Conversations: From the Mythical to the Very Real, Ancient Women in Power w/ Stephanie McCarter
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and building a plan for tomorrow, today. For the ones you'll always look out for, trust Amika Life Insurance. Amika. Empathy is our best policy. Hello, nerds. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I am your host, Liv, here with a conversation with returning guest Stephanie McCarter. You all remember Stephanie McCarter's name from her recent trip.

translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses which I mean our conversation about that a year ago two years ago what is time was absolutely amazing but that translation is just chef's kiss and so I was so thrilled to have Stephanie back to talk about her new book this source book type thing Women in Power and this conversation was so much fun because we were talking about women in power like in all forms oh

enjoy conversations from the mythical to the very real ancient women in power with stephanie mccarter i mean honestly i was just so excited because i think i would have known you had this book coming out but then of course it landed in my inbox that metamorphoses episode and just your translation are still they're very much talked about in our listener circles as well so that's what that's wonderful it's

thing. No, it was a wonderful, it was one of my favorite things I've done to promote the, to promote the metamorphosis. So yeah, that's great. Such fun. And so of course you're right. Like, it's funny because I feel like all we did was focus on the women in metamorphosis because of course I would, but if now you have a book called Women in Power and I'm just like, okay, great. Well, obviously, yeah, I want to hear all about this. It's an interest for sure. Yeah. Um,

So what led you to that? Yeah. Interestingly, this book has been brewing probably for about 16 years, I would say. So I have been teaching at the University of the South in Swanee since 2008. So that year I taught a course on women and gender in the ancient world for the first time. And I knew I wanted to teach about the Amazons because the Amazons are amazing. And so I thought, well, I'll just go.

go and find the stories about the Amazons and have them read them. And there was no place where I could just easily find that. So I, you know, I ended up like literally copying and pasting a bunch of stuff for my students to spend on that day for the Amazons. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be nice if we had

like a reader that included the Amazons. And then I often will teach the assembly women of Aristophanes as well. And, you know, if you want to teach something like a play, you have to have them purchase an entire book. And so it just occurred to me that maybe it would be nice if a book kind of assembled some of these sources for ancient women and

And particularly like under the theme of like women who had power. But I didn't want it to just be, you know, influential women in the ancient world or badass women in the ancient world because there were tons of those. Right. But I wanted stories about women who wielded official power and did not, you

therefore, exercise power through men. It was really important to me to do that because I think it gives you a real view, a window into how Romans conceived not only of women,

and power, but also how they conceived of otherness too, because almost all these stories are not set in Rome, right? They're, you know, Roman or in Greece, right? So these are stories where the idea of women ruling is really tangled up with ideas of ethnicity. And so to me, I just wanted to bring together these stories that would help us, my students and I explore this theme.

I mean, it's like a big smile on my face throughout all of this. That's just, it's all I've ever wanted, you know? Like, and of course, like my show exists for such similar reasons. And so I'm just, yeah, I'm so, so thrilled with this and the Amazons. I mean, I, and,

And the Amazons are so interesting to me. And so maybe we just like, we're going to talk about the Amazons because you mentioned them and I'm not going to say no. They're so interesting to me because of everything you were just kind of, you know, talking about there, which is the way they do interact or the stories of them do interact also with that otherness, that foreignness. And then like, what does that mean?

you know, that they only understood women could rule a foreign people. And like, based on the stories, like they seem to have done it pretty well, you know, like they're meant to be this like big force against Theseus. And they certainly thought highly of Theseus. So like, it says a lot about them. And so like, yeah, I mean, what, what are your thoughts on the Amazons and that and like anything? Well,

Well, so many, yeah. I mean, if you just take Theseus in the Amazon, he's only one of the Greek heroes who had to fight against the Amazons. Yeah, like they all do in little ways, right? They do. Yeah. Hercules, of course, famously fights against the Amazons. And then you have, if you just take, just sticking with Theseus for a moment, you have the story that he marries the queen of the Amazons, who is Hippolyta. So, so many of these stories are about

the triumph of the Amazons. And, you know, Helen Morales talks about this a lot in her book, Antigone Rising, that this is just part of what makes a hero a hero is that you have to defeat women. Because, and especially these women, because power, I think fundamentally at the heart of thinking about power in the ancient world was that there's only so much of it to go around.

And tied to that is power is so entwined with masculinity that there's not only so much power to go around, there's only so much masculinity to go around.

And the moment that, you know, someone like Hippolyta or or Penthesilea, who's another really cool Amazon, as soon as they take some power for themselves, they're denying it from a man. Right. And so female power is by nature emasculating to the Greek and Roman mind.

And so if we want to have these virile heroes who have power, we have to show that they're always getting the upper hand over women. And women come to symbolize not just the way that Greek men can have power, but the way Greeks in general can have power. Because Amazons, again, they're other, they're Eastern.

Barbarians.

The wattle with the Amazons, the Amazonomachy, was pictured on the Parthenon, on the Metopes. And it's on lots of temples. But this is a place where the Greeks can articulate their triumph over the forces of Persians, right? And over the forces of otherness and chaos and monarchy, right?

So the Amazons become really interesting figures with whom the Greeks can think about male elite democratic identity.

So, you know, unfortunately, we don't really get a lot of historical accuracy in these stories about the Amazons, although they were certainly warrior women on the ancient, you know, eastern steppes. But we get a lot of, you know, illustrations of how the Greeks used women to think with and female power to think about male power. Yeah.

What a fascinatingly dark concept to like, try to just think about the idea that the reason they had to take it is just that they couldn't conceptualize both having power. And like, that is so distinctly patriarchal. Like, it reminds me, you know, when, when I talk about, like, I've recently been on a kick of looking back at like, evidence of past of matriarchy in, you know, the prehistoric record. And,

but when I say matriarchy, so often people hear it as an opposition to patriarchy. And I, that's so interesting. Like this idea that it has to, I mean, it's the same thing. It's this, it has to be an opposition. Whereas what I mean is more like an egalitarian, just like, Oh,

Oh, what? Big surprise. It turns out like both people can be in the same place at the same time and nobody's going to die. Like, what is it about that patriarchal mind? I'm trying not to say the men male mind because I'm like, I'm trying to be better. But like, what is it about that patriarchal mindset? Sure.

that like means that we, they, they cannot conceptualize of both. It's horrifying and fascinating and horrifying. Patriarchy is by nature, a hierarchy. I mean, that's just how it, that's how it functions. There's the, the male head of household, the male head of state, the male King. And, and,

women's power has always been really crucial to upholding patriarchy um this is something that kate mann who's a philosopher at cornell explores brilliantly in her book down girl the logic of misogyny where she talks about that book now thank you oh oh buy it oh my god the title alone it was it's one of the most illuminating books i've read on this subject but um

She looks at the way women's power, their influence, their abilities are really valued by men as things.

subordinate position in subordinate positions right um and when women become potential usurpers for that male role then the the this is where the title comes from it's like down girl yeah so i think that you know patriarchy harnesses women's women's power and their abilities but it doesn't support them at the top of the hierarchy so um you know it's

I think it testifies why you can say, well, you know, there are so many powerful women, even in these so-called patriarchies. I'm like, yeah, of course there were because their power was being harnessed in support of that, right? You look at,

This is why a lot of the Roman empresses don't get in the book, you know, someone like Livia, the wife of Augustus, who was an incredibly influential woman. But insofar as the state went, she wasn't allowed to wield official power. But her influence was used and exploited to hold up Augustus' power. Yeah.

