The story of Rhodopis , recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between 7 BC and AD 23, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story. Although the story's title and main character's name change in different languages, in English-language folklore Cinderella is an archetypal name.
The word Cinderella has, by analogy, come to mean someone whose attributes are unrecognized, or someone who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect. In the world of sports, "a Cinderella" is used for an underrated team or club winning over stronger and more favored competitors. The still-popular story of Cinderella continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions , and tropes to a wide variety of media.
The oldest known oral version of the Cinderella story is the ancient Greek story of Rhodopis , [ 4 ] [ 6 ] a Greek courtesan living in the colony of Naucratis in Egypt , whose name means "Rosy-Cheeks". The story is first recorded by the Greek geographer Strabo in his Geographica book 17, 33 : "They [the Egyptians] tell the fabulous story that, 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 same story is also later reported by the Roman orator Aelian c. Aelian's story closely resembles the story told by Strabo, but adds that the name of the pharaoh in question was Psammetichus. The resemblance of the shoe-testing of Rhodopis with Cinderella's slipper has already been noted in the 19th century, by Edgar Taylor [ 11 ] and Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould.
A second predecessor for the Cinderella character, hailing from late Antiquity , may be Aspasia of Phocaea. 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. 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.
