geary_patrick_j
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| - | Chapter 1 - p9 | + | ====== |
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| + | p9 | ||
| This is by no means an unreasonable suggestion. As we shall | This is by no means an unreasonable suggestion. As we shall | ||
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| do not live long. | do not live long. | ||
| - | Chapter 2 | + | ====== |
| p26 | p26 | ||
| - | W | + | Well into his history of the Goths, Jordanes, the sixth- |
| - | ell into his history of the Goths, Jordanes, the sixth- | + | |
| century author who claims to be summarizing a lost history by | century author who claims to be summarizing a lost history by | ||
| Cassidorus, enters a long excursus on the valor of Gothic women | Cassidorus, enters a long excursus on the valor of Gothic women | ||
| Line 102: | Line 105: | ||
| interesting question, but Jordanes himself provides no answer: | interesting question, but Jordanes himself provides no answer: | ||
| instead he returns to the great and praiseworthy deeds of men. | instead he returns to the great and praiseworthy deeds of men. | ||
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| + | p27 | ||
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| + | An alternative response, not as naive as it may sound, is that | ||
| + | there actually were female warriors among the barbarian peoples | ||
| + | encountered by the Romans and Byzantines. Thus, as good eth- | ||
| + | nographers, Roman and post-Roman authors simply described | ||
| + | them. We mustn’t dismiss this possibility out of hand: Not only | ||
| + | do Amazons figure prominently in classical ethnographic ac- | ||
| + | counts and origin legends from the time of Herodotus through | ||
| + | the Middle Ages, but Roman accounts of campaigns against | ||
| + | Celtic and Germanic enemies regularly mention women on the | ||
| + | battlefield. Later, Avar and Slavic armies reportedly included | ||
| + | women.9 Warrior women figure in vernacular oral traditions and | ||
| + | emerge in both Scandinavian literature and in Middle High Ger- | ||
| + | man texts such as the Nibelungenlied and histories such as Saxo | ||
| + | Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum.10 Finally, archaeological evi- | ||
| + | dence of women buried with weapons occurs widely. In Sauro- | ||
| + | matian-Sarmatian burials from the sixth to fourth centuries | ||
| + | B.C.E., archaeologists have found tombs of women buried with | ||
| + | swords and daggers and at least one skeleton of a young woman | ||
| + | bow-legged apparently from riding, supplied with a quiver con- | ||
| + | taining forty bronze-tipped arrows, an iron dagger, and hanging | ||
| + | around her neck, a leather pouch containing a bronze arrow- | ||
| + | head.11 From the early Middle Ages, some sixteen Avar women’s | ||
| + | graves were excavated in southern Slovakia that contained none | ||
| + | of the usual female ornaments and grave goods but instead | ||
| + | horses, normally typical of high-status men.12 Such finds have | ||
| + | led historians and archaeologists to conclude that women in no- | ||
| + | madic societies may well have had a military role that led to or | ||
| + | reinforced legends of Amazon warrior maidens. | ||
| + | |||
| + | p40 | ||
| + | |||
| + | However, Cosmas’s emplotment of the Amazons does not | ||
| + | simply adopt the classical tradition on which it draws. Unlike the | ||
| + | Amazonomachia—or indeed the grizzly slaughter in the Czech | ||
| + | language, the Dalimil Chronicle of 1314—the violence is re- | ||
| + | strained: the Amazons are not killed; they are married, albeit | ||
| + | with the violence of rape. The foundation of male rule is thus | ||
| + | more reminiscent of the Roman rape of the Sabine women than | ||
| + | the destruction of the Amazons. Nor is Libuše destroyed or even | ||
| + | condemned. Her power may be suspect, but she works for the | ||
| + | good of society. This is in a real sense Cosmas’s dilemma: wom- | ||
| + | an’s power may not conform to the proper order of the world, | ||
| + | but it both can be potent and can advance the cause of justice. | ||
| + | |||
| + | p42 | ||
| + | |||
| + | In conclusion, we see how malleable was the motif of Ama- | ||
| + | zons at the origins of peoples: Although firmly established as | ||
| + | part of the prehistory of peoples, what this prehistory meant | ||
| + | could change. It could be employed to criticize weak lordship, | ||
| + | but it could also criticize a society that because of its failings | ||
| + | needed stern authority. As its uses shifted with different social | ||
| + | and cultural motivations, | ||
| + | Cosmas is much less unambiguously opposed to the public role | ||
| + | of women than most previous or subsequent authors. His pow- | ||
| + | erful women belonged, unlike those of the third century, to a | ||
| + | world that was genuinely attractive even if it, in the end, had to | ||
| + | be destroyed in order for divinely willed order to be created. | ||
geary_patrick_j.1672163290.txt.gz · Last modified: 2022/12/27 17:48 by jl
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