What I like about all these women, most of them, there are a couple of other examples, is that they're threats to male power primarily. And also what's interesting to me, and I could, I'm sorry, I'm talking so much. No, no, please. None of the women in this book fundamentally overturn the hierarchy. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because there aren't really other women.

you know, ways to conceive of power in the ancient world, except for being hierarchical and there's only so much to go around. So like the Amazons, they don't, you know, they don't kind of set up a,

equitable utopia between men and women they get usually they get rid of the men entirely yeah they do the things that men do and then they put the men if they let the men stick around at all they make them do the weaving and the house chores right this is the assumption that that is that is what would automatically happen like that male fear of like oh my god like i literally cannot withhold or like let go of any of this power because obviously they're going to take over and it's like

Wow. That is like what you're showing your cards, right? Like that, like that's what you want to do. The assumption that that's what everyone would want to do is wild.

Absolutely. I love looking at some of these myths in relation to like political cartoons during the women's suffrage movement. Oh, my God. Because you see this a lot where, you know, the women are kind of smoking cigarettes and discussing politics in the foreground. And in the background, you have the man back there holding the baby and washing the clothes. Right. It's just this sort of flip. You see this.

with another mythical woman in the book, who's another favorite, her name is Omphalee. And she was a Lydian queen. And I'm sure you've talked about her a lot. As soon as you said the switch around, I'm like, well, okay, that's coming. Great. Absolutely. You know, she famously was the lover of Hercules, and he came under her power, both sexually and politically, right? And that

reversal was demonstrated in the art between them because she marches around wearing his lion skin and wielding his club and he gets to you know weave and wear her her um you know her clothes there's a very funny um bit I included it's a description by Olive where he basically tries to put on her bra and it kind of breaks open and

But yes, I mean, this kind of visual representation of power is a zero-sum game. You see it again and again and again and again. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it reminds me like...

And before I say this, I'm going to specify that I'm talking hypothetical and I recognize the connection to the modern political climate in the country I do not live in. But you do. But before I say this, I'm not talking about the American election. I'm not. People have been making some assumptions lately and I have to remind them that I'm Canadian. And sometimes I don't remember that it's happening. Okay.

And sorry, I say that lightly. I recognize how, how important it is, but sometimes I have to like, in any case, before I say this, that's that, but.

It reminds me of this notion that people or women often say, and I say this, white women, I want to make that clear. White North American women often say this idea of like, oh, well, things would be so much better if a woman was in power. And like, as if there would be this like switch that gets like flicked the minute a woman gets in power and like things are going to turn around and like,

News flash. Most women of today, certainly those who have risen to a certain level of power, are unfortunately completely conditioned by the patriarchy to continue on the exact same patriarchal path.

thing like it's not likely to change I think that if we went back in time 3,000 years and we never got to this patriarchal nature where this is like that the power dynamic that you're talking about where like the zero-sum game I think if we never got to that maybe that things would be different but there's never going to be this moment we've we've gone too far past the line that there's this moment like doesn't mean there's not slow change I don't want to suggest that change isn't possible obviously we should always be hoping for change and better and it is baby steps but like

there's often this mentality that it's like, it'll will be immediate. And then when it's not, it's like somehow it's like that individual woman's fault. And it's like, well, that's not true either. It's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's so interesting to think in how it still plays out today. And I want to stick to the ancient world, but yeah, you know, if you think, if you think in an intersectional framework, then if you want to, you know, really embed feminism in an intersectional intersectional framework that you're

you know, equality and equity will not be achieved simply by having a new, you know, a new face at the top of hierarchy, right? I mean, the structure needs to be transformed. Exactly. And also, I think there's this idea that, you know, any kind of rule by a woman will be feminist rule. Yeah, exactly. That's wild. Yeah. It's wild because,

It kind of wants to reduce women to the stereotype, to a stereotype, like a lot of these stories do. But to me, one of the most feminist ideas we can arrive at is the fact that women are morally complex human beings. It's funny you say it that way, because I've been...

dealing with while we're recording this it's we're in the midst of my Euripides series and that's why I say I love him is because I think he just thought women were complex moral or humans with like just complete complex morality exactly the same as men and like the bar is in the ground but that's why I would say that in whatever form he could have been an ancient feminist you know yeah because you write shitty women alongside good women because turns out women are just as complex as men absolutely

It's such a revolutionary thought. We're fully, fully human. But I think you do see this in, you know, in the stories about these rulers that women are, are considered to be, I mean, very complex in these stories. Unfortunately, so much of their complexity also gets kind of collapsed into stereotypes as well. You know, someone like,

You know, Boudicca, she is extremely complex because on the one hand, she's almost out-Roman-ing the Romans, right? She becomes...

like a spokesperson for freedom. Can we pause for one sec? Cause I want to hear more about Buddha Kali and I'll actually ask you to say even more, but first I will back. Let's back up. Yeah. But before we got there, cause I have one, there's one thing that I found in some, I, I wrote a piece for an upcoming book on Medusa and I,

So I did all this digging into ancient sources that reference her and the Gorgons. And one that will now live inside my brain literally forever is Diodorus Siculus, who writes about the Gorgons and the Amazons as if they're kind of the same. Do you...

know of that offhand. Yeah, like he talks about how they were both races of warrior women and that Heracles killed them because his mandate to the power of man was not to allow women to rule. It's just like it puts into words exactly what you're saying about this zero-sum game. That's great, but it also doesn't surprise me in the least that you would align the Amazons with the Gorgon because

Amazons are, and I'm not endorsing this idea, but by the ancient view, they're monsters. Because a monster is a hybrid creature.

And Amazons become hybrids of men and women. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. Well, and yeah. And to me, it's also a reminder of like what the Gorgons served as more of in the ancient world than how we see them now, which is like of, of kind of a defensive, like they were sure that, yeah, they, they, they defended themselves against men, which feels like kind of what the Amazons are doing too. So like linking that as a way to like, no, we had to put them down. Like,

Oh, it just that lives in my head. And then so yeah, hearing you describe this, I'm like, oh, that's literally what he wrote. Like they put it into a myth. They were like, Heracles like could not allow women to rule under in a world that he existed in. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So to return to Boudicca, though. So my listeners, I'm going to admit something. It's pretty bad. My listeners have no idea. Well, through me, who Boudicca is, because I've just never gotten to talk about her at all.

Yeah, an intro maybe? Yeah, absolutely. So the book is divided into three parts. Let me start there. The first part is about like the woman run state. So you have the Amazons and then I translated the entirety of Aristophanes' Assembly Women because it's one of my favorite plays. It's so underappreciated.

And then the second part is about just mythical queens. So Dido and Hypsipoli and people like that. And then the last part is historical queens. And I wanted to include all of these because ancient writers weave these different kinds of queens together. They don't sometimes, and you'll see like a historical queen will sometimes model herself on a mythical queen, for instance, for example. But Boudicca, I mean, if you have any listeners in Britain, as I'm sure you do, she's a

She will be well known to them. They'll know. They will know. She's a bit of a British hero at this point, but she was the queen of a Celtic group called the Icini. And I'm probably not saying that. Probably some people will say Icini. People say it in different ways. And her husband, Prasutagus, was a Roman client king and he died and he wanted to leave his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman emperor.

But after he died, the Roman soldiers basically came and said, we're taking over here and flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. And yeah, in response to this, she led one of the most successful and violent uprisings against Rome. This was when Nero was the emperor, but it's recorded later first by Tacitus and then by Cassius Dio.

And, and she's given these sort of amazing speeches and, and then ultimately she is defeated and she dies either of poisoning herself or sickness. So there's not, we don't know exactly how she died, but yeah, but the speeches are super interesting that she tells, as I said, she,

In Tacitus, a lot of the northern, and I'm going to use the word barbarian just because this is how the Romans conceived of non-Romans, but northern barbarians were often given ultra-masculine attributes. And also, not just that, but ultra-Roman attributes. So the Romans, they valued freedom, but the way Tacitus was,

will depict the Romans themselves as they're no longer free because they live under an emperor. And certainly under an emperor like Nero, there's no way the state can be free. So instead, this becomes an attribute for which northern barbarians especially will fight Germans and Britons. And so Boudicca in her speech

She is calling both speeches, both in Tacitus and Cassius Dio. It also gets said Dio Cassius. So if I go back and forth, I will apologize. But they both make her appeal to freedom. Right. So, I mean, this is something that a Roman reader would probably certainly elite reader such as Tacitus's readers were would have been really sympathetic about.

