Hipparchia of Maroneia c. 350 BC – c. 280 BC

Hipparchia of Maroneia was an ancient Greek Cynic philosopher of the late 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, one of the few women philosophers documented in the historical record from antiquity. She abandoned her wealthy family in Maroneia in Thrace to marry the Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes, and lived with him in the same austere public manner as her male Cynic contemporaries, defying the conventions of women's seclusion in classical Greece. Her writings, including reportedly some philosophical letters and treatises, are entirely lost. Her life and a few sharp exchanges with male critics survive in the Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. Her example was cited in antiquity and the early modern period as evidence that women were capable of the philosophical life.