In addition to the title character, two other prominent characters are women: Antiope, her advisor, who also falls in love with a Scythian man, Learchus; and Tomiris, the high priestess of Diana, who is—as revealed near the end of the opera—the mother of Orontes.
Learchus or Learches is a figure in Greek mythology and was the son of Athamas and Ino as well as the brother of Melicertes.
During his reign, Battus realised that Cyrenaica had become an unstable state, from the unstable relations with the Libyans, Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis II and the attempted overthrow of his late father and himself from Learchus.
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His maternal grandmother was the Cyrenaean Princess Critola, while is maternal grandfather was a Cyrenaean noble whose name is unknown and was murdered by Learchus (a rival to Arcesilaus II) in 550 BC.