From their earliest mention, women warriors provoke a variety of irresolvable questions in epic. Amazon warriors, especially those who came to the aid of the Trojans, are mentioned in Homer, but since their most important incursion in the war occurs after the Iliad’s conclusion, their brief moment of glory ( aristeia) is reserved for a later (lost) Epic Cycle poem, the Aethiopis. Only the first book of Quintus of Smyrna’s third-century ce Post-homerica preserves the aristeia of the Amazon Penthesileia, who in this poem foolishly believes that she will rival Hektor, kill Achilles, and set fire to the Greek ships (on this poem see Chapter 26, by James). Her aristeia is distinct from those of other overconfident young warriors in its repeated emphasis on her beauty, which stirs Achilles to an erotic response as he views her dead body. This moment was popular in early Greek art, which sometimes depicts a compelling glance between Achilles and the dying Amazon. In archaic Greek epic Amazons are viewed as inevitably to be defeated by Greek warriors, but compellingly attractive and admirable for their prowess. Over time, the monstrosity of the armed female begins to dominate her representation more heavily. Amazons and their monuments naturally lurk menacingly at the margins of the voyage of the ‘‘Argo’’ to the Black Sea; both Apollonius’ and Valerius Flaccus’ Argonauts come close to encountering them. Penthesileia’s aristeia significantly appears in a mural on Dido’s temple to Juno in Carthage (Aen. 1.490-3). Statius’ Thebaid makes a point of establishing the Attic hero Theseus’ credentials as a creator of order by noting his recent return from a successful expedition against the Amazons; his new consort, the Amazon Hippolyte, cannot join the battle at Thebes, despite her eagerness to do so, because she is pregnant. For both post-Homeric Greeks and for Romans, the defeat of the Amazons plays a role in envisioning their relation to, and conquest of, barbarians outside epic and colors their portrait within it.
Camilla, Virgil’s native Italian warrior, is, like her Amazon predecessors (to whom she is compared at Aen. 11.648), beautiful and skilled on the battlefield. But the text emphasizes the unnaturalness of a female presence there, and this heroine is as vulnerable to wealth and beauty as she is herself beautiful. She dies in pursuit of extravagantly attractive armor, feminized by a wound in her exposed breast (11.803). As in Quintus, the female warrior has a disturbing effect on ordinary matrons, who are temporarily inspired to step out of their traditional roles and take to action on the city walls (Aen. 11.891-5) or even to begin to arm themselves (Quint. Smyn. 1.403-76). At the same time, Camilla’s story evokes sympathy and becomes part of the poem's stress on the loss of talented youths caused by the Trojan incursion into the rural innocence of Italy. Silius Italicus' nomadic horsewoman Asbyte, who is modeled on Penthesileia and Camilla, falls a heroic victim to a Cretan priest of Hercules, and is avenged by Hannibal (Pun. 2.56-269) without the stress on her femininity found in Virgil and Quintus; the focus on Carthage and its exotic allies perhaps explains this difference.
Women’s political leadership or professional roles provoke even stronger doubts. Medea, priestess of Hecate, has already symbolically stepped beyond virginal modesty in Apollonius because the path she has chosen habitually takes her outside the confines of her palace (Arg.3.250-2). The Aeneid evokes admiration for Dido’s courage in founding
Carthage, building a city, and dispensing law and justice. But once in love, Dido neglects her duties, betrays her first husband by entering into a liaison with Aeneas, incurs the wrath of native African suitors, and ends by fomenting future enmity between Carthage and Rome with her curse. The ancient commentator Servius insists that the curt opening description of Dido’s leadership, dux femina facti (the leader of the expedition was a woman, 1.364), should evoke astonishment in the hearer. Lurking behind Virgil’s queen is the historical figure of Cleopatra, who in the Roman view feminized and orientalized the Roman general Anthony even if she ended with a courageous suicide. The monstrous Cleopatra appears in the battle of Actium represented on Aeneas’ shield in Aeneid 8 and reappears in Lucan’s Civil War as seducer of Julius Caesar. The only woman mentioned in the vision that Anchises presents to Aeneas of the public future of Rome in the underworld of Aeneid 6 is Ilia. She was the mother of Romulus and Remus who was raped by the god Mars and sent to her death (the fragmentary early Roman epic Ennius’ Annales preserves bits of her story; see Chapter 31, by Goldberg). The Aeneid's women generally remain more oriented than its men to the past. As noted above, the aggressive wives of Cato and Pompey in Lucan’s poem may reflect the active participation of aristocratic women in politics and even on the battlefield after Julius Caesar’s death. Anthony’s first wife Fulvia, for example, was pilloried for involving herself directly in battles.
Both Argonauticas and Statius’ Thebaid feature the story of the Amazon-like (Statius 5.144) Lemnian women, who kill their husbands and male children because they have been sexually neglected by their spouses; they establish their own government, and then mate with the Argonauts to repopulate their island. Hypsipyle, the daughter of the former King Thoas, is established as a just leader of this all-female society; unlike the other women, she maintained reason and piety and rescued her father from death. Yet without the advantage of deceit the Lemnian women are no match for men and readily give way to the erotic attractions of the Argonauts (Statius’ Hypsipyle, however, is raped by Jason), thus confirming that an all-female society is both given to monstrous and irrational behavior and inevitably short-lived, like that of the Amazons.
World History
