ABSTRACT
WHAT is recorded by Plutarch, a most diligent investigator of ancient customs, in his book, Famous Women among the Greeks, and what Giovanni Boccaccio writes of them among the Italians, the painstaking reader must find out for himself. He may read also how in his book of Chronicles Eusebius supports Orosius, Florus, and Regino of Prüm, when they state that among the Hungarians men and women were equally fierce. Jordanes, moreover, affirms that the Gothic women were the first to be engaged in the line of battle. Then Flavius Vopiscus, Blondus, and others bear witness that ten extremely belligerent women, dressed as men, fought against Aurelian with the greatest courage, and these he led in his triumph. 1 Paul the Deacon states that, when the men of the Lombards began to droop, their women took up arms and went forward in their place; the slaughter they inflicted was as man-like as it was terrifying. 2 In his treatise on the thirty pretenders Trebellius also mentions Victoria, a noble woman, who was distinguished by such great achievement and renown that she called herself the mother of the camp and, giving her grandson Tetricus the title of Caesar, set him to rule over the Gallic provinces. What does the same writer record, too, about Zenobia, that powerful woman, bringing in evidence a good many instances of her feats? He says that in the considered opinion of many people she was more gallant than her husband, the warlike Odaenathus, that she was the noblest lady among all the women of the East, and also, as Cornelius Capitolinus testifies, the most beautiful. 3 About her something even more remarkable will be set out below. 4 Vincent also, in Bk. XXX, Ch. 93, of his Mirror of History, says that Georgian women of knightly rank can expect to receive instruction on how to fight in battle. 5 Herodotus, too, relates at length in Bk IV that the Amazons shoot with the bow, throw javelins, ride horses, and know nothing of women’s work. Moreover they go hunting on horseback and advance into battle as men do, though wearing robes. But since the time when Amazons living in the farthest tracts of European Scythia permitted men to wed them, no virgin marries before she has killed one of her race’s foes; and so before they can marry some of them die as old women, because they are unable to fulfil the law. 6 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315598758/240f65d0-e362-4830-b834-b70852cccccf/content/pg274_1.tif"/>
Plutarch
Fierceness of Hungarian women Gothic women first in the battle-line 10 women dressed as men
Treatise on the 30 pretenders Victoria
Zenobia more gallant than her husband, Odaenathus
Georgian women
Weapons of the Amazons
Those who kill no man become old maids
