Warrior Women and Women to Be Feared: Camilla, Medea, Cleopatra

Where the option has been going

This is the last part of the option, and it is where the argument you have been building arrives. **Four figures**: the Amazons and their queen Penthesilea, Camilla in Virgil's Aeneid, Medea in Euripides, and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. **Notice what happens to every one of them.** The Amazons are always defeated. Camilla is killed. Medea is foreign as well as female, and both are used to explain her. Cleopatra is remembered as Egypt rather than as a rival for power at Rome. **So "women to be feared" is not a description of these four women. It is a description of what their cultures did with them** - which is exactly what you found with the legends, with the women called improper, and with the boundary drawn around religious authority. **The option has been making one argument all along.**

Four women at the edge

Two Greek and two Roman. Note how different the four are as kinds of evidence.

Match each figure to what her story does

What are the Amazons for?

Greek art shows Greeks fighting Amazons constantly, alongside battles against centaurs and giants. What does that grouping suggest?

• That an Amazonomachy works like those other battles: a culture-hero defeating something that stands outside the proper order, so the Amazons are a way of thinking about that boundary rather than a record of any people
• That the Greeks had fought a real nation of warrior women
• That the Greeks admired women who fought
• That the subject was simply popular with artists

A people and a person

Both are women who fight. As evidence they are completely different, and an answer that treats them alike has missed the most interesting thing in this section.

How Virgil treats Camilla

Select the TWO statements a strong answer could make about Virgil's Camilla.

• He gives her the sustained moment of excellence in battle that an epic normally gives a male hero, so the form itself grants her the standing of a warrior
• He gives her a history - an upbringing in the wild and a dedication to Diana - so she is a person rather than a type
• She survives the poem and is rewarded
• She appears only briefly and is not developed

Why Medea disturbed an audience

Medea, abandoned by Jason at Corinth, kills his new bride, the king, and her own two children, and escapes. That is what happens, and it is not what the play is about. **Euripides gives her arguments.** She is not presented as a creature acting without reason. The play lets her set out what has been done to her, what her position as an abandoned foreign woman actually is, and what she has decided - and an Athenian audience had to sit and listen to it. **That is what made the play disturbing, and it still is.** **She is also foreign.** She comes from Colchis, at the edge of the Greek world, and the play keeps that in view. So two explanations are available to an audience wanting one: she did this because she is a woman, or because she is a barbarian. **Noticing that both are offered, and that the play does not simply endorse either, is the analysis.** **A useful comparison**: the Amazons are frightening because they are outside. Medea is frightening because she is inside, in a Greek city, speaking Greek, and making a case.

Feared women in a paragraph

The _____ were a mythical people of warrior women whose queen _____ was killed by Achilles at Troy. In Virgil's Aeneid the warrior maiden _____, dedicated to the goddess _____, leads cavalry against the Trojans and is killed. In Euripides' play, _____ is a princess from Colchis abandoned by Jason. The last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt was _____, defeated by Octavian at Actium.

Who wrote Rome's Cleopatra?

Roman literature presents Cleopatra as a foreign queen threatening Rome with luxury and disorder. What should an answer say about that portrait?

• That it was produced by the side that defeated her, and that presenting the conflict as a war against a foreign queen rather than against a Roman rival was politically necessary for the victor
• That it is a reliable description of her character
• That it reflects how Egyptians saw her
• That it is worthless as evidence

Spot the framing

A summary of how Roman writers presented the conflict with Cleopatra. Tap the TWO details that show the account has been shaped rather than simply reported.

• Cleopatra was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and was defeated at Actium in 31 BC.
• The war was in fact between two Roman commanders, but it was presented as a struggle against a foreign queen
• She died the following year.
• Roman writers dwell on her luxury and her foreignness, the two qualities most useful for making an opponent seem un-Roman
• . Egypt became a Roman province.

Women to be feared, answered

**"Why were some women in the ancient world presented as figures to be feared? (12 marks)"** "The four figures on this part of the course have almost nothing in common as people. One is a mythical people, one a character in a Latin epic, one a character in an Athenian tragedy, and one a real ruler whose dates we know. **What they share is how they were handled.** **The Amazons are always defeated**, and in art they appear beside centaurs and giants: the enemy of order, placed at the edge of the map. They are evidence for a Greek way of thinking about the boundary, not for any people. **Camilla is honoured and killed.** Virgil gives her the sustained battlefield excellence an epic gives its male heroes, which is a real grant of standing - and she still dies, which is the limit of what the form would allow. **Medea is given arguments**, and that is what disturbed her audience: an abandoned foreign woman setting out her position in a Greek city, in Greek, and being listened to. Her foreignness gave an audience a second explanation for her, and the play does not simply endorse either. **Cleopatra is remembered as Egypt.** Actium ended a war between two Roman commanders, and presenting it as a war against a foreign queen was what allowed the winner to celebrate it. **So the fear is not a property of these women. It is a description of what was done with them** - defeat, death, or explanation as something foreign. That is the same pattern found in the legends, where women explain male political events, and in the treatment of the women called improper, who reach us only through men attacking them." **The move that makes this a top answer**: it refuses to treat four different KINDS of evidence as the same kind, and then finds the pattern anyway.

Write carefully about Cleopatra

Build a sentence that uses the Roman portrait of Cleopatra without treating it as fact.

From myth to history

Put these four from the one we can know LEAST about as a person to the one we can know MOST about. The ordering is the point: they are four different kinds of evidence.

• The Amazons: a mythical people, with no evidence that any such nation existed
• Camilla: a character invented for a Latin epic, who exists only inside the poem
• Medea: a figure of myth given a specific treatment in one surviving Athenian tragedy
• Cleopatra VII: a real ruler with known dates, coins and a documented reign

Writing about a feared woman

An exam question asks why Medea and Cleopatra were both presented as dangerous. Work through how to answer it.

• Your first instinct is to compare what the two women did. Is that the right approach?
• You notice both are described as foreign. What do you make of that?
• How should the answer conclude?

Your turn: the whole option

Explain how the ancient world presented women who fought or who were feared, and connect it to what you have studied elsewhere in this option.

• Explain what the Amazons are evidence FOR, and why their appearance alongside centaurs and giants supports your answer
• Explain how Virgil treats Camilla, and what the limit of that treatment is
• Explain what Euripides does with Medea that made the play disturbing, without recounting the plot
• Explain why the Roman portrait of Cleopatra was politically useful, and connect that to ONE woman from an earlier part of this option who also reaches us through a hostile source