as tokens of her identity : 41 because she is one of twin sisters : 41 -the mother fears that she will be accused of infidelity : 41 (according to popular belief, twins were evidence of two different fathers). Illustration of Marie de France, the author of Le Fresne, from a medieval illuminated manuscript During the banquet, the Persian King sets his sights on Aspasia herself and ignores the other women. In another episode, she and other courtesans are made to attend a feast hosted by Persian regent Cyrus the Younger.
As she dozes off, the girl has a vision of a dove transforming into a woman, who instructs her on how to remove a physical imperfection and restore her own beauty. Her story is told in Aelian's Varia Storia: lost her mother in early childhood and raised by her father, Aspasia, despite living in poverty, has dreamt of meeting a noble man. Aspasia of Phocaea Ī second predecessor for the Cinderella character, hailing from late Antiquity, may be Aspasia of Phocaea. The resemblance of the shoe-testing of Rhodopis with Cinderella's slipper has already been noted in the 19th century, by Edgar Taylor and Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould. Herodotus, some five centuries before Strabo, records a popular legend about a possibly related courtesan named Rhodopis in his Histories, : 27 claiming that she came from Thrace, was the slave of Iadmon of Samos and a fellow-slave of the story-teller Aesop, was taken to Egypt in the time of Pharaoh Amasis, and freed there for a large sum by Charaxus of Mytilene, brother of Sappho the lyric poet. Aelian's account indicates that the story of Rhodopis remained popular throughout antiquity. Aelian's story closely resembles the story told by Strabo, but adds that the name of the pharaoh in question was Psammetichus. 235) in his Miscellaneous History, which was written entirely in Greek. The same story is also later reported by the Roman orator Aelian ( c. The story is first recorded by the Greek geographer Strabo in his Geographica (book 17, 33): "When she 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." The oldest known oral version of the Cinderella story is the ancient Greek story of Rhodopis, a Greek courtesan living in the colony of Naucratis in Egypt, whose name means "Rosy-Cheeks".
4.4.4 English language live-action TV films and seriesĪncient versions European Rhodopis.4.4.3 English language live-action feature films.