Tractatus de mulieribus

Ancient Greek work discussing famous women in antiquity

Tractatus de mulieribus claris in bello ("Treatise on Women Distinguished in Wars"; Greek: Γυναῖκες ἐν πολεμικοῖς συνεταὶ καὶ ἀνδρεῖαι, "Women wise and brave in the art of war") is a short ancient Greek work by an anonymous author,^[1] which discusses fourteen famous ancient women,^[2] of whom one is not otherwise attested.^[3] The treatise is preserved as part of a 12th- or 13th-Century manuscript in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Codex Laurentianus 56-1.^[4]

Despite the title, not all of the women discussed are warriors, and only a few are portrayed as skilled military strategists.^[3] It was written near the end of the second or the beginning of the first century BCE.^[5] Deborah Gera has suggested, however, that it was written by Pamphile of Epidaurus during the 1st century AD.^[2]^[6]

It is a list of ancient women, four Greek and ten barbarian,^[7] and contains the following individuals:^[1]

Semiramis
Zarinaea
Nitocris the Egyptian
Nitocris the Babylonian
Argeia
Dido
Atossa
Rhodogune of Parthia
Lyde (Woman who tames her son Alyattes by fasting)
Pheretime
Thargelia
Tomyris
Artemisia I of Caria
Onomaris

References

^ ^a ^b Gera, Deborah (1997). Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus. E.J. Brill, Leiden, the Netherlands. p. 4. ISBN 90-04-10665-0.
^ ^a ^b Gourevitch, Danielle (1998). "Review of Warrior Women by Deborah Gera". L'Antiquité Classique. 67: 413.
^ ^a ^b Lightfoot, J.L. (1998). "Review of Warrior Women by Deborah Gera". Mnemosyne. 51 (2): 240.
^ Brodersen, Kai (2010). "Mannhafte Frauen bei Polyaenus und beim Anonymus de Mulieribus". In Broderson, Kai (ed.). Polyaenus. Verlag Antike. p. 149.
^ Holloway, Steven Winford. Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, p.325
^ Gera, Debora (1997). Warrior Women. The anonymous Tractatus de mulieribus. Leiden: Brill. pp. 60–61.
^ McLeod, Glenda (1991). "A Fickle Thing is Woman". Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance. University of Michigan Press. p. 19. ISBN 9780472102068. Retrieved 2024-03-28.