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Single Issue XVIII
Rewriting history or representing history? Women as leaders and commanders in ancient societies
By Alwyn
The free update which accompanied the release of the Desert Kingdoms DLC for Rome II (patch 19) added women as influential characters and generals to this game for the first time (except for Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, introduced when the previous DLC, Empire Divided, was released). The introduction of women as leaders and generals was criticised by some people as 'rewriting history'. Some people said that women weren't leaders or generals in ancient societies or that they only had these roles in very exceptional cases.
This article investigates whether women were leaders and generals in ancient societies. To answer this question, we'll explore the situation of women in ancient societies. It's easy to make assumptions about these cultures. We might assume that ancient societies all had the same attitude to women in positions of authority. We might assume that, if the position of women in many societies improved in the 20th century, then it must have been worse the further back in history we go, so that women's status must have been very low in antiquity. In this article, we'll investigate whether assumptions like these are supported by evidence and stand up to questioning.
Isn't it true that ancient societies treated women as inferior?
Yes, some of them were strongly opposed to women in leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome, there is certainly evidence that women had a lower status. Artistotle wrote that "the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying" (Aristotle, Politics, Part XIII). There's more evidence of ancient Greek attitudes from the ancient Greek historian Polybius. Polybius wrote that, after the death of King Agros of Illyria:
His wife Teuta succeeded him on the throne; and managed the various details of administration by means of friends whom she could trust. But her woman's head had been turned by the success just related, and she fixed her gaze upon that, and had no eyes for anything going on outside the country. Her first measure was to grant letters of marque to privateers, authorising them to plunder all whom they fell in with; and she next collected a fleet and military force as large as the former one, and despatched them with general instructions to the leaders to regard every land as belonging to an enemy. - Polybius, Histories 2.4
We've seen an ancient Greek philosopher and a historian share hostility to the idea of women in authority. This view was widely shared among ancient Greeks:
Women in the ancient Greek world had few rights in comparison to male citizens. Unable to vote, own land, or inherit, a woman’s place was in the home and her purpose in life was the rearing of children. - Mark Cartwright, Women in Ancient Greece
Spartan women were treated somewhat differently than in other states. For example, they had to do physical training like men, were permitted to own land, and could drink wine. - Mark Cartwright, Women in Ancient Greece
Hypatia, daughter of Theon of Alexandria, was born in that city around 350 AD. She studied and later taught at the great school in Alexandria. Some modern mathematicians acclaim her as having been “the world's greatest mathematician and the world's leading astronomer”, a viewpoint shared by ancient scholars and writers. She became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria lecturing on mathematics, astronomy and philosophy attracting students from all over the ancient world. Political and religious leaders in Alexandria sought her advice. - Canadian Museum of History, Women in Ancient Greece
The most remarkable thing about Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas I of Sparta, is that we know anything about her at all. Herodotus and other ancient Greek historians are far more likely to mention Persian queens than the wives of Greeks – not because Persian women were more powerful than their Greek counterparts, but because Persians had several wives, and so it was sometimes useful to record by which of them a certain Persian figure had been born. Since Greeks had only one legitimate wife, there was no need for such clarification when it came to prominent Greek citizens. - Helena P. Schrader, quoted in Joshua J. Mark, Gorgo of Sparta
Like ancient Greek culture, ancient Roman culture contained strong opposition to the idea of woman in authority. Ancient Roman writers, commenting on women who opposed Rome, saw women leaders as strange, disturbing and unnatural:
... everything in Cassius Dio's description [of Boudica's uprising against Rome] seems designed to instill the reader with an awe that is also tainted with disgust: like the Amazons to the Greeks, everything about the other culture was upside-down and plain wrong. To a Roman audience, a woman ruler was a vile oxymoron as only men were fit to govern: queens, with their deadly blend of sex and power, represented a perversion of the natural order. - Vanessa Collingridge, Boudica (2005) p. 8
In regards to the power held by women (Boudica, Cartimandua, and Veleda), Tacitus, while calling them feminae (because they were high-born noble women), then augmented that term with words that indicated he disapproved of how these women had usurped power that rightly belonged to men. - Lauren Hammersen, Indigenous Women in Gaul, Brittania, Germania and Celtic Hispania, 400 BC to 235 AD (2017) p. 35
... Roman women in general had much greater independence than women in most parts of the classical Greek or Near Eastern world, limited as it must seem in modern terms. The contrast is particularly striking with classical Athens, where women of wealthy families were supposed to live secluded lives, out of the public eye, largely segregated from men and male social life (the poor, needless to say, did not have the cash or the space to enforce any such divisions). There were, to be sure, uncomfortable restrictions on women in Rome too: the emperor Augustus, for example relegated them to the back rows of the theatres and the gladiatorial arenas; the suites for women in public baths were usually markedly more cramped than those for men; and in practice male activities probably dominated in the swankier areas of a Roman house. But women were not meant to be publicly invisible, and domestic life does not seem to have been formally divided into male and female spaces, with gendered no-go areas - Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2016) p. 307.
