A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Artemisia II.
ARTEMISIA II. Queen of Caria, Sister and Wife of Mausoleus,
Immortalised 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 them back to the walls of their city, which she besieged in person, and took in the year 351, B. C. She treated the inhabitants with rigour, and caused two statues to be erected, one of the city of Rhodes habited like a slave, and the other of herself marking it with a hot iron. This monument remained a long time, to the shame of the vanquished, because it was a religious tenet with them, never to destroy even the trophies of their enemies; but they afterwards built walls round it to screen it from public view.