Bravery of Women (intro-3)

Plutarch’s well-chosen selection of stories about the bravery of women was composed for his friend Clea, who held high office among the priestesses at Delphi, and to whom he dedicated also his treatise on Isis and Osiris. He speaks of it as a supplement to a conversation on the equality of the sexes, which he had with Clea on the occasion of the death of Leontis, of blessed memory, suggested no doubt by the noble character of the departed. It is not impossible that some of the topics discussed in that conversation are included here also, so as to make the book a complete and finished whole.

The treatise stands as No. 126 in Lamprias’s list of Plutarch’s works.

Polyaenus drew freely from this book to embellish his Strategemata, as a glance at the notes on the following pages will show.

Novelists who still write of virtuous women and heartless villains may find some material in this work of Plutarch’s. They need not be ashamed to glean where a great poet has reaped.

Regarding the virtues of women, Clea, I do not hold the same opinion as Thucydides.[*] For he declares that the best woman is she about whom there is the least talk among persons outside regarding either censure or commendation, feeling that the name of the good woman, like her person, ought to be shut up indoors and never go out.[*] But to my mind Gorgias appears to display better taste in advising that not the form but the fame of a woman should be known to many. Best of all seems the Roman custom,[*] which publicly renders to women, as to men, a fitting commemoration after the end of their life. So when Leontis, that most excellent woman, died, I forthwith had then a long conversation with you, which was not without some share of consolation drawn from philosophy, and now, as you desired, I have also written out for you the remainder of what I would have said on the topic that man’s virtues and woman’s virtues are one and the same. This includes a good deal of historical exposition, and it is not composed to give pleasure in its perusal. Yet, if in a convincing argument delectation is to be found also by reason of

the very nature of the illustration, then the discussion is not devoid of an agreeableness which helps in the exposition, nor does it hesitate

To join

The Graces with the Muses, A consorting most fair,

as Euripides says,[*] and to pin its faith mostly to the love of beauty inherent to the soul.

If, conceivably, we asserted that painting on the part of men and women is the same, and exhibited paintings, done by women, of the sort that Apelles, or Zeuxis, or Nicomachus has left to us, would anybody reprehend us on the ground that we were aiming at giving gratification and allurement rather than at persuasion ? I do not think so.

Or again, if we should declare that the poetic or the prophetic art is not one art when practised by men and another when practised by women, but the same, and if we should put the poems of Sappho side by side with those of Anacreon, or the oracles of the Sibyl with those of Bacis, will anybody have the power justly to impugn the demonstration because these lead on the hearer, joyous and delighted,[*] to have belief in it ? No, you could not say that either ?

And actually it is not possible to learn better the similarity and the difference between the virtues of men and of women from any other source than by putting lives beside lives and actions beside actions, like great works of art, and considering whether the magnificence of Semiramis has the same character and pattern as that of Sesostris, or the intelligence of

Tanaquil the same as that of Servius the king, or the high spirit of Porcia the sanie as that of Brutus, or that of Pelopidas the same as Timocleia’s, when compared with due regard to the most important points of identity and influence. For the fact is that the virtues acquire certain other diversities, their own colouring as it were, due to varying natures, and they take on the likeness of the customs on which they are founded, and of the temperament of persons and their nurture and mode of living.[*] For example, Achilles was brave in one way and Ajax in another; and the wisdom of Odysseus was not like that of Nestor, nor was Cato a just man in exactly the same way as Agesilaus, nor Eirene fond of her husband in the manner of Alcestis, nor Cornelia high-minded in the manner of Olympias. But, with all this, let us not postulate many different kinds of bravery, wisdom, and justice - if only the individual dissimilarities exclude no one of these from receiving its appropriate rating.

Those incidents which are so often recited, and those of which I assume that you, having kept company with books, have assuredly record and knowledge, I will pass over for the present; but with this exception: if any tales worthy of perusal have escaped the attention of those who, before our time, have recorded the commonly published stories. Since, however, many deeds worthy of mention have been done by women both in association with other women and by themselves alone, it may not be a bad idea to set down first a brief account of those commonly known.

Most of those that escaped from Troy at the time of its capture had to weather a storm, and, because of their inexperience in navigation and ignorance of the sea, were driven upon the shores of Italy, and, in the neighbourhood of the river Tiber, they barely escaped by running in, under compulsion, where there were anchorages and havens. While the men were wandering about the country, in search of information, it suddenly occurred to the women to reflect that for a happy and successful people any sort of a settled habitation on land is better than all wandering and voyaging, and that the Trojans must create a fatherland, since they were not able to recover that which they had lost. Thereupon, becoming of one mind, they burned the ships, one woman, Roma, taking the lead. Having accomplished this, they went to meet the men who were hurrying to the sea to save the ships, and, fearful of their anger, some embraced their husbands and some their relatives, and kissed them coaxingly, and mollified them by this manner of blandishment. This is the origin of the custom, which still persists among the Roman women, of greeting their kinsfolk with a kiss.

The Trojans, apparently realizing the inevitable necessity, and after having also some experience with the native inhabitants, who received them kindly and humanely, came to be content with what had been done by the women, and took up their abode there with the Latins.

The deed of the women of Phocis has not found any writer of high repute to describe it, yet it is not inferior in point of bravery to anything ever done by women, as is attested by imposing sacred rites which the Phocians perform even to this day in the neighbourhood of Hyampolis, and by ancient decrees. Of these events a detailed account of the achievements[*] is given in the Life of Daïphantus,[*] and the women’s part was as follows.

The Thessalians were engaged in a war without quarter against the Phocians. For the Phocians had slain on one day all the Thessalian governors and despots in their cities. Whereupon the Thessalians massacred two hundred and fifty Phocian hostages[*]; then with all their forces they made an invasion through Locris, having previously passed a resolution to spare no grown man, and to make slaves of the children and women. Accordingly Daïphantus, Bathyllius’s son, one of the three governors of Phocis, persuaded the men to meet the Thessalians in battle, and to bring together into some one place the women with their children from all Phocis, and to heap about them a mass of faggots, and to post guards, giving them instructions that, if they learned the men were being vanquished, they should with all haste set fire to the mass and reduce the living bodies to ashes. Nearly all voted approval of the plan, but one man arose in the council and said it was only right that the women approve this also; otherwise they must reject it, and use no compulsion. When

report of this speech reached the women, they held a meeting by themselves and passed the same vote, and they exalted Daïphantus for having conceived the best plan for Phocis. It is said that the children also held an assembly on their own account and passed their vote too.

After this had been done, the Phocians engaged the enemy near Cleonae of Hyampolis, and gained the victory. To this vote of the Phocians the Greeks gave the name ofDesperation [*]; and the greatest festival of all. the Elaphebolia in honour of Artemis, they celebrate in Hyamoolis even to this day in commemoration of that victory.

The reason which led the Chians to appropriate Leuconia as a settlement was as follows: One of the men who appear to have been prominent in Chios was getting married, and, as the bride was being conducted to his home in a chariot, the king, Hippoclus, a close friend of the bridegroom, being there with the rest amid the drinking and merry-making, jumped up into the chariot, not with intent to do anything insulting, but merely following the common custom and indulging in facetiousness. Whereupon the friends of the bridegroom killed him.

Signs of divine anger were soon disclosed to the Chians, and the god of the oracle bade them slay the slayers of Hippoclus, but they said that they all had slain Hippoclus. So the god bade them all leave the city, if they were all involved in the crime. And thus the guilty, both those who had taken a hand in the murder and those who had in any way assented to it,

being not few in number nor without strength, the Chians sent away to settle in Leuconia, which they had earlier wrested from the Coroneans and taken possession of with the co-operation of the Erythraeans.

Later, however, they became involved in war with the Erythraeans,[*] the most powerful of the lonians; and when these marched against Leuconia, they were not able to hold out, and agreed to evacuate the town under truce, each man to have one cloak and one inner garment and nothing else. The women, however, called them cowards if they purposed to lay down their arms and go forth naked through the midst of the enemy. But when the men said that they had given their oath, the women bade them not to leave their arms behind, but to say, by way of answer to the enemy, that the spear serves as a cloak, and the shield as a shirt, to a man of spirit. The Chians took this advice, and when they used bold words towards the Erythraeans and displayed their weapons, the Erythraeans were frightened at their boldness, and no one approached them nor hindered them, but all were well pleased at their departure. So the Chians, having been taught courage by their women, were saved in this way.

A deed which does not in the least fall short of this one in bravery was performed by the women of Chios many years later at the time when Philip,[*] son of Demetrius, was besieging their city, and had made a barbarous and insolent proclamation bidding the slaves to desert to him, their reward to be freedom and marriage with their owners, meaning thereby that he was intending to unite them with the wives of their masters. But the women, suddenly possessed of fierce and savage spirit, in company with

their slaves, who were themselves equally indignant and supported the women by their presence, hastened to mount the walls, both bringing stones and missiles, and exhorting and importuning the fighting men until, finally, by their vigorous defence and the wounds inflicted on the enemy by their missiles, they repulsed Philip. And not a single slave deserted to him.