When the coded message arrived, there was trouble with it's decipherment: "When the message reached its destination, no one was able to guess the secret until, as I understand, Cleomenes" daughter, Gorgo, who was the wife of Leonidas, divined it and told the others that, if they scraped the wax off, they would find something written on the wood underneath
This was done; the message was revealed and read, and afterwards passed on to the other Greeks." This story displays Gorgo's intelligence and importance to the Spartans. Non-Spartan women in The Histories seldom come across important matters such as this. Other queens were not involved in the important matters of the state, while Gorgo, a strong Spartan woman, was at the forefront of Spartan urgencies.
In Book 4 of The Histories, Herodotus describes the wit and loyalty of a group of Spartan women. Herodotus tells the story of the Minyae, descendents of the Argonauts, who were given Spartan women to marry, plots of land, amongst other privileges (4.146). Soon, the Minyae went too far and claimed they deserved the privileges of the royal family. They were arrested, thrown in jail, and sentenced to death. Herodotus writes:.
Now judicial killings at Sparta are always carried out at night, never by day; so just before sentence could be executed on the Minyae, their wives asked leave to be admitted into the prison, in order to have a word with their husbands. These women were all natives of Sparta and daughters of leading Spartan citizens, so no one suspected treachery, and they succeeded in getting their request granted. Once inside the prison, however, they changed clothes with the men, who were enabled by this disguise to pass themselves off as women and get out.
These Spartan women committed treason, however, they were ambitious and clever enough to carry out a cunning plan. No other Greek women in The Histories challenged authority in such a crafty way.