Ancient Greek and Roman writers provided many of the texts through which we view the ancient world. Perhaps there is a danger of seeing the ancient world through the eyes of members of the societies which were most hostile to women in authority. Greek and Roman cultures were very important and influential in antiquity. However, even in Europe and neighbouring regions represented in Rome II's Grand Campaign (such as north Africa and Arabia), other important cultures existed - and ancient societies did not all have the same attitude to women.
In ancient Celtic societies, there is evidence of woman having important responsibilities. For example, women ambassadors from the Volcae were sent to negotiate with Hannibal. Julius Caesar's Gallic War records how in Germanic communities women would declare, through divination, when the people should go to war:
When Caesar inquired of his prisoners, wherefore Ariovistus did not come to an engagement, he discovered this to be the reason-that among the Germans it was the custom for their matrons to pronounce from lots and divination, whether it were expedient that the battle should be engaged in or not; that they had said, "that it was not the will of heaven that the Germans should conquer, if they engaged in battle before the new moon." - C. Julius Caesar, Gallic War
Tacitus’ description of Veleda as a prophetess and spiritual leader was indicative of a woman of great power on a level similar to that of Boudica - Lauren Hammersen, Indigenous Women in Gaul, Brittania, Germania and Celtic Hispania, 400 BC to 235 AD (2017) pp. 115 to 116
... the Bettelbühl Princess was interred, with her gold finery and her horse's decorated bronze chamfron, in a plank-floored wooden chamber, under a mound ... one of the most striking messages from the graves of the Bettelbühl Princess is that the higher echelons of this society were not exclusively reserved for men. And not only was it possible for a women to possess such high status, her children - including her daughters - would inherit such status - Alice Roberts, The Celts: Search for a Civilization (2015) pp. 82 to 83).
Women in at least some ancient Celtic societies had better property rights than women in early to mid-19th century Britain. In surviving codifications of Celtic law codes, women could inherit property and remained the owner of property brought into marriage (Peter Beresford Ellis, A Brief History of the Celts, 2003). Even in ancient Rome where women tended to have less freedom (for example, they had no option about whether to marry), women had some legal rights which compared well with 19th-century Britain:
A woman did not take her husband's name or fall entirely under his legal authority. After the death of her father, an adult woman could own property in her own right, buy and sell, inherit or make a will and free slaves - many of the rights which women in Britain did not gain until the 1870s - Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2016) p. 308
In ancient Egypt, Cleopatra VII reigned as a pharoah. She was not the only woman to rule Egypt, others included Arsinoe II who was "full co-ruler" with Ptomeley II (Joann Fletcher, The female ‘kings’ of ancient Egypt). It was not unusual for women to have high-status roles in ancient Egypt:
Egypt’s women were portrayed alongside men at every level of society. ... So while the most common female title in Egypt’s 3,000-year history was ‘lady of the house’ (housewife), many women worked in the temple hierarchy. Other women were overseers and administrators, or they held titles ranging from doctor, guard and judge to treasurer, vizier (prime minister) and viceroy. - Joann Fletcher, The female ‘kings’ of ancient Egypt
Perhaps as a result of the strong influence of women figures in religion, Nubia and its Kushite rulers gave way to a number of strong queens during its history. Ten sovereign ruling queens are recognized from the period - Tara L. Kneller, Neither Goddesses Nor Doormats: The Role of Women in Nubia (University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center 1993)
Perhaps women were leaders in some ancient societies. But surely they weren't military commanders - or only one or two were?
