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Amazon Queen

Ory Amitay

in From Alexander to Jesus

One explicit example of Alexander the Great's live mythologization is the story of his meeting with the Queen of the Amazons, Thalestris. Alexander met Thalestris when he was campaigning in northern ... More

One explicit example of Alexander the Great's live mythologization is the story of his meeting with the Queen of the Amazons, Thalestris. Alexander met Thalestris when he was campaigning in northern Iran (in the land then known as Hyrkania). The expeditions of the Amazons and the Thracians against Attica were conceived as both mythical counterpart of and historical precedent to the Persian wars. Isokrates unraveled the common thread running through the barbaric Asiatic nations, which tried in their hate of all Hellenes to spread their dominion over Europe. The political conclusion of his worldview was to try and foment war between Greece and Persia. All this was highly relevant to Alexander and his men. Setting out from Europe, the Macedonian King had championed the cause of Greece against Persia. The story of the Amazon Queen thus has a distinct political message. Unlike those of his great ancestors, Herakles and Achilles, the story of Alexander's meeting with the Amazon Queen does not feature confrontation and hostility, but rather cooperation and familiarity.Less

Mourning Endless: Female Otherness in Statius' Thebaid

Antony Augoustakis

in Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic

This chapter discusses several female figures from Statius' Thebaid, a poem on the civil war between the two brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Hypsipyle is portrayed as an exiled foreigner, a ... More

This chapter discusses several female figures from Statius' Thebaid, a poem on the civil war between the two brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Hypsipyle is portrayed as an exiled foreigner, a displaced mother with misplaced affections, while Antigone and Ismene are transformed into the abject other, by regressing into their personal, yet unsafe space. Finally the poem ends with the appearance of the captured Amazons in Athens and the lament of the Argive widows, which brings the poet to an impasse and to his confession of utter powerlessness. Generic boundaries are reset, and gender hierarchies are crystallized, as the women remain alien and marginal.Less

Populating the Imaginaire

Joseph E. Skinner

in The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus

This chapter leaps backward and forward through imagined space, like the mind of the archetypal well-traveled man in Homer’s Iliad or, perhaps more famously, the mind of Odysseus, who “saw the cities ... More

This chapter leaps backward and forward through imagined space, like the mind of the archetypal well-traveled man in Homer’s Iliad or, perhaps more famously, the mind of Odysseus, who “saw the cities of many men and knew their minds.” Its purpose in doing so is simply to populate the ethnographic imaginaire, highlighting the breadth and diversity of knowledge relating to a variety of foreign peoples in the years prior to the Persian Wars. Taking Homeric imaginings as a starting point (Cyclopes/Phaeacians), it swoops in from the northernmost margins of the oikoumenē, traversing in turn the imagined territories of the Hyperboreans, one-eyed Arimaspians, Scythians, and Amazons, before encountering the many tribes of Thrace From here it turns to western Asia Minor and the Levant (Phoenicians/Lydians) before relocating once more to the sun-scorched realm of the Ethiopians. It then moves on to Egypt, followed by brief excurses on past and present populations variously associated with lands less foreign: the (seemingly ubiquitous) descendants of Pelasgos and the inhabitants of Arcadia. By compiling what is effectively a gazetteer of some of the major categories of foreign peoples of whom knowledge is attested, the chapter paves the way for discussion of the interlocking systems of knowledge and understanding that provided both the material and the means by which groups and individuals were able to “position” selectively either themselves or others.Less

Performing Madam Britannia and the Blessing of Example

Emma Major

in Madam Britannia: Women, Church, and Nation 1712-1812

This chapter looks at some women who were claimed by their contemporaries as examples to the nation or as women who benefited the public. It begins with Elizabeth Burnet, who was involved in the ... More

This chapter looks at some women who were claimed by their contemporaries as examples to the nation or as women who benefited the public. It begins with Elizabeth Burnet, who was involved in the religious revival following the Glorious Revolution. It then discusses the critic, patron, and hostess Elizabeth Montagu, arguing that she saw herself as part of a patriotic pantheon of women and enjoyed describing herself in relation to Elizabeth I, Amazons, businesswomen, farmers, coalminers, witches, Lady Bountiful, and other types of woman. Catherine Talbot was a patriotic and religious exemplar in a very different way: part of the household of a clergyman who became archbishop, she was closely involved in Church matters and wrote fascinating journals. The chapter concludes by discussing Talbot’s journals and her criticism of Samuel Richardson’s novel Sir Charles Grandison.Less

Cranford (1851)

Patsy Stoneman

in Elizabeth Gaskell

Cranford, always the most popular of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels, has until recently seemed unproblematically charming. The women's movement, however, has produced some startling re-readings. Whereas ... More

Cranford, always the most popular of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels, has until recently seemed unproblematically charming. The women's movement, however, has produced some startling re-readings. Whereas Lord David Cecil, for instance, saw Miss Matty as a ‘wistful figure’ of ‘fragile, flower-like grace’, Nina Auerbach sees her as a biblical avenger with a ‘savage mission’. The ground for this divergence lies in the novel's opening sentence: ‘In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons’. Are there ways, however, in which the ladies of Cranford are like Amazons? As warriors? As sexually mutilated? As hostile to men? As a community of women? And, if these parallels can be sustained, does the novel present them as desirable? This chapter argues that both the hostility and the community of Cranford are effects of the orthodox doctrine of separate spheres, and thus not triumphs over patriarchy, but results of marginalisation. The positive movement of the novel comes not from female separatism, but from women and men who work and care for children.Less

Virginity and Terror: Reading Hippolytus

Lisabeth During

in The Chastity Plot

Euripides's troubled hero Hippolytus introduces masculinity into the history of chastity. A committed virgin, Hippolytus worships Artemis and despises marriage. His contempt for the works of ... More

Euripides's troubled hero Hippolytus introduces masculinity into the history of chastity. A committed virgin, Hippolytus worships Artemis and despises marriage. His contempt for the works of Aphrodite brings disaster. Recovering the significance of this virgin goddess at the origin of chastity's history is made possible by Jean-Pierre Vernant's seminal lectures on Artemis. Euripides found in the excesses of asceticism and the arrogance of the virgin much to worry about. Hippolytus's understanding of 'sophrosyne' or temperance is at odds with the moral code of his stepmother Phaedra, also committed to an ideal of virtue she finds impossible to fulfill. Both may be wrong. But their conflict is instructive. Virginity, in the tragic context, is neither mild nor accommodating. Those who dedicate themselves to the cult of Artemis, who chase a wilder and more natural life, are perceived as anarchic, violent, and transgressive by the standards of the city. Remembering Hippolytus allows us to see again a non-Christian, non-bourgeois, and non-domestic conception of asexuality, connected to an image of freedom that is hard to reconcile with conventional thought about sexual decorum and renunciation.Less

An Amazonian Past: Female Rule and the Threat of Illegitimacy

Eleonora Stoppino

in Genealogies of Fiction: Women Warriors and the Dynastic Imagination in the Orlando Furioso

This chapter surveys the descriptions of Amazonian societies in the Italian epic tradition preceding Ariosto. It analyzes the figure of the Amazon and its Ariostean incarnation, Marfisa. Looking at ... More

This chapter surveys the descriptions of Amazonian societies in the Italian epic tradition preceding Ariosto. It analyzes the figure of the Amazon and its Ariostean incarnation, Marfisa. Looking at Virgil, Pulci, and Boiardo, but also at anonymous epic poems and travel narratives such as Marco Polo's Devisement du monde, the chapter posits Amazonian societies as necessary narrative and ideological preludes to the construction of the female warrior in Ariosto's poem. This section contextualizes within the culture of Herculean Ferrara the revival of the Amazon imagery, and shows it to be the product of a society obsessed with illegitimacy. The analysis of these imagined Amazonian communities moves between a broad overview of the chivalric genres in Italy and the close textual analysis of specific episodes. In the Furioso, the crucial episode is the adventure of the woman warrior Marfisa in the land of the “femine omicide” (canto XX).Less

“Inaccurate, as lady linguists often are”: Herodotus and Kleist on the Language of the Amazons

in The Rhetoric of Error from Locke to Kleist

This chapter examines the Histories of Herodotus and the tragedy Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist, focusing on how their representation of the misspeaking Amazon reveals how error can render all ... More

This chapter examines the Histories of Herodotus and the tragedy Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist, focusing on how their representation of the misspeaking Amazon reveals how error can render all pairings unlikely. Histories is about the formation of a hybrid nation formed by a union between the Scythian men and the Amazons, while Penthesilea retells the story of the encounter between the Greeks and the Amazons before the walls of Troy, and the ill-fated love affair between Achilles and Penthesilea, the Amazon Queen. Herodotus and Kleist both describe a failed figure called “solecism” that they attribute to the Amazon and which generates the possibility of uncontainable and unpredictable errance. The chapter also considers what Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz claimed to be a reliable marker in the reconstruction of the history of language: the names of rivers. Herodotus and Kleist both use the term Tanaïs for their origin narratives, which simultaneously names and fails to name a river—an unreliability that suggests that it is impossible to reduce errance to a coherent fluvial course.Less

Alexander and the End of Days

Ory Amitay

in From Alexander to Jesus

Alexander the Great's great adventure wrought ground-shaking changes from the Indus to the Nile, and beyond. Alexander's name pops up repeatedly in the context of eschatological expectation. Indeed, ... More

Alexander the Great's great adventure wrought ground-shaking changes from the Indus to the Nile, and beyond. Alexander's name pops up repeatedly in the context of eschatological expectation. Indeed, Alexander plays a key role in the most influential piece of apocalyptic eschatological literature produced by second temple Judaism: the Book of Daniel. Alexander also occupies a prominent position with respect to the relation between the inevitable march of history and the principle of prophecy. Moreover, the position of Alexander as a prominent milestone on the road towards the end of time (eschaton) receives its clearest elucidation in a Hebrew text: the Midrash of ten kings. The legendary Alexander had become associated with protecting the northern frontier of civilization, building a fortification to defend a pass across the Caucasus. Of course, Alexander had never been to the mountains which we today call the Caucasus. The real Caucasus was close to the traditional home of the Amazons, whose queen, Thalestria, Alexander met in Hyrkania.Less

Fading Shades of Hybris: The Attic Amazonomachy

Matteo Barbato

in The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past

This chapter argues that democratic institutions influenced how the Athenians conceptualised the causes of the Attic Amazonomachy and used them to foster ideas about their own attitude towards ... More

This chapter argues that democratic institutions influenced how the Athenians conceptualised the causes of the Attic Amazonomachy and used them to foster ideas about their own attitude towards hybris. Due to the influence of the state funeral, Lysias’s Funeral Oration ignores Theseus’ abduction of Antiope and depicts the Athenians as righteous punishers of the hubristic Amazons. Aeschylus’ Eumenides states that the Amazons invaded Athens out of phthonos (meaning either envy or rightful indignation) for Theseus. The dramatic festival enabled the poet to both hint to and challenge the picture of the Athenians as righteous enemies of hubristic invaders. Private settings, which were free from institutional constraints, allowed for a wider range of variations. The abduction of Antiope/Hippolyta could be vaguely alluded to as the Amazons’ pretext for pursuing the conquest of Greece (Isocrates’ Panegyricus); it could be described as a lawful acquisition as a war prize, which contradicted the righteous picture of Athens by portraying Theseus as the original aggressor (Philochorus and Pherecydes); or it could be portrayed as Hippolyta’s deliberate choice, which characterises Theseus as guilty of seduction and potentially endangers the Athenians’ image as the champions of justice (Isocrates’ Panathenaicus).Less

Natalie Barney’s Missed Marriages

Melanie C. Hawthorne

in Women, Citizenship, and Sexuality: The Transnational Lives of Renée Vivien, Romaine Brooks, and Natalie Barney

Although a coeval of Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney (1876-1972) managed to steer a happier middle course in which she openly embraced a lesbian identity while avoiding (for the most part) questions ... More

Although a coeval of Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney (1876-1972) managed to steer a happier middle course in which she openly embraced a lesbian identity while avoiding (for the most part) questions of national belonging. The celebrated hostess of an international salon in interwar Paris, Barney retained more autonomy by remaining unmarried and nationally unattached. She flirted with marriage proposals, others claimed she was married, and she indeed once signed a marriage contract with another woman (though a legally unenforcable one), but she remained unattached, a status reflected in her transnational situation as an American citizen living as a denizen of Paris.Less

Reclaiming Life and History: The Amazons Benevolent Society and the Black Storyville Baby Dolls

Robin Roberts

in Downtown Mardi Gras: New Carnival Practices in Post-Katrina New Orleans

This chapter focuses on The Amazons Social Aid and Benevolent Society and The Black Storyville Baby Dolls. The Amazons is group of breast cancer survivors, both natives and transplants, who provide ... More

This chapter focuses on The Amazons Social Aid and Benevolent Society and The Black Storyville Baby Dolls. The Amazons is group of breast cancer survivors, both natives and transplants, who provide support to other survivors while celebrating life through costuming and parading. Wearing breastplates and brandishing swords, the group commandeers a militaristic posture that exudes strength and power. While the group’s main focus is social aid and support, the members use Mardi Gras parades to make a public statement of women’s empowerment. The Black Storyville Baby Dolls, also founded by Dianne Honoré, draw directly on the African-American tradition of Baby Dolls, the historical practice of adult women dressing as young girls, in beautiful outfits made of satin, dancing in the streets, and acting tough (smoking cigars). Both groups exemplify the use of Carnival as an opportunity to resist gender and race stereotypes.Less

Dancing in Scyros: Masculinity and Young Women’s Rituals in the Achilleid

Vassiliki Panoussi

in Ritual and Religion in Flavian Epic

This chapter examines the representation of young women’s rituals in Statius’ Achilleid. The poem shows female ritual activity (expressed through Bacchic rites, choral dancing, and collective worship ... More

This chapter examines the representation of young women’s rituals in Statius’ Achilleid. The poem shows female ritual activity (expressed through Bacchic rites, choral dancing, and collective worship of Pallas) as bestowing the young women of Scyros with a power that appears capable of containing (or at least delaying) the manifestation of Achilles’ masculinity. The girls’ agency is indicated in three ways: the power of their beauty and sexuality to attract and potentially dominate men; their association with Amazons; and their performance of Bacchic rituals. An analysis of these narrative strategies reveals that Statius invests typical motifs associated with women with an exceptional power that renders the young women capable of posing a threat to the full articulation of masculinity.Less

The 1890s: New Women, Bloomer Girls, and the Old Ball Game

Debra A. Shattuck

in Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers

The 1890s saw a dramatic redefinition of femininity that coalesced into the image of the Gibson Girl and “New Woman.” Men like Bernarr Macfadden taught women that athleticism was a prerequisite of ... More

The 1890s saw a dramatic redefinition of femininity that coalesced into the image of the Gibson Girl and “New Woman.” Men like Bernarr Macfadden taught women that athleticism was a prerequisite of beauty; thousands of women began riding bicycles and playing vigorous sports with gusto. Women’s professional baseball shifted from theatrical to highly competitive and featured talented female players like Maud Nelson and Lizzie Arlington. Their “Bloomer Girl” teams barnstormed the country playing men’s amateur and semi-professional teams. Many decried the New Woman ideal and critics of female baseball players called them Amazons and freaks. Bloomer Girl teams of the 1890s paved the way for the talented female teams of the twentieth century.Less

A Dog's Legacy: After Marston Moor

Mark Stoyle

in The Black Legend of Prince Rupert's Dog: Witchcraft and Propaganda during the English Civil War

This chapter argues that the anxieties and apprehensions which had been aroused as a result of the propaganda storm which had raged around the figures of Rupert and Boy continued to possess a ... More

This chapter argues that the anxieties and apprehensions which had been aroused as a result of the propaganda storm which had raged around the figures of Rupert and Boy continued to possess a powerful resonance long after ‘the four legged cavalier’ himself had been removed from the scene. It demonstrates that, after 1644, the conviction that the Royalist cause was diabolically inspired became ever more firmly entrenched in the Parliamentarian camp, and suggests that a number of significant – and hitherto overlooked – connections existed between ‘the Black Legend of Prince Rupert's Dog’ and the great English Witch Hunt of 1645-47. It also discusses the part which the ‘Boy Myth’ may have played in paving the way for the notorious massacre of the king's female camp- followers which was carried out by Parliamentarian soldiers in the wake of the Battle of Naseby in 1645. [145 words]Less

Deploying Amazons: Women and Wartime Propaganda

Gina M. Martino

in Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast

Chapter 3 explores the relationship between women’s war making in the northeastern borderlands and propaganda. It argues that political and religious leaders used accounts of women’s martial ... More

Chapter 3 explores the relationship between women’s war making in the northeastern borderlands and propaganda. It argues that political and religious leaders used accounts of women’s martial activities to improve morale and influence policy at local, colonial, and imperial levels. Images of Amazons and other mythical and historical women warriors often appeared in this propaganda, establishing a precedent for women’s actions in North America and adding excitement and familiar literary figures that resonated with readers. In New France, Jesuit missionaries used the figure of the Amazon to positively portray Native female combatants as well as brave nuns who traveled to Canada. They also used their published reports, the Jesuit Relations, to urge wealthy French women to be brave like Canada’s Amazon-nuns and donate to the mission. In New England, officials held up women who made war (such as Hannah Dustan) as positive, Christian role models when morale was low, and writers such as the Rev. Cotton Mather sent accounts of women’s war making to England in attempts to shape imperial policy.Less

Camilla, or the limits of invention

Nicholas Horsfall

in Fifty Years at the Sibyl's Heels: Selected Papers on Virgil and Rome

Camilla is presented as the last of the leaders in Virgil’s Italic catalogue, which is neither exclusively epic in origin nor completely antiquarian in content. It is no surprise to discover ... More

Camilla is presented as the last of the leaders in Virgil’s Italic catalogue, which is neither exclusively epic in origin nor completely antiquarian in content. It is no surprise to discover historical and antiquarian elements in Virgil’s portrayal of Camilla, but we need to avoid the danger of a simplistic polarization between ‘invention’ and ‘inheritance’ in the analysis of a figure presented in such rich and impassioned detail. We should arrive at Camilla with the presupposition that we shall probably find invented and inherited elements coexisting, and with the awareness that both these aspects will probably be elusive and nuanced. The only legitimate way to study Camilla’s antecedents is in the wider context of Virgil’s sources for other Italic warriors, and the argument on the poet’s use of the sources is fundamental.Less

Pontos

Duane W. Roller

in Empire of the Black Sea: The Rise and Fall of the Mithridatic World

The territory of Pontos was the northern coastal regions of Asia Minor, a rugged region that was a mixture of coastal Greek cities, Hittite and Assyrian outposts, and an indigenous population, noted ... More

The territory of Pontos was the northern coastal regions of Asia Minor, a rugged region that was a mixture of coastal Greek cities, Hittite and Assyrian outposts, and an indigenous population, noted for the unusual phenomenon of elaborate temple states. The region had long been known to the Greeks: Jason and the Argonauts were said to have passed along its coast. Its economy was primarily agricultural. It was also famous in Greek myth as the home of the Amazons. It was here that the Mithridatic kingdom has its origins, eventually coming to dominate the territory and its people.Less

We Learned These Things from the Romans

Caitlin C. Gillespie

in Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain

Chapter 4 analyzes Dio’s representation of Boudica as an emblem of barbarian strength and fortitude who criticizes the misplaced values of the Romans. Boudica’s fearsome visage opens the ... More

Chapter 4 analyzes Dio’s representation of Boudica as an emblem of barbarian strength and fortitude who criticizes the misplaced values of the Romans. Boudica’s fearsome visage opens the conversation. Her appearance has parallels in Diodorus Siculus’s description of the Gauls, and material evidence of East Anglia provides support for her wearing a gold torc (a type of metal band worn around the neck). Images of the personified Britannia and other non-Romans suggest the models Dio is working against in his depiction of Boudica. Boudica’s speech in Dio responds to other female speeches, from Hersilia, to Veturia, to the empress Livia. In her speech, Boudica comments on the failures of Nero’s regime and the lack of imperial models of traditional Roman morality.Less

Meaning

David C. Yates

in States of Memory: The Polis, Panhellenism, and the Persian War

This chapter builds on Chapter 4 and examines whether the Greeks assigned the same basic meaning to the war. It includes three comparative case studies, each of which pairs popular narratives in ... More

This chapter builds on Chapter 4 and examines whether the Greeks assigned the same basic meaning to the war. It includes three comparative case studies, each of which pairs popular narratives in Athens with others exampled in Plataea, Megara, and Corinth. Each reveals significant differences in the meaning assigned to the war in these states. The chapter additionally examines the motives that lay behind these idiosyncratic recollections of the war. This moves beyond the question of why the Greeks remembered the war differently and considers why the Plataeans, Megarians, and so on remembered the war as they did and not in some other equally distinct way. Yates concludes that different preexisting social memories, actual wartime experiences, and present interests predisposed the Greeks to remember even so elemental a question as the overall meaning of the war in unique ways.Less