But then at the same time in these stories, Boudicca does things that fulfilled all of the most negative stereotypes of barbarians. So can I tell you a really, really horrendous story?

Please, but I'm glad that you gave a warning for people. I'm going to give you a warning. If you need to jump ahead, then this does involve some brutal violence. Cassius Dio tells us that after they took three towns in Britain, including London, and burned them to the ground. But then Cassius Dio tells us that in one of these towns, she took the most elite women, Roman women, and she...

And her troops would cut off their breasts and then sewed their own breasts into their mouths and then impaled them. So it's an absolutely brutal story in which Boudicca answers the violence that her daughters have and she herself have suffered from.

With, you know, similarly brutal violence. Yeah. So she's a real conundrum, Boudicca, in trying to, you know, one is very sympathetic, but then one is also taken back by her. Yeah. And I think that's true of a lot of these women. Yeah. Well, and in that case, too, like, do we know anything about the actual, like, the historicity of that? Like, is it just the guys are writing these things who are, like, 50-50, right? Exactly.

we have no idea if this is true interesting this is Cassius Dio who is you know he's living quite a long time after this happened yeah you know a century after this happened so

Again, this is fulfilling stereotypes. So perhaps we're just making up things that fulfill those stereotypes. Yeah. Because it's also, it's giving Amazon a little, right? Like there was that, I mean, it's not that prominent, I think in the ancient world that they didn't have one breast or that they cut one off. Right. But that did exist as like a conceptual idea. So yeah, it's, it's similar. Absolutely. I mean, the thing about these stories is that they are inventions invented by

They may have some historicity, but Tacitus made up this speech. Diocasius made up this speech. And so we don't know what the historical facts are. They tell us much more about how men were thinking about women in power than how women in power were actually behaving. All of it. That's all we have. That's what's so interesting and infuriating, but mostly interesting. Yeah.

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Have you ever brought your magic to Walt Disney World like, "Hey, we came to play"? Did you tip your tiara to a Creole princess or get goofy officially? Step up like a boss and save the day? Or see what life's like under the tree of life? Did you? If you could, would you? When we come through, it's true magic, 'cause we came to play. Bring the magic at Walt Disney World Resort.

It reminds me of, you know, you've mentioned Aristophanes and I already, so I've never read the assembly women and now you made me want to, but I also think maybe I just have you come on and talk about it if you're interested in the future. Because I've, I have qualms with Aristophanes because I think he was, or I think he was unkind to Euripides' legacy to us. I feel like probably,

I come in, I really take, change my mind often about how Aristophanes might've felt, but he definitely gave us this world where people are like, Euripides was a misogynist because women hated him. And it's like, it reminds me of that. Just like, we only know about how women felt about Euripides through the writings of Aristophanes. So like, are we believing this comedic playwright who wrote also like,

dick jokes into every second word like or are we you know believing the work of Euripides it's so interesting to kind of to pull apart I mean that's the the truth with all ancient sources and it's why I love the ancient world but it's yeah it's just such a weird thing to be to be looking at at these things that are the only thing we have that maybe tells part of the story and also are have the potential to just be like so skewed and biased for all these other different reasons

Absolutely. And what surprises me is how often like today when we're talking about these women, we will choose a story that we think is kind of fun. Right. And then we repeat it as though it's something that really is true. So we get very invested in the truthfulness of some of these stories. Like we get very invested, say, in the.

you know, the picture of the alluring Cleopatra that we have is there's so many of these stories were told actually to damn her by the man who conquered her. Right. Even some of the things that we think are super cool were actually meant to, to just denigrate the idea of women in power. Yeah. So,

I mean, I'm sure you have lots of examples of that, but do any stand out? Like, do you want to talk about Cleopatra? I merely want to hear about anyone and everything. I mean, so there's this story that we're told about Cleopatra. I have so many authors in this book. I want to make sure I get this right. So this is a story by Pliny the Elder. And he tells us how she and Antony are having this dinner party and they're trying to outdo one another. And so she says, I can give you the most expensive meal you can imagine.

And he's like, sure you can. So she, she has these two amazing pearls. And so she, and she has a cup of vinegar brought in. This seems like some kind of magical vinegar that can dissolve a pearl. She drops the pearl into it and their earrings, I should say. And when the pearl dissolves, she drinks it apparently. And she's just on the verge of putting the other pearl in to dissolve when one of her, you know, one of her,

people her uh the people who are perhaps i can't remember who it is but one of one of her retinue stop her and uh and so you know don't do that you've proven your point already um but you know this is not this is a this was a story meant to make us gape in awe of her right yeah like it seems so amazing that someone would do this and then apparently the other earring was taken and

and saw it in half and used to decorate a statue in Rome. But so often, so many of these stories about women make them into what the Greeks would call a Thalma, like a marvel, right? They become things we can marvel at. They become beyond anything that we can imagine. And by making women something to marvel at,

We're actually, again, that's another way of othering them. Yeah. It's like a freak show. A freak show. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. You see it again and again. One of my favorite stories of that in this book is, um,

Samir Amos, who is the legendary founder of Babylon. And this is one of the figures that the Romans were obsessed with her. But I couldn't, again, find a good translation of what was written about her. So her story is told. And again, I'm going to make sure I have this right. Her story is told by, or are you Samir Amos? By Didor Siculus. And he tells us that she wanted to go to war against the king of India.

but she didn't have any elephants. So she had all these cows just slaughtered and then heaped their carcasses on top of camel, on top of camels to make them look like elephants. That is impractical and horrifying. Horrifying. And so she has like these fake elephants. And this is just, again, it's like, you want to have this reaction that you're having, like,

It's marvelous, right? Yeah. It's freaky. And so therefore it becomes a way of like making this Eastern queen. She's incredibly clever. Yeah. She's beyond human, right? That's so weird. That's weird. It's weird. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And Cleopatra operates within that same kind of, you know, that same kind of complex of ideas. You know, we're told at one point,

And again, so many authors. I think this is the bit by Cassius Dio, who I know I've already called Dio Cassius a million times. I feel like you've just said Cassius Dio, which is the only one I hear. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. So I go back and forth. And in fact, I may just, if I can find it, I may read you this little bit. Please. Yeah. And take, I mean, feel free to find it. Yeah. You can edit this out. Okay. It's actually, this is by Plutarch in his Life of Antony. And Plutarch tells us,

Her beauty taken by itself was not altogether incomparable, nor such as to astound those who saw her, but just her presence held you in an irresistible grip. Her demeanor, together with the eloquence of her conversation and her character, which somehow pervaded her every interaction, all produced a certain stinging excitement."

There was also a sweetness in the sound of her speaking. In her tongue, like a many-stringed instrument, she effortlessly turned to whatever language she wished. So she rarely met with foreigners needing any translation at all, but for the most part made their replies solely by herself, whether they were Ethiopian, Chagadite, Hebrew, Arab, Syrian, Mede, or Parthian. She is said to have learned the languages of many other peoples, though the previous kings had refused to take up even the native Egyptian language.

And this may be true that Cleopatra spoke all of these languages. So there may be a kernel of truth here. However, what we're also doing is we're saying something about the power of the female voice and its seductive ability, right? The female voice here for Cleopatra, the way she speaks,

It reels you in. I always compare this to the sirens, right? Where the voice will reel you in. But then, you know, at the end of this, you're going to encounter a woman who is extremely dangerous. Yeah. And, you know, so this is part of Roman propaganda. But we also love this about Cleopatra.

