ABSTRACT
Bed and war, equal value to the hoplite and the woman in labor: the extent of the equivalence can be ascertained by recalling that in the eyes of all Greece Sparta was reputed to have invented the hoplitic ideal of the beautiful death sung by Tyrtacus: that of the citizen fallen like a soldier in the front line. The association between motherhood and war in cities is apparently straightforward: mothers produce hoplites. The feminine war is waged under the redoubtable protection of Artemis, a “goddess-woman” but a virgin goddess whose rejection of marriage readily associates her with the universe of warfare, in which she sometimes appears next to Ares. For, in addition to orthodox division of tasks, more than one passage in the Iliad presents the feminine in the midst of war. The historian’s joyous surprise at the encounter between war and childbirth in the same word is followed by doubt, as the price of imprudently trusting etymology becomes evident.
