Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (5 page)

More recently, however, scholars have been stepping warily where such positive statements concerning historical matriarchies are concerned. It is suggested that the archaeological discoveries of women buried with horses and spears – for example the Sarmatian graves of the fourth century
BC
– may point to the presence of women in the fighting force, but that in itself does not necessarily suppose a matriarchy.
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After all, if the graves of females who have served in the Israeli army were to be discovered in a thousand years’ time, it would be a mistake on the part of scholars to regard this as proof of a matriarchal organization in the Israeli state. In 1986 shortage of recruits in the prolonged Iraq–Iran war led to girls being sent into battle, pictured in the newspapers dressed in the chador and carrying a gun: their skeletons, surviving by chance alongside their guns, would give an even more distorted picture of the Muslim state if some kind of ‘matriarchal’ conclusion were drawn.

Replacing the belief in actual matriarchies, it is now supposed that while certain strong-minded Bronze Age queens did exist, just as individual women in certain societies of the past did display at least something of Spenser’s ‘antique glory’, the status of women as a whole was not superior to that of men. The existence of these spirited and respected individuals represents a state of affairs which is a far cry from the dreams of true matriarchy and matrilineal succession, the evidence for which has been described, even in the free Celtic world from which Boudica sprang, as being ‘very dubious’ and ‘best consigned to the large corpus of myths surrounding Celtic society’.
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It seems, as with the clearly legendary goddesses of war, that it is the continued tradition of pre-Classical matriarchies which is important here, rather than the fact of their existence.

The question of historical truth becomes even more acute in
the case of the Amazons and their leaders, including most prominently Penthesilea and Hippolyta. Like the alleged early pre-Classical matriarchies, the Amazons have sometimes been granted a proper historical existence; however in their case the evidence actually comes from the Classical writers, most notably Herodotus.
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If true, this would be another interesting possibility to explore with regard to the nature of the Warrior Queen’s origins: should we look to these colonies of armed and self-mutilated women for inspiration? (They were supposed to remove one breast for the sake of drawing the bow: the name Amazon itself was once thought to derive from the Greek ‘without breast’.) Many of the ancient writers site the Amazons in an area around the Black Sea, and indeed if they are allowed a historical existence, what is now Northern Anatolia seems the likeliest place for the cradle; coincidentally or not, the lands contiguous to the Black Sea will also provide a number of indisputably authentic Warrior Queens. Scythia to the north however also has its claims. Herodotus, on the other hand, supported by Diodorus Siculus, places his armed maidens on the shores of the Mediterranean in Libya, the significant point being that the Classical writers in general situated the Amazons on the outskirts of their known world, and as this world expanded, so the kingdoms of the Amazons receded into more distant territories.

Outside the known world of the Greeks lay the barbarians – those rude and unfortunate strangers who lacked the brilliant order of the Greek state, and it is to this realm of disorderliness and unnaturalness that the Greek tradition of the Amazons belonged.
¹⁰
Thus the Greek heroes of legend are frequently found undergoing a kind of ritual encounter with an Amazon, from which the Greek emerges the victor – the point being less the victory of one sex over the other (since the superiority of the male sex would be taken for granted by the Greeks) than the subjugation of the barbarians by the forces of civilization: it was one of the labours of Hercules to secure the girdle of the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. Similarly in art, Amazonomachy was a popular
theme for many temple friezes and vases: but the defeated women there depicted actually stood for the Greek’s victories over their male enemies – such as the Persians.

Diodorus Siculus, writing in about 40
BC
, has, like Homer, Penthesilea involving her Amazons in the Trojan War, in support of Priam, and being killed as a result by Achilles: after that the power and prestige of the Amazons declined. And it was the defeat and death of the ‘Amazonian’ Camilla of the Volscians, described by Virgil in
The Aeneid
, which presaged the establishment of the new Roman Empire under Aeneas.
¹¹

Camilla is introduced to us at the head of ‘her cavalcade of squadrons a-flower with bronze’. She is among the Italian leaders who have gathered together, hoping to expel the invading Trojans led by Aeneas from their native land: a maiden warrior so fleet of foot that she could run across a field of corn without damaging the blades, across the sea without wetting the soles of her feet. Her description also provides an excellent Classical example of the Tomboy Syndrome: ‘She was a warrior; her girl’s hands had never been trained to Minerva’s distaff and her baskets of wool, but rather, though a maid, she was one to face out grim fights and in speed of foot to out-distance the winds …’ As Camilla passed, wayfarers gaped ‘to see how regal splendour clothed her smooth shoulders in purple, how her brooch clasped her hair in its gold, and how she wore on her a Lycian quiver and carried a shepherd’s myrtle staff with a lance’s head’.

In the final military confrontation with Aeneas Camilla rides ‘armed with her quiver, exulting like an Amazon, through the midst of the slaughter, having one breast exposed for freedom in the fight. Sometimes with all her strength she would be casting her tough spear-shafts in dense showers, and sometimes without pause for rest her hand would wield a stout battle-axe.’ Camilla is surrounded by her faithful female attendants (‘daughters of Italy’) equally bold in the affray, Larina, Tulla and Tarpeia ‘wielding her bronze axe’; Virgil compares them directly to the Amazons of Thrace, ‘who, warring in their brilliant accoutrements, make Thermodon’s streams echo to the hoof-beats, as they ride, it
may be with Hippolyta, or else when martial Penthesilea drives back in her chariot from war, and her soldier-women, shrieking wild battle-cries, exult as they wave their crescent shields’.

Camilla’s previous exploits – man-killing on a vicious scale – are related in gory detail (‘She battered through his unguarded breast with her long firwood-shafted spear’, etc. etc.), as is Camilla’s pride in her achievements. Here she addresses the mighty hunter Ornytus, whom she has pierced through: ‘Etruscan, did you imagine that you were chasing wild beasts in a forest? Well, the day will come which will prove that you and your fellows imagined wrongly; and it will be proved through a woman’s weapons. Yet you shall carry to the spirits of your fathers no mean fame – the fame of falling by Camilla’s spear.’

In the end Camilla does fall to a man: it is the javelin of Arruns, whistling out of the blue which smites her down, signalling the defeat of the Italian cause. But Arruns only succeeds with the direct intervention of Phoebus Apollo; and subsequently Diana, the goddess Camilla serves, sees to it that her sentinel Opis avenges the Volscian’s death: ‘Your passing shall not be without fame throughout the world.’

It is indeed the fame of the Amazons, and prototypes such as Camilla, which foreshadows the Warrior Queen, rather than the historical truth of their existence. Again and again we shall find a Warrior Queen acting out her life voluntarily or involuntarily as an example of the Appendage Syndrome: that is to say, she will either be regarded officially as an appendage to her father, husband or even son (as in the case of Cleopatra) or stress the relationship to give herself validity (as in Elizabeth I’s frequent stress upon her father Henry VIII). The Amazons of legend, however, specifically derived their exotic quality from the fact that they were nobody’s appendage.

The latter-day reputation of the Amazons and their imitators was expressed by Thomas Heywood in his popular
Gynaekeion or Nine Bookes of Various History Concerning Women
, first printed in 1624. He praised Camilla for being the product of a tomboy upbringing by her father: for taking a vow of
chastity to concentrate on the hunting and killing of wild beasts. Heywood translated Virgil’s account of Camilla in battle array with verve if not melody:

To their supply Camilla came

The gallant Volscian lass

Who bravely did command the horse

With troops that shin’d in brass.
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The fact that the Classical writers described the Amazons originally as an example of how badly things would turn out if the world was turned upside down and women ruled was disregarded. Ironically, John Knