Concerning the Virtues of Women (5-9)

Cyrus, causing the Persians to revolt from King Astyages and the Medes, was overcome in battle; and the Persians retreating by flight into the city, the enemy pursued so close that they had almost fallen into the city with them. The women ran out to meet them before the city, plucking up their petticoats to their middle, saying, Ye vilest varlets among men, whither so fast? Ye surely cannot find a refuge in these parts, from whence ye came forth. The Persians blushing for shame at the sight and speech, and rebuking themselves, faced about, and renewing the fight routed their enemies. Hence a law was enacted, that when the king enters the city, every woman should receive a piece of gold; and this law Cyrus made. And they say that Ochus, being in other kinds a naughty and covetous king, would always, when he came, compass the city and not enter it, and so deprive the women of their largess; but Alexander entered twice, and gave all the women with child a double benevolence

There arose a very grievous and irreconcilable contention among the Celts, before they passed over the Alps to inhabit that tract of Italy which now they inhabit, which proceeded to a civil war. The women placing themselves between the armies, took up the controversies, argued them so accurately, and determined them so impartially,

that an admirable friendly correspondence and general amity ensued, both civil and domestic. Hence the Celts made it their practice to take women into consultation about peace or war, and to use them as mediators in any controversies that arose between them and their allies. In the league therefore made with Hannibal, the writing runs thus: If the Celts take occasion of quarrelling with the Carthaginians, the governors and generals of the Carthaginians in Spain shall decide the controversy; but if the Carthaginians accuse the Celts, the Celtic women shall be judges.

The Melians standing in need of a larger country constituted Nymphaeus, a handsome man and marvellously comely, the commander for the transplanting of the colony. The oracle enjoined them to continue sailing till they cast away their ships, and there to pitch their colony. It happened that, when they arrived at Caria and went ashore, their ships were broken to pieces by a storm. Some of the Carians which dwelt at Cryassus, whether commiserating their distressed condition or dreading their resolution, invited them to dwell in their neighborhood, and bestowed upon them a part of their country; but then observing their marvellous increase in a little time, they conspired to cut them off by treachery, and provided a feast and great entertainment for that end and purpose. But it came to pass that a certain virgin in Caria, whose name was Caphene, fell in love with Nymphaeus. While these things were in agitation, she could not endure to connive at the destruction of her beloved Nymphaeus, and therefore acquainted him privately with the conspiracy of the citizens against him. When the Cryassians came to invite them, Nymphaeus made this answer: It isnot the custom of the Greeks to go to a feast without their wives. The

Carians hearing this requested them also to bring their wives; and so explaining the whole transaction to the Melians, he charged the men to go without armor in plain apparel, but that every one of the women should carry a dagger stuck in her bosom, and that each should take her place by her husband. About the middle of supper, their signal token was given to the Carians; the point of time also the Grecians were sensible of. Accordingly the women laid open their bosoms, and the men laid hold of the daggers, and sheathing them in the barbarians, slew them all together. And possessing themselves of the country, they overthrew that city, and built another, which they called New Cryassus. Moreover, Caphene being married to Nymphaeus received due honor and grateful acknowledgments becoming her good services. Here the taciturnity and courage of women is worthy of admiration, that none of them among so many did so much as unwittingly, by reason of fear, betray their trust.

At the time when the Tyrrhenians inhabited the islands Lemnos and Imbros, they violently seized upon some Athenian women from Brauron, on whom they begat children, which children the Athenians banished from the islands as mixed barbarians. But these arriving at Taenarum were serviceable to the Spartans in the Helotic war, and therefore obtained the privilege of citizens and marriage, but were not dignified with magistracies or admitted to the senate; for they had a suspicion that they would combine together in order to some innovation, and conceived they might shake the present established government. Wherefore the Lacedaemonians, seizing on them and securing them, shut them up close prisoners, seeking to take them off by evident and strong convictions. But the wives of the prisoners, gathering together about the prison, by many

supplications prevailed with the jailers that they might be admitted to go to salute their husbands and speak with them. As soon as they came in, they required them to change their clothes immediately and leave them to their wives; while the men, apparelled in their wives’ habits, should go forth. These things being effected, the women stayed behind, prepared to endure all hard usages of the prison, but the deluded keepers let out the men as if they had been their wives. Whereupon they seized upon Taygeta, exciting the Helotic people to revolt, and taking them to their aid; but the Spartans, alarmed by these things into a great consternation, by a herald proclaimed a treaty of peace. And they were reconciled upon these conditions, that they should receive their wives again, and furnished with ships and provisions should make an expedition by sea, and possessing themselves of a land and a city elsewhere should be accounted a colony and allies of the Lacedaemonians. These things did the Pelasgians, taking Pollis for their captain and Crataedas his brother, both Lacedaemonians, and one part of them took up their seat in Melos; but the most part of them, which were shipped with Pollis, sailed into Crete, trying the truth of the oracles, by whom they were told that, when they should lose their Goddess and their anchor, then they should put an end to their roving and there build a city. Wherefore, putting into harbor on that part of Crete called Chersonesus, panic fears fell upon them by night, at which coming under a consternation, they leaped tumultuously on board their ships, leaving on shore for haste the statue of Diana, which was their patrimony brought from Brauron to Lemnos, and from Lemnos carried about with them wherever they went. The tumult being appeased, when they had set sail, they missed this statue; and at the same time Pollis, finding that his anchor had lost one of its beards (for the anchor, having been dragged, as appeared, through some rocky place, was accidentally torn), said that the oracular answer of the Pythia was accomplished. Therefore he gave a sign to tack about, and accordingly made an inroad into that country, conquered those that opposed him in many battles, sat down at Lyctus, and brought many other cities to be tributary to him. And now they repute themselves to be akin to the Athenians on their mothers’ side, and to be Spartan colonies.

That which is reported to have fallen out in Lycia, although it be fabulous, hath yet common fame attesting it. Amisodarus, as they say, whom the Lycians call Isaras, came from a colony of the Lycians about Zeleia, bringing with him pirate ships, which Chimarrhus, a warlike man, who was also savage and brutish, was commander of. He sailed in a ship which had a lion carved on her head and a dragon on her stern. He did much mischief to the Lycians, so that they could not sail on the sea nor inhabit the towns nigh the sea-coast.

This man Bellerophon pursued with his Pegasus and slew him, and also defeated the Amazons, for which he obtained no due requital, but lobates the king was most unjust to him; upon which Bellerophon went to the seashore, and made earnest supplication by himself to Neptune that he would render that country barren and unfruitful; and having said his prayers, he faced about. Upon which the waves of the sea arose and overwhelmed the land, and it was a dreadful sight to behold the lofty billows following Bellerophon and drowning the plain. And now, when the men by their deprecation, laboring to put a stop to Bellerophon, availed nothing at all, the women plucking up their petticoats met him full butt; upon which confounded with shame he turned back again, and the flood, as they say, returned with him. But some

unriddle the fabulous part of this story, by telling us that it was not by execrations that he brought up the sea; but the fattest part of the plain lying lower than the sea, and a certain ridge extending itself all along the shore which beat off the sea, Bellerophon broke through this, so that the sea forcibly flowed in and overwhelmed the plain; and when the men by their humble addresses obtained nothing, the women assembling about him in multitudes gained respect from him and pacified his wrath. Some tell us that the celebrated Chimaera was a mountain opposite to the sun, which caused reflections of the sun’s beams, and in summer ardent and fiery heats, which spread over the plain and withered the fruits; and Bellerophon, finding out the reason of the mischief, cut through the smoothest part of the cliff, which especially caused these reflections. But on seeing that he was treated ungratefully, his indignation was excited to take vengeance on the Lycians, but was appeased by the women. The reason which Nymphis (in the fourth book concerning Heraclea) doth assign is to me not at all fabulous; for he saith, when Bellerophon slew a certain wild boar, which destroyed the cattle and fruits in the province of the Xanthians, and received no due reward of his service, he prayed to Neptune for vengeance, and obtained that all the fields should cast forth a salt dew and be universally corrupted, the soil becoming bitter; which continued till he, condescendingly regarding the women suppliants, prayed to Neptune, and removed his wrath from them. Hence there was a law among the Xanthians, that they should not for the future derive their names from their fathers, but from their mothers.