The martial virtuescourage, loyalty, cunning, and strengthwere central to male identity in the ancient world, and antique literature is replete with depictions of men cultivating and exercising these virtues on the battlefield. InWomen and War in Antiquity, sixteen scholars reexamine classical sources to uncover the complex but hitherto unexplored relationship between women and war in ancient Greece and Rome. They reveal that women played a much more active role in battle than previously assumed, embodying martial virtues in both real and mythological combat.The essays in the collection, taken from the first meeting of the European Research Network on Gender Studies in Antiquity, approach the topic from philological, historical, and material culture perspectives. The contributors examine discussions of women and war in works that span the ancient canon, from Homers epics and the major tragedies in Greece to Senecas stoic writings in first-century Rome. They consider a vast panorama of scenes in which women are portrayed as spectators, critics, victims, causes, and beneficiaries of war.This deft volume, which ultimately challenges the conventional scholarly opposition of standards of masculinity and femininity, will appeal to scholars and students of the classical world, European warfare, and gender studies.
Introduction1. War, Speech, and the Bow Are Not Women's Business2. Women and War in the Iliad: Rhetorical and Ethical Implications3. Teichoskopia: Female Figures Looking on Battles4. Women Arming Men: Armor and Jewelry5. Woman and War: From the Theban Cycle to Greek Tragedy6. Women after War in Seneca's Troades: A Reflection on Emotions7. Love and War: Feminine Models, Epic Roles, and Gender Identity inStatius's Thebaid8. Elegiac Women and Roman Warfare9. Warrior Women in Roman Epic10. War in the Feminine in Ancient Greece11. To Act, Not Submit: Women's Attitudes in Situations of War in Ancient Greece12. Women's Wars, Censored Wars? A Few Greek Hypotheses (Eighth to FourthCenturies BCE)13. The Warrior Queens of Caria (Fifth to Fourth Centuries BCE): Archeology,History, and Historiography14. Fulvia: The Representation of an Elite Roman Woman Warrior15. Women and Imperium in Rome: Imperial Perspectives16. The Feminine Side of War in Claudian's Epics
""To sum up, this collection fills a perceived need and ideally should stimulate deeper consideration of women's paradoxical but inescapable link to war.""