Right. Yeah. And so I think this is one place where we have to resist this. Oh, my gosh. She was so amazing. She spoke all these languages and think, well, why were they telling this story about her in the first place? Well, in the way they compare her to the earlier kings. They're also like, yeah, they're really I mean,

It sounds good to us now. But yeah, back then they're like, oh, well, she's not that Roman. She's not that Greek. She's going with everyone, you know, like. Exactly. Yeah. She's like teaming up with the barbarians almost is what they're saying. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

But then we, yeah. But then this just gets repeated with our approval. Yeah. Yeah. Because it sounds great today. Well, yeah. I mean, oh, you mentioning the Diodorus again. I'm trying to remember what, because the way you described it earlier. Sorry, my brain's just having a little hiccup. It just like the kind of the wildness of the way he describes the people, which I

I recognize is not what you just read, but the earlier you said earlier, but because the way he described the Gorgons and the Amazons in that piece that I had read, like it was something like that where it's just like,

so over the top, like before Heracles put them down, it was like they had done all these things that sound great. But really, if you break them down, are all these kind of like hits against them in that the contemporary kind of mindset. And I'm just kind of now like I read that piece so many times now that it's just like coming together in my head as you speak about what they're really doing. But in describing these women, it's just it's

Okay. There's so many more. I want to, you've mentioned so many names already and I really want to hear your thoughts on, no, no, no, no apologies. You've just given me more ideas.

Well, no, I mean, so am I, which is why it works great. But Dido and Hypsipoli you mentioned too. So because you're looking at the mythological. Right. I really want to, I don't want to try to, you know, have us jam everyone into this, but I'm also just want to ask all of about all of the women. The problem is you've just come to me with all of my favorite things in the world and I'm trying to fit it into one episode. So, but yeah, like...

I love Dido. Obviously, like, you know, I've only talked about her in small context because of I don't talk about Rome all that much. But Hypsipoli, too. I was talking to Melissa Funke recently about Hypsipoli because she studies fragments and talked about that. And so I've got sort of the Euripides fragments in my head by this time. But obviously, Hypsipoli appears in so many ways. So, like...

I just now I'm rambling and I would just love if you could tell me about Hipsipoli. I'll tell you about Hipsipoli. So she is she's the queen of Limnos, the island in the Aegean. And I include two versions of her story.

And I should say that the book is compiled, it compiles translations by various people. And so only some of them are new, but some of them were previously published translations that I just really like. So I included the story about Hypsipoli from Aaron Puchigian's translation of Apollonius of Rhodes. So it's a great translation. Good to know. Yeah. Yeah. I really love his translation of Apollonius. But

At any rate, and then I actually translated the story, the version of her story from Statius in the Thebiad. So these stories are so, they have different features and comments. Like the basic structure of her story is that

She's a Lemnian queen. Her father is actually the king, which brings me to an interesting point I'd like to dig into further is that these women tend to come into power in the, like when a male has died or when a male has to leave the scene. It's like an accident. It's an accident. Almost always. Yeah. Even in the Diodorus Siculus, actually, now that you say that, when he's describing the Gorgons or whatever sources I was looking for the Gorgons, they also are always like, oh, well, Gorgons came to power because their father died. Yeah.

Exactly. That's right. Exactly. It's almost always the case. Or the husband dies or something. But her dad is still around at the beginning of this story. But they have dishonored the goddess Aphrodite slash Venus in favor of her husband Hephaestus slash Vulcan. So Venus, I'm going to say Venus because I'm a Romanist. Go ahead. You've been saying Hercules. We'll keep it going. Okay.

It might grate to some, but she gets very upset at the Lemnians because they refuse her worship. And so she basically creates repulsion between the men and the women. Makes them smelly, as we like to. Exactly. So in a lot of versions, yeah, she makes the Lemnian women smelly and the men go off.

And they start fighting wars in Thrace. And in the absence of the men, the women start plotting. Of course, that's what women do when men aren't around. And again, this is what all these stories would have us believe. I feel like I'm so ready. Yes. I want to say this, and then I'm going to come back to you simply. These women almost get...

rejected from leadership because they have the very qualities that would make them good leaders. Yeah.

It's threatening. They're intelligent. They speak well. They're often seen as like, you know, making deals and, you know, wheeling and dealing. And we might say that they become conspiratorial, which is certainly what happens in the Limnian episode. So anyway, they conspire, they plot, they plan, they're clever. And when the men come back, they kill them all.

And except for Hypsipoli. So she puts her father to sea on a boat to save his life. And then she only pretends to have killed him. But because she's his daughter, she becomes the queen. And so Hypsipoli is interesting because she usually becomes a foil in a lot of ways. So in the Bayad, she's a foil, not just to the other women who were overtaken by fury, but

But she's a foil for the larger epic too, which is the seven, it's the story of the seven against thieves. And it's just an epic in which all the men are taken over by madness, lust for war, impiety. I mean, just you name it. And she's like this one lone figure of piety. I'm not going to kill my father. She's like a little Aeneas within this story that is all about

just utter madness and bloodshed. And then in the Apollonia story, she's a foil to a much, she's a less threatening version of a much more threatening character who will come later, who is Medea. She's like a, that like, what's the, I mean, I don't even know the word I want, but you know, yeah, she's, she's the way you described it like that. Yeah. Cause she's like an introductory for Jason, right? Like, yeah.

But, you know, even this most positive exemplar for female leadership that we can find in the ancient world still comes to power in a bloody coup, right? So that's... Well, and the smelliness is so, like...

The addition of derogatory and of derogatory nature about them and then to also have it done by Aphrodite. All of these things are these little dings against her, right? It's like, oh, women are predisposed to that type of thing that would have Aphrodite curse you. I forgot that it was so connected with her relationship with Hephaestus too, which is like...

I mean, also, again, feel free to use the Roman names. I realize I will automatically use Greek and not even notice we're doing both. So the listeners will get it if we just go back and forth between us. It's kind of fun. But it's so interesting to me that it's connected with that couple because we have so many...

Aphrodite herself to me is like these women in a lot of ways. She could be all powerful and there are so many instances in the mythology of all of these different times in which she is brought to heel and like

And her relationship with Hephaestus is like the major one, which is that she doesn't want to marry him. You know, she wants to marry war and like how powerful that would that make her? They recognize that she's already so powerful. And so to then like have her relationship with Hephaestus also then be this catalyst for.

For the Lemnian women becoming smelly and like becoming this obviously derogatory like stereotype kind of thing. Like, oh, it's so there's so many layers in that. Absolutely. Well, it makes me think about the relationship between sex and power. Right. I mean, Aphrodite slash Venus is beautiful.

She derives so much of her power through her sexuality. And you see this again and again in these stories that sex becomes an arena for contesting power, right? So women can wield power through sex, but sex as a sphere is usually controlled by men, right? And so we see this in, I think, the Lemnian episode really well, right?

The women have, you know, this is the sphere over which they can, you know, try to have some control having sex with, you know, this is their, you know, through sex with their husbands, the production of children, marriage, right? Mm-hmm.

men refusing them that their husbands refusing them that and so women will then take over and and kill their husbands when sex becomes a battleground right which is something that i mean certainly in ancient poetry this was a common trope that sex is is like a battlefield and um in the mythology though too like they have this real obsession with women controlling reproduction like you were saying so like even in yeah like you know all of the like the

The most ancient of mythology, all of that is really tied up in that idea, right? Like that's why Zeus impregnates so many women. That's like this idea that women control that. And like, how is that, you know, how can, how can men use that against them? Essentially. Absolutely. Which is why so many of these stories involve women getting the sexual upper hand. You cannot have women.

Power unless you control sexuality, right? Unless you control reproduction, who gets to sleep with whom. And so in like the assembly women, and again, I could talk about that play for a whole episode, so I don't want to get into it too much. But the women dress up in their husband's clothes, they go into the assembly, they vote to give themselves power.

And so the whole play sets that up. But there's this very disturbing final episode where these two, three older women who are treated in remarkably sexist ways, all kinds of stereotypes about old women, but they are fighting over who gets to have sex with this young man. Wow.

And the whole thing is just this argument that happens. And he's lost the ability to have any control over who he gets to have sex with. He has no say in the matter. But to enact a fully woman-controlled society, you have to...

show how they exert power over the sexual realm. I mean, the realms that you have to take control of are sex, speech, war, and money. Yeah. Wow. Oh, I, this episode is tied in really well with another that also hasn't come out, but which I recorded recently with Emily Hauser, because she is a newish book, When Women Became Poets.

And it's just from a mind. Have you read it or know of it? I'm familiar with it. I know of it, certainly. Yeah. So like it's connecting so much with this, like because she broke down all the ways in which like they refuse to call women poets, like even Sappho, like all these different ways they wouldn't do it. And it's just, oh, the connection is so solidly there, right? Like you're talking literal power. They're talking like Emily was talking like artistic kind of power. And it's like all this same thing, this like stronghold.

struggle for control where the two sides are just so disconnected like this yeah oh

And the way the stories are told too, for a, again, because it is, it's a struggle, right? Power is a constant struggle in these stories. So for a woman to have any kind of autonomy over her body, it requires deposing the man, right? Like there's doesn't seem to be a world in which a woman can come to equal terms, right? Autonomy equals mastery in this, in this way of thinking. Yeah. Well, and it's like, oh my God, how, how?

very relatable is that still today this yeah because I mean that's what the core of everything is like in our world now is like that it's still that that deep desire to just control the things that women control over their bodies over like oh it's dark and also fortunately interesting um because you're the Romanist I would love to hear all about Dido and then you don't have to use any of the Greek names okay

So I will say, I love teaching Dido, but it's hard to teach again because I don't want them to buy like an entire Aeneid. I don't want to have to have my student buy these. So I included the bits about Dido from Fagel's translation in this. And Dido, in case your readers are not aware, she is the queen in Carthage in the

Virgil's Aeneid, when Aeneas and his men flee from Troy after it falls in the Trojan War, he and his men kind of wander around the Mediterranean. They end up in Carthage where they spend about a year. And Dido is the queen there. She gives them hospitality and

She and Aeneas enter a relationship, which she believes is marriage. And Virgil doesn't tell us exactly what Aeneas believes about the relationship. He has to go because it's his duty to found Rome. And she...

She builds a pyre and she dies by suicide by falling upon his sword on top of the pyre. But before she does that, she curses the future Romans and the Carthaginians always to be at odds with each other.

So she single-handedly brings about the Punic Wars that will happen later in the story, according to Virgil. But she's interesting to read alongside Cleopatra. I like having them in the same volume. Yes. Because there's this idea that Aeneas, who is something of a prototype for Augustus later, he's the first founder of what will become Rome, and Augustus is the second founder. Aeneas is very much

a figure of piety to the gods, duty to the state. These are values that Augustus would try to associate with himself later. But there's this moment when he becomes almost an Antony.

And he's, Aeneas is there in North Africa with his queen, right? And there's this moment when Mercury comes down after Jupiter basically says, you know, go down there and tell him to get the hell out. And Mercury refers to him as Uxorius in Latin, which would become the English Uxorius, which is a man who's controlled by his wife, right? Wow.

So this idea that Aeneas is momentarily emasculated by having spent this time in Carthage with Dido and he leaves, even though it's pretty darn clear he'd like to stick around perhaps a bit longer. He seems pretty happy as he's helping Dido build her city. But this becomes kind of, she becomes a negative foil to Aeneas in so many ways she's like Aeneas.

She was a refugee from Tyre and Sidonia. The reason she took power, there's also a death, right? Yeah. So her husband, Zacchaeus, was murdered. Oh, right. Okay. But it's still that she does take power because her husband was murdered. That's exactly right. For some reason, I question whether it was her husband. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. This...

I mean, it's strange. Monarchy produces more female empowered women because of this, you know, this, this feature of it that if the king dies, then, and he has no adult sons, then it can go to the woman. And so that's how almost all these women come into power, both in the myths and the history. You know, Boudicca, she comes into power when her husband dies, for example. So, but anyway, so she, she is the, the murder of her brother,

He is he's she needs to flee him. And so she comes as a refugee to North Africa, just as Aeneas does. And she starts she founds a city just as Aeneas will do. And it's beautiful and successful. And the story illustrates, though, how she is a woman. Again, it's a negative stereotype. She's so susceptible to to love.

and into passion and that ultimately will become the downfall of her city so as much as we admire her she she too becomes an argument against female power because she doesn't have control of her feelings of passion she can't turn away from them the way you phrased it with the i mean one cleopatra which i hadn't really thought of but also like the the her being this cause of the punic wars like

I mean, beyond the story of her, do you have like thoughts on, on how intentional the Cleopatra might've been either, you know, I know there's so many theories about Virgil writing the Aeneid and like, whether he was like loving on Augustus or whether he was like subtly putting down Augustus. And it's interesting to me to have that Cleopatra connection because it, it, it feels like it could be one of those like little underhanded, like, I don't totally love how you came to power kind of digs, you know?

It's interesting. I mean, Virgil, I've never thought, I've never bought that he is pro-Augustus. I've also never bought that he's anti-Augustus. Okay. To me, I want to do with Virgil what I do with women is allow him to be a morally complex human being. Okay. And so that means that he's capable of wrestling with complex stories in all of their complexity. Yeah. And so he...

He presents a Cleopatra, or sorry, a Dido, who's really, I think she's a likable character in the story. She's heroic, right? She too is complex, right? And so I love this about Virgil. I mean, one of my favorite characters, and I'm going to get off women for just one second to say this about Virgil, is in the second half of the Neid, his name is Mezentius.

He is a figure of horrendous impiety. He is killed. You would almost think that most writers would make him into a caricature of evil. But Virgil, Virgil refuses. He's this extremely sympathetic character because he loves his son so much. And then his son is killed and it's so very sad. And we see him as into his grieving. And I just love that about Virgil. He never lets us, um,

to reduce the characters to stereotypes or to simple one-sided characters and so he does this with Aeneas too like he's not going to let him just be an Augustus figure he's also going to make him be a bit of an Antony maybe these two sides can coexist in one person and that's what makes Aeneas I think fully human as a character yeah well I think when you when you phrase it like that I

I feel like he really also reached his goal a little of being very Homeric in that way. Because the Homeric is, I mean, no one's surprised to hear that the Aeneid is directly inspired by the Homeric epics.

But also the Homeric epics are so explicitly like not on either side there, you know, it, there's no like good guys and bad guys. So that, that makes sense. And it kind of works. And, and she is, she said she fits the Cersei role very well. And yeah, that's. Yeah. This is it.

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I love the story of Dido and also hate the story of Dido. And, you know, it's but it's interesting to think of it that way. And the Cleopatra connection, I'm

particularly interested in and so close to like absolutely yeah oh I think it had to have been so on on purpose but then of course Cleopatra does appear in the um Aeneid in book in book eight yeah and and I did translate that bit myself and included it and in fact I can just read that too is that okay that's the underworld right please this is not this is not the underworld this is actually the shield of Aeneas where Cleopatra yeah where Cleopatra herself um appears um

So I'll just read this little bit because here there's not a lot of moral complexity for Cleopatra herself.

Okay, here is Cleopatra on the shield of Aeneas. So I'll just read it and then we can compare it to Dido since he, I think, by putting her there purposely does juxtapose them. So this is the Battle of Actium, which is right there on the center of the shield. And Aeneas has no idea what he's looking at. This is just armor. Yeah, because it's like a future shield. A future, it's like...

I think that the phrase is often used to describe it as history in the future tense, right? This is what will happen. And Virgil tells us like he doesn't know what any of this means. It's just on this shield that his mom brings to him. Okay. So we are told the queen amid this signals with her sistrum, not seeing yet the twin snakes at her back.

all sorts of monstrous gods and barking anubis fight armed with neptune venus and minerva and in the conflict's center rages mars engraved in iron from the sky sad furies advance and discord joyous clothed in rags trailed by bellona with her bloody whip actine apollo bends his bow observing on high

It's beautiful.

Well, she's there, but on one side are the gods of Rome and Augustus. On the other side, the gods of Egypt and Cleopatra. So there's this real us and them, Rome, Egyptian civilization thing.

And not, right? So, so much of the complexity he gives Dido, he doesn't give to Cleopatra later. But I do think this image of the Nile welcoming the conquered into his embrace is kind of beautiful and perhaps a bit sympathetic. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean...

to me it just sounds like sort of equally powerful but i recognize what he's doing it's not necessarily meant that way in in that work but she just sounds i mean she sounds badass but again like we were like you were saying a lot of things that we now almost are forced to think sound badass it's just because they are in opposition to the patriarchy but yeah it no that's

The twin snakes. Was that a reference to how she died? It's a reference to how she, well, okay. How she quote unquote died. Yeah, I mean, this story about Cleopatra drives me crazy. Tell me why. I don't believe it for a second. I don't believe that Cleopatra died.

In this moment where, you know, she's really literally afraid she's going to be taken captive, that she is going to be marched in Roman triumph. Antony has already fallen on his sword. He is dead. Her options are limited. And she makes a desperate choice to keep her own sense of control over her own life and die by suicide, right? It's a very, I mean, it's a very powerful choice that she makes. I don't believe for a moment that she...

In this very serious choice that she makes to keep autonomy, that she says, how can I die in the most histrionic way possible? Somebody bring me some snakes. That feels like it's a...

It is a dig against a woman. It's the way you said histrionic that immediately flagged it in my head. It's like, oh, right. No, it's like, it's hysteria. It's all of these things. Women are overdramatic. Like, of course, she wouldn't just kill herself. She would find a couple of snakes to bite her. Absolutely. Yeah. Which, you know, it's so interesting. My son and I just went to see Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. And this is something that happens in that movie where this woman in this moment of just

she's being histrionic purposefully so and snakes are involved but I thought oh my gosh it's Cleopatra this is how we're presenting her but so the snakes are a Roman invention and they're there to make her again look kind of over the top

overly passionate theatrical and and feminine yeah and I don't mean that as a compliment in this particular instance because they didn't mean that as a compliment necessarily yeah but but we've you know and if you if you google Cleopatra painting nowadays it's gonna give us that that's what we will see her death scene with those snakes because we still lean into it we are still seduced by it

I think of the Waterhouse Cleopatra painting. Sorry, if I was to Google, that's the one I want. I can see you doing it. I am.

I'm sure I know it, but I, oh yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's my Cleopatra. I actually, a listener years and years ago had sent to me this enormous art piece that has that painting, but then over top is painted the words, I am the work of art and I love it. So I think about it always, but yeah, but yeah, you're right. Like it is, it's that iconic thing of like, oh, she killed herself by snakes, but really

I mean, it's propaganda and also just, yeah, I mean, made to make her look bad and hysterical. Yeah. Since I would love to make, since Cleopatra is the most famous, right? She's there in Egypt. She dies in the year 30 BCE. But there are two other queens who bookend her, both geographically and temporally, who we don't talk about, who we never talk about.

So I wanted to include them. The reason we talk about Cleopatra is because she was conquered, right? And by the Romans. And by the Romans. They make her into this mythical creature. But then there are two women who they don't really. The first is Salome Alexandra, who was a Hasmonean queen in Judea. And she was the only Hasmonean queen.

And her dates, oh gosh, I'm going to go find them because I will get them wrong. I'm the worst person with dates. But I have written down here, she ruled from 76 to 67 BCE. Oh, wow. Okay. And her story is recorded in Josephus. He's very ambivalent about her. He like, she seems to have been, you know, a very wonky, capable administrator, right? Okay.

Which doesn't quite work well, right, for our over-the-top employees.

marvelous women that we want in these stories. It's almost like women are just, you know, complex people who are capable of all things. She increased the size of the military. She, you know, he talks about the fact that she became too deferential to the Pharisees. And so this is not something that he really likes so much. And he, but, you know, she doesn't do a whole lot. I mean, what ends up happening is that her sons get involved in a war of succession and

But eventually Josephus kind of just blames her for that. Of course. Of course. Naturally. And yeah, you know, she's fine, but she's a woman in power. We can't have that. She's weakening the state. And this explains why Herod can later, if you're Josephus, come in and bring it into the Hasmonean dynasty. But, um,

The other woman who I would like to think about in relation to Cleopatra, she's also on the cover, I will say. She's right here. She's amazing. Her name is Amani Reynes, and she was the queen in Kush. She was really the queen in the kingdom of Meroe, which was in Kush, which is roughly equivalent to modern Sudan, bits of southern Egypt.

Yeah, I was going to say, okay, south. Yeah, exactly. Immediately realizing I don't, I know about Sudan. Could I point to it on a map? Not great. Okay, south. Got it. South of Egypt. I figured Kush was, so now you just taught me the connection between Kush and Sudan. But we only know, okay, so we don't know much about her, except there is a story that's told about her from the Roman perspective. It's told by Strabo. And he, let me make sure it's by Strabo. Yes, Strabo.

She was actually the queen when Cleopatra was defeated, which is interesting. You never hear about her. Just south of Cleopatra, you have this other queen. Strabo refers to her as Kandake, but that's just a title that the queens of Meroe were given. Her name is Amonirenus.

And she was, as I said, the queen when Cleopatra was defeated. And then the Romans come in, of course, and Egypt becomes the personal possession of Augustus. And of course, their eyes are going to start to look to expand south. Imagine. So she actually leads a incursion and invades several Roman towns.

And Strabo tells, he describes her very, very briefly. Strabo, he describes her very briefly. He says, among this group were the generals of Queen Kandake, who in my own time ruled the Ethiopians, a manly woman blind in one eye.

They're making her look great. I can tell already. But this is basically the only glimpse we get of her in Strabo. But we're told about her when Ethiopians was like a blanket term that was often used here. Of course, it's describing the people of Kush and Meroe. But anyway.

So the Romans are starting to go south. She invades several Roman towns. We're told that her troops toppled lots of statues of Caesar, of Augustus. Ha ha ha!

And eventually what ends up happening is that this is settled through diplomacy. She sends some ambassadors to Augustus and he says, okay, fine, we're going to slightly make the border a bit south. So Qasim Ibrim becomes like the permanent southern border of the Roman Empire. But Kendake and Kush itself become exempt from Roman taxation and

Cush never becomes a Roman province. She remains queen until about 10 BCE or so. And we never hear about her much in the Roman sources except here in Strabo. Why?

Because she wasn't conquered, right? Because she wasn't a good example for them to, yeah, be angry about women. Exactly. Exactly. Wow. What is so cool is, you know, Strabo mentions that these, the temples were toppled. We know that they at least took one of these statues, not temples, but these statues.

We know that she took at least one of these statues back with her to Meroe because there was this temple to victory and the head was actually buried under the steps. And that way, anybody who walked up the steps of the temple could trample upon the head of Augustus.

Oh, my gosh. And so if anybody Googles Augustus of Meroe, M-E-R-O-E, they will see this amazing bronze head of Augustus. This must have been one of the statues. Wow.

that they toppled. And so, I mean, she gets presented as a defeater of Rome, right? That does not fit the narrative easily. So I like to ask my students, why do you know about Cleopatra, but you don't know about Amani Reynos? Whose stories have you been told? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it makes me, I can only think about the connection to modern Sudan too. You know, I mean, one of the most horrific, like,

just crises in human morality is going on there and caused entirely by the west because it just that kept going right like you just it it's rome started it you know like ignore the people down there because they can't be like crushed in the way they wanted and then you know over the years like just oh the power develops like around them almost i don't know phrasing it so yeah um

But that's, that's so dark. And I mean, well, good. I'm glad that she existed and clearly like was doing fine. So that's a great part of the story. Yeah. But just the way they erase it because of that. And then we have it erased because in the West, like, I mean, everything we have is formed by the ancient Romans and Greeks and, you know, peripherally, but

Yeah. Wow. You know, every story and every way we tell a story has an agenda. There's no narrative that's free of that. And so I think that what I wanted to bring out

By presenting the original versions of these stories as they are presented by the Greeks and the Romans is I want people to be aware of what the original agenda was. Yeah. Because, you know, there are all these books that are written about these women and these, and I'm not calling out a specific book or ways of telling stories because they have their own agendas too, but they take the information and they present it as fact. But then I want, I would like,

Because I find that so much of the primary material is simply inaccessible to most people. I wanted to make it accessible. So if you are interested in, say, you know, Zenobia, you can go and read about her in the primary materials that we have and ask yourself, what was the agenda of the original telling?

What can that illuminate for the ways that we talk about women in power today and how we use our own narratives to just still to discredit the very idea. I am so excited for this book. Like, I just feel like your, your goals were everything that I want, you know, like,

It's funny. The piece I have on Medusa, which is the book's coming out next month. But I had a really similar intention. And like, it's just it's a well, it was like 25,000 words. So it's like a decent chunk on Medusa. But my whole goal was to look at what actually exists in the ancient sources and what were the what what.

what's the agenda behind them and how does that influence us today? And what are the alternative possibilities based on the ancient sources of like, and versus the agenda? Like, so I'm just obsessed with all of this. I'm like, Oh, these are, this is what I want to know. I want to know behind. I want to know that, that to, to, yeah, to, to look at the ancient sources,

But as what they were and what was maybe going on. And yes, this is all that survives, but it doesn't mean it's the actual thing, like in whatever way we're looking at it. I mean, history is so biased depending on what, what you have, what survives and why. Right. And I think that one thing that also we can see is like, despite the fact that I think these stories are told ultimately to uphold patriarchy is that

we can still see really incredible things in them, right? We can see how, we can find positive messages still there. So like, Boudicca is motivated to step into the arena of power because of the sexual violence that was done to her daughters. In the assembly women, the women realize that they have to work together

right, to take over, to have some say in what the state is going to do. No single woman can do that on her own. In the story of Amon Arenas, we can see how

um, you know, a woman leader can resist an imperial power. I mean, she can be the Luke Skywalker in that story, right? I mean, there is, you know, there are really cool messages, I think, to take out of these stories. But yeah, before you can do that, you have to be able to scrutinize the whole story. Yeah. Okay. You just saying that gave me such an idea. So I'm curious if you touched on it or thought about it at all. Because again, this came to me while researching the Gorgons, because I was looking at all of the different

kind of what could be going on in that story because obviously Medusa's messy but what comes up a lot is I mean you know she is from North Africa in the mythos right she's from like the far west and

So, like, there's so many connections kind of to possibly what was going on in Africa when it came to queens. Like the Diodorus Siculus thing where he's like, the Amazons and the Gorgons, they were queens. They were bad. Hercules killed them. That was because they were probably seeing African queens and obviously were threatened by them. And so the story comes to us that way. You know, and people...

People like to speculate that Medusa is based on some kind of like African goddess or queen. I don't think that's true, but I do think that like the stories of her, they were come, there's parts of it were coming from that notion. And so like, you know, you also mentioned Zenobia, which I don't,

I know the name, but like, so, but in addition to Imani Ramis, am I saying it right? Well, I always say Imani Renis for a long time. And then I started saying Imani Reynis. Yeah. Reynis. Okay. Yeah. And, uh,

that seems like evidence for these African queens. Do we know, can you tell more about ancient African queens? Do you have that? Well, I mean, certainly I think going back to Egypt, I mean, you have the example of female pharaohs. You have Hatshepsut, for example. I mean, I think

perhaps in North Africa, you have a lot of, you know, brother sister rule that come, you know, in the pharaonic period that comes over into the, you know, the Ptolemaic period. You have the, and, and Amarna Arenas is certainly not the only woman who had that title of Kendake. Yeah. I mean, so perhaps there was just a lot of evidence for Queens in North Africa, but also, I mean, gosh,

even in the myths, I mean, the lands, you know, outside of Greece, right? I mean, it's women's rule becomes a feature there. But I think especially of the East and perhaps of Africa as well. Not being a historian, I don't want to speculate too much on what kind of historical reality this might present. But I think it's important that

I think it's important that we don't just say, okay, well, there are these queens because the Greeks were othering these places. But also to recognize that this was, I mean, this was a reality that there were women queens. The depiction of the stories includes othering for sure. But yeah, that doesn't mean there weren't women queens. Same with the Amazons, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Were there any more examples that made it into your book of just sort of beyond the Greco-Roman world that you're particularly interested in?

Well, most of the ones that I included were at least women who had come into contact with the Greco-Roman world in some way, right? I mean, Zenobia is another one that I love. I love the description of her.

She was a Palmyrene queen who, again, upon the death of the male, Zenobia was her husband, Odinophis. He was assassinated and she became into power. And then she, he was a client king of Rome. And this is often what happens. Like you have these client kings and they will die. And then the woman will come into power and immediately come into conflict with the Romans, right? This happens with...

We have Boudicca, we have Zenobia. She's great too. I mean, ancient Palmyra was such an interesting place because it was at a real, you know, crossroads. And so she, she, she, she,

She had imperial ambitions of her own. I mean, she took over a lot of Egypt and she was defeated by Aurelian. He marched her in a triumph in Rome. So what Cleopatra was so frightened of happened to her. Her story is told in the Historia Augusta, which is this really weird fourth century historical text about

And but he tells us that the Senate had questions, had questioned Aurelian's manliness because he had defeated a woman and marched her in triumph. So he so Aurelian, in order to demonstrate his own manliness, has to show that Zenobia was a worthy adversary. So there's this very interesting like speech or letter that he wrote to the Senate where he praises her.

Wow. Yeah. Just the need to do that. There's so many layers in there. Yeah. And the Historia Augusta is very complimentary towards her. It says things like, you know, she only had sex with her husband for the purpose of procreation. Oh, what a good woman. What a good woman. And she spoke with the voice of a man, which we've

But this is interesting to me because, again, two of the realms that women needed to exert control over were sex and speech. Yeah. And we see her doing that in those stories. And women were often thought to be very sexually voracious. Pre-Christian times, right? Wow. Yeah.

You know, men, Greeks thought that men possess naturally, more naturally than women, the quality of sophrosyne, which is like self-control, right? And that comes to be associated with sexual self-control. So the fact that Zenobia can exercise sexual self-control means that she has this quality, a very masculine quality that would make her a good ruler.

Well, and it, I mean, even the description, you know, describing her as man-like in those varied ways, like, and you mentioned it with Imani Reynes. Yeah, exactly. Manly woman, we are told. Yeah. So it's interesting because it's like, it's both...

a dig at them it's a dig at their femininity but also like a bit of like respect to their power so it's like yeah it's kind of hard to like piece apart how those actually end up coming across in the end it is meant as a compliment which sounds a little bit

which um you know does strike the modern ear is very odd and and yeah it is it is denying them their femininity but again it's showing that it's giving some explanation for why they were successful rulers yeah yeah because they can't it's a compliment only because they can't face the idea that women could be feminine and competent rulers so it's like yeah it's

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, okay, I'm not going to keep you forever, but do you have any that you, any women or any stories that you haven't gotten to tell that you are really obsessed with in this? I mean, I'm obsessed with them all. I mean, basically there will be, I know complaints. Why didn't you include this person? Why didn't you include that person? Because these are my favorites and that's why. And you know what? You make the rules because you wrote the book. I know the feeling. I do.

So I made the rules. I mean, there are just so many great ones. I mean, I guess one that we haven't touched on would be, oh, okay. I have to choose between Lavinia and Artemisia. Oh, Artemisia, please. Can we? Because that's Greek-er. It's not Greek. She's not Greek, but she's Greek-er. Well, she is Greek. She is Greek. She's a, you know, she's a Greek woman.

a Greek queen and and again we're told she came to power when her husband died this is Artemisia the first she was the queen of Caria we know about we know so not the second sorry not the one on the boat in Salamis that's all I've got yeah this is the one this is the one on the boat in Salamis yes great you can tell how good I am at history even if it's Greek to say the one on the boat in Salamis

In theory, I know what I'm talking about. We're fine. Because there's also the later Artemisia, who's the wife of a name I can never say correctly, but Mausolus. She built the mausoleum. But anyway, this is Artemisia I. And she is the queen of Halicarnassus, which is where Herodotus is from. And Herodotus tells her story. He's so filled with admiration for her. She's his queen, right? And...

But she does not side with the Greeks. She sides with the Persians because she's also, Caria was a Persian satrapy. So she's kind of a client monarch of Xerxes. But she's constantly like the only Greek in the room, right? When Xerxes is having these conversations with his Persian advisors and these other advisors from these different allied groups.

And she's the only one who can speak with any sense of freedom with Xerxes. And so he's coming to her and saying, what do you think I should do, Artemisia? She gives him very good advice and says, you're a great person and I admire you, but I don't think I'll do what you say. And then he promptly goes and gets defeated and things like that.

like that. And she's very clever. It's about the battle of Salamis. She's in between an enemy ship behind her and a friendly ship in front of her. And she knows she's about to get into trouble. So she decides just to ram the friendly ship. But so she doesn't really have a sense of, you know, loyalty to her allies. I mean, she's like saving her own butt. I mean, she's Greek, but she's working with the Persians. Like, you know, I guess I get it.

But Xerxes sees this and he doesn't realize that she's rammed an enemy ship. And he says, man, the only man out there is Artemisia. And so what is so fascinating to me about this is that I would love to think that Herodotus just sees her as a really cool, capable queen. Like we finally we have found someone.

But what he's doing is he's using her as a foil to Persian masculinity. Yeah. And so you cannot disentangle any of these stories from ethnic prejudice. It shows up in all of them. And he's also, you know, he's from Halicarnassus, like you say, but he's Greek, considers himself Greek. And so is writing about like,

someone from where he's from and he considers himself Greek but she was on the Persian side of the big bad Persian war that he's talking about so that's really interesting yeah there's there's so much going on there and we still have that moment where Xerxes calls her a man in order to clarify that she's good as a leader absolutely absolutely yeah I mean it's the zero-sum game right I mean it's an interesting lesson that the way that we think about gender is not linked to biology at all here right the person who's the man in the situation is the one who's exerting control and power

But it's a commentary on Eastern masculinity because Artemisia, the Greek woman, outmans the Eastern men, right? And so you see a lot of anti-Eastern prejudice in so many of these stories. Yeah. Well, and that's like a running theme, the femininity of the Persians so specifically too. So it's like the easy way to get a dig at them. Absolutely. That's really interesting. And it

It led me to a thought. Oh, when you were the gender thing that you just said, my ADHD is going a little while today. I apologize, but we're there. When you mentioned the gender, the way that it's not about biology in this moment, right? It reminds me of Ovid, just bring it back to the last time you were here and specifically Canis slash Canis and, you know, the sort of transformation transgender story in there.

which is such a great example of that. Like this reminder that to back them, it didn't, the biology was not really their concern. They were very much open to, to having biology be not an issue. It was all about actions when it comes to your gender or, or, and also like power. Yeah. And, and so to have that, like she, Kineas, when a man becomes like all powerful and that's why she,

That's why he's a man because he's like unbeatable on the battlefield, you know, like, and obviously there's, there's more to it. And there's some like, there's really nice trans readings of that. But in this moment to me, it's just like, oh, well, of course, Canis is a man because battle. But I will say that for, for Canis to have that,

I mean, there is that physical transformation that takes place. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely. So I think that the ideal is usually in the ancient world. Like you take Hercules, for example. It's that...

the physical power, I mean, Hercules is so powerful, physical power, the power of, you know, in war, power of our armies, that these will converge upon a masculine body, right? But in the absence of that, if the masculine body is not doing, you know, behaving as it should, then that will converge on a woman, right? And I mean, this is, you

you know, this is a way that Zenobia's success gets explained that, um, that all the men around her aren't doing what they're supposed to do. They're not acting like men. So in the absence of that, she has to occupy the role. Right. Um, so yeah, I think that, I think that the relationship between, you know, gender and the body in the ancient world, it's always one that was, um,

to debate and thinking about. I mean, it was not an automatic assumption that there was a clear relationship there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting. I mean...

Yeah, I'm going to talk about all of, I mean, all of this literally forever and truly no pressure. But if you do want to come back on sometime and talk about the assembly women, I think that would be amazing. It is its whole thing. I mean, it is a little bit, it stands out a little bit in the book because it's not about a queen, right? Yeah. It's taking these stories, and I'll just say this, Natalie, it's taking these ideas, but saying now let's throw them into a democracy and see what happens.

Yeah. This isn't a monarchy somewhere else where women come to power. This is what happens when women come to power in a democracy. Yeah. It's really cool. In Athens. So specifically. And by Aristophanes. Like now I'm excited, which is saying a lot for me with Aristophanes. I love the idea of him. But do

What do you want to, I mean, the book is called Women in Power, but is there anything more you want to share with the listeners? The last thing, I want to give a shout out to my fellow translators. Because as I said, some of the things that were included were pre-existing translations. We have Fagles, Aeneid, I have Matthew Fox's Lucan, some passages from there, Aaron Puchigian's

Apollonius translation, but lots of new things. And so I'm going to shout out to Erica Zimmerman Dahmer, who is at the University of Richmond, and she did a beautiful translation of Ovid's Heroides 7 at Dido to Aeneas, which is great. My student, Paige Graff, she worked with my colleague, Chris McDonough, to do a wonderful translation of Boudicca's Speech in Tacitus, which they did a great job on.

And then my other colleague, Daniel Holmes, who also happens to be my spouse, he translated tons of stuff for this. He was, I could just like go throw things at him and say, translate. And

And so he's a Hellenist and he did a lot of the translating too. So it was a real, real group effort, I must say. That's so fun. And I'm so grateful to all of them for contributing. Oh, I'm thrilled to hear all of that. That's great. And yet you did the Aristophanes, even though he's the Hellenist. And you know what? My husband has actually written a book on Aristophanes. Oh!

So it was great. I really, I wanted, I just wanted to translate an Aristophanes play. I'm like, yeah, this is going to be my chance. I'm a Latin poetry person, but I'm going to do it. But there were moments when I would go to, to, to Daniel and say, what in the world does this joke mean? I can see that. He was able to help me out there, but yeah, I did a lot. I did a bunch of Statius, a bunch of Perpurgis, Virgil, Aristophanes. I mean,

I was translating plenty for this thing. So it was a way I could really stretch myself. Yeah. That sounds like it was really fun too. It was just a fun book. And I was... In fact, when it came out, I said to some students of mine, like, I barely remember writing it because it was just so much fun. Yeah. That's so nice. Well, honestly, like, I mean, I've been excited about it since I found out it existed. But now I'm like, oh, I'm excited for the translations too. Like, this is just...

I'm going to go buy it on ebook because then it serves as my source so much easier. I'm really excited, basically. Oh, thank you so much. I mean, thank you for coming on the show again and just being so lovely to chat with. It's been so much fun. Thank you so much. It's been great.

nerds thank you so much for listening as always it was such a joy to have stephanie back i again recorded these uh recent conversation episodes a little while ago now um but returning to thinking about that and remembering them for editing honestly is so much fun i love talking to stephanie and i'm certain we'll have her back not least because apparently maybe she can make me like aristophanes

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