Women from the Ancients
Anderson, pp. 52-66
“Traditions Empowering Women”
Traditions Empowering Women
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Goddesses
Warriors
Queens and Empresses
Wealthy Women
Educated and Artistic Women
Goddesses – Magic 3
The Fates
• Clotho – the
spinner
(thread of
life)
• Atropos –
the
Terminator
• Lachesis –
allocates
good and
bad fortune
Goddesses - Magic 3
• Urda (the past)
• Verdandi (the present)
• Skuld (the future)
Seen here from Richard
Wagner’s Der Ring die
Niebelungen
Goddesses-potent symbols
Diana of
Ephesus –
“multi
mamia”
Venus de Milo
Warriors
Valkyrie on
horseback↓
←
Wounded
Amazon
Zenobia ↓
Boudica ↑
Queens and Empresses
• Enobarbus: “For her own
person she was statue still
Her gown was silk of an
azure blue
Diaphanous curtains
obscured the view
But her eyes were dark and
pierced right through…”
• Chorus: “Royal Wench,
Royal Whore”
– Antony and Cleopatra (I,v)
Queens and Empresses
• Galla Placidia (388450 CE) ruled
Western Roman
Empire as Augusta
• Empress Irene
(753-803 CE) ruled
Byzantinium after
blinding her son
Wealthy Women
• “You see here, stranger,
the statue of a woman who
was pious and very wise,
Scholastica. She provided
the great sum of gold for
constructing the part of the
[two public baths] here that
had fallen down.” (part of
inscription from Ephesus)
• No mention of them
outside Greece and Rome
Educated and/or Artists
• Few women in science or the
arts; if they were, they most
likely had a father in the subject
• None of the women recorded
as artist has any surviving work
• Beruriah is one example of a
Jewish biblical scholar
• Hypatia (370-415) taught at U.
of Alexandria in mathematics
and philosophy
• The Christian Patriarch incited
the crowds to kill her and burn
her books
Sappho of Lesbos
I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
A great deal; she said to me, "This parting must
be endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."