We might wonder if warrior queens really were generals, or if they were merely figureheads. When the Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote of Boudicca, he "made no mention of Boudica having borne arms herself in any of the battles during the campaign against the Romans" (Hammersen 2017, p. 89). However, if a male commander directed an army, we'd call him a general, even if he didn't personally engage in hand-to-hand fighting. It seems reasonable to apply the same question to women commanders: is there evidence of them directing or leading warriors?
Boudicca of the Iceni ambushed the Ninth Legion (IX Hispania) on their journey from Lincoln to defend the Roman capital in Britain. IX Hispiania were veterans of campaigns in Iberia and Pannonia before serving in Britain (Ellis 2003). Tacitus wrote that Boudicca and her daughters "flew to arms" and describes their victory:
Turning to meet Petilius Cerialis, commander of the ninth legion, who was arriving to the rescue, the victorious Britons routed the legion and slaughtered the infantry to a man - Tacitus, Annals, 31 to 32
Different writers have different views on whether Boudicca actually participated in hand-to-hand fighting. Lauren Hammersen criticises Simon James (in his book The World of the Celts) for writing that:
“The modern notion of the sword-wielding Celtic Amazons is more difficult to substantiate: although women were often present on the battlefield, there seem to be no evidence of them bearing arms – except in Dio’s description of Boudica...” - Simon James, The World of the Celts, quoted in Lauren Hammersen, Indigenous Women in Gaul, Brittania, Germania and Celtic Hispania, 400 BC to 235 AD (2017) p. 75
This statement completely ignored Appian’s description of Celtiberian women fighting in battle during the Spanish Wars and mischaracterized the primary sources which described Boudica, none of which made any reference to her fighting with the men of her army. - Lauren Hammersen, Indigenous Women in Gaul, Brittania, Germania and Celtic Hispania, 400 BC to 235 AD (2017) p. 75
Boudicca became ruler of the Iceni and led a rebellion after the death of her husband. Amage, queen of the Sarmatians, took over the leadership of her people, including giving instructions to soldiers, while her husband was still alive. She "observed her husband to be totally given up to luxury, and took the reins of government into her own hands. She judged causes, stationed garrisons, repulsed the invasions of enemies, and directed everything with so great ability, that her fame extended through all Scythia" (Polyaenus, Strategems of War, 56). Like Boudicca, Amage gave instructions to soldiers, by stationing garrisons and repelling invasions.
While Boudicca led a rebellion, Rhodogune of Parthia was described by Polyaenus, a 2nd-century Macedonian writers, as leading the troops who quelled a rebellion:
Rhodogune was just coming out of her bath, with her hair as yet undressed, when she received intelligence of the revolt of a subject nation. Without waiting to have her hair dressed, she mounted her horse, and put herself at the head of her army. At the same time, she vowed never to have her hair dressed, till she had subdued the rebels; which she eventually achieved after a tedious war. She then bathed, and had her hair dressed. From this circumstance, the seal of the kings of Persia bears on it Rhodogune with dishevelled hair. - Polyaenus, Strategems of War, 27
The perfect example of the expanded powers of the queen is Kushite Queen Amanirenas. In 24 B.C., she was threatened by the Roman Empire. Egypt was under the subjugation of Rome and the frontier of the Kushite/Nubian empire was seventy miles south of Syene (Assuan). The Nubians were constantly raiding their Egyptian neighbors. On one of these journeys, the Kandace Amanirenas went along. When confronted, she led her armies into battle and defeated three Roman cohorts. - Tara L. Kneller, Neither Goddesses Nor Doormats: The Role of Women in Nubia (University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center 1993)
Rufinus of Aquileia (who died in 410 AD) wrote about how Mavia and her Saracen warriors fought the late Roman army in the 370s, laying waste to cities and how “she also wore down the Roman army in frequent battles, killed many, and put the rest to flight.” (Mohamad Ballan, Mavia’s Revolt: An Arab Warrior Queen and the Roman Desert Frontier during the Late Fourth Century).
There were women who led armies against rivals. Onomaris of the Scordisi led her people in battle against the Illyrians. (Ellis 2003). Macha, an Irish queen, raised an army and defeated a rival, Dithorba (Ellis 2003). Cynane of Macedon defeated an army led by Antipater, one of Alexander's generals, through "superior tactics" (Joshua J. Mark, Cynane)
Just as men sometimes commanded through force of personality and necessity in a desperate situation (as opposed to appointment by a monarch or Senate), so did women. Telesilla of Argos (a faction in the Wrath of Sparta DLC) led an improvised force to defend her city:
With Telesilla as general, they took up arms and made their defense by manning the walls around the city, and the enemy was amazed. They drove Cleomenes off after inflicting many losses. - Joshua J. Mark, Telesilla of Argos
These examples don't prove that women commanders were common. They do suggest that, if we claim that Boudica was the only woman commander in this period, or that only two or three women were generals, we're mistaken. Most of these examples of women commanders were warrior queens, which suggests that this was the normal way for women to become commanders in societies which (unlike ancient Rome and Greek city-states) allowed women to lead nations and armies.
We might want to know how many warrior queens (and other women commanders) there were, and what percentage of historical commanders were women. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions have been lost to us. Without complete lists of 'all ancient generals' and 'all ancient women generals', we cannot accurately calculate the percentage of commanders who were women. Different people can reasonably come to different conclusions about these questions.
Some people may conclude that women commanders were very rare, because we know the names of relatively few of them. However, if we are prepared to assume that male commanders existed in antiquity whose names have been lost, it seems reasonable to assume that there are women commanders whose named were lost (or were not recorded in writing). If we consider the Iceni, for example, we might only be able to think of one person who led them in battle: Boudicca. If someone made the mistake of suggesting that, because we can only name one Iceni commander and she was a woman, therefore there were no Iceni male commanders, such a claim would not be convincing. If we accept that there were male commanders of the Iceni whose names have been lost, then it seems reasonable to conclude that the names of women generals could also have been lost, in cultures where women could be commanders.
As we saw earlier (in the comment by Helena P. Schrader), women tended not to be mentioned by the ancient Greek and Roman historians who wrote much of the source material we rely on. Our main sources come from writers belonging to the cultures which were hostile to the idea of women in authority. It seems reasonable to conclude that there were women leaders and commanders whose names have been lost. There is evidence for this: Hammersen refers to an "unknown female leader", after the defeat of Boudicca of the Iceni, who led another tribe of the Britons against the Romans:
Sometime between the Boudican revolt and Agricola’s campaign against the Caledonians in 85, Tacitus recounted that a woman led the Brigantes in battle against the Romans - Indigenous Women in Gaul, Brittania, Germania and Celtic Hispania, 400 BC to 235 AD, (2017) p. 98
such an argument seems flawed for the following reasons: Tacitus’ source was most likely Agricola himself (who had served in Britain both during the time of the Boudican revolt, as well as the campaigns against the Brigantes and in Caledonia). Tacitus may have had access to military documents of this period in Britain; the unknown female leader described in this passage is mentioned in the context of the fighting during Agricola’s campaign against Caledonia in an area that bordered the territory of the Brigantes (whereas the Iceni were far to the south and would have been much further removed from the personal experience of the Caledonians). The Brigantes were known to follow female leaders (such as Cartimandua); and Tacitus explicitly mentions Boudica much earlier in his writing of the Agricola - Indigenous Women in Gaul, Brittania, Germania and Celtic Hispania, 400 BC to 235 AD, (2017) p. 103
Why, if women really were leaders and commanders in ancient history, do people say that this is unhistorical?
We might wonder why some Rome II players feel so confident that women weren't leaders or generals (or that women only took these roles in very rare cases). Three things seem to be happening:
1. We don't realise how many women leaders and commanders there were, historically.
Because we can't think of more than one or two, we assume that there must have only been one or two. That's understandable, however it's not difficult to find examples if we look. Women leaders included Artemisia I of Halicarnassus, Boudicca of the Iceni, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, Olympias of Macedonia, Arsinoe II of Thrace, Cartimandua of the Brigantes, Zenobia of Palmyra and ten queens of Kush (Tara L. Kneller 1993). Women commanders included Boudicca of the Iceni, Rhodogune of Parthia, Amanirenas of Kush, Zenobia of Palmyra, Onomaris of the Scordisi, Macha of Ireland, Cynane of Macedon, Telesilla of Argos and Mavia of the Saracens. These are the women leaders whose names were recorded and retained. Just as the names of some male rulers and generals have been lost, it seems likely that the names of some ancient women weren't recorded or didn't survive the centuries between antiquity and the present day.
2. We know that the ancient Romans and Greeks were horrified by the idea of women in authority and we assume that all ancient societies must have been like that. It wasn't so.
As part of this, we might assume that societies became more progressive over time and prejudice declined. Based on that assumption, and the knowledge that laws against gender discrimination were passed relatively recently in many countries, we might think that ancient societies must have severely restricted the roles which women could have. However, the situation of women varied enormously in different ancient societies - and, in some historical periods, some societies such as Britain became less progressive and more prejudiced, rather than the opposite. For example, it was noted (above) that women in some ancient Celtic societies could inherit property and remained the owner of property brought into marriage. Modern Britain didn't allow this until the Married Women's Property Act in 1870 (Peter Beresford Ellis, A Brief History of the Celts, 2003).
3. We instinctively assume that, if the game is set so that there's a 15% chance that a new character in a Celtic nation will be a woman, then 15% of leaders and commanders in those societies will be women.
That's not how probability works - it's the Gambler's Fallacy (the belief that good luck will turn bad, or bad luck turn good, because the outcome of a series of dice rolls, draws of the cards or spins of the wheel in their gambling session will reflect the chance of that outcome). With thousands of campaigns being played, and our computers making hundreds of thousands of dice rolls, in some campaigns the percentage of women leaders and generals will be higher (just as, in some campaigns it will be lower.) Connected to this (in Rome II) is the introduction of the family tree in the Ancestral update. For campaigns which were already ongoing, the 'cards' which previously represented wives became characters on the family tree, which could have created the impression of a sudden increase in female characters. These women were already present in the game, the only difference is that they were now represented as characters in their own right, not as ancillaries of male characters.
Conclusion
It's true that generals and leaders were usually men in antiquity. In Rome II, as in history, women leaders and generals are uncommon in most societies and absent from some cultures. Women didn't generally have equal status in ancient societies. The game rightly represents the resistance to women in leadership in some ancient societies. Women characters in some cultures - Rome, Carthaginian, Greek and Eastern cultures generally - have a Family Duty trait in the game which means that they can't be generals or party leaders.
The game makes it possible for players to include woman in our rosters of influential characters and generals, in cultures which historically had women in such roles. The percentage chance of a new important character being a woman was reported as 15% for Barbarian cultures, 6% for Greek and Roman cultures and 50% for Kush. Some players may want to create mods to change these percentages (or use such mods which are already availabe). Apparently the database tables to include in any such mod are female_character_culture_details; female_character_faction_details and female_character_subculture_details. Since there is no list of 'all ancient generals' from which we can calculate the actual percentage of women generals, different people can reasonably come to different conclusions about this.
Some of us may conclude from the fact that we know the names of relatively few women generals that they were very rare. That could be a mistake. We've seen that, while some societies strongly opposed women as leaders, others had a very different view, such as ancient Britons who "admit no distinction of sex in their royal successions" (Tacitus, Agricola, 16.1). We've seen that women could become rulers of some ancient societies and that female rulers could become warrior queens. We've seen that much of our information on ancient history came from the writings of ancient Greek and Roman historians - writers whose societies opposed the idea of women in authority. We've seen that the names of important women in ancient Greece and a warrior queen of the Brigantes who fought the Romans have been lost.
It's easy to assume that because history involves progress, our ancestors must have been more prejudiced than us. It's easy to assume that because some ancient societies didn't allow women in leadership roles, it must have been the same everywhere. It isn't so. Even in ancient societies where there was a lot of hostility to woman in authority, some women became philosophers, poets and physicians. In other ancient societies, women became rulers and generals. To enable players to play a game in which Cleopatra can rule Egypt, Teuta can send Illyrian marines to raid her enemies and Amanirenas and Boudicca can lead their soldiers against Roman armies is not rewriting history: it is representing history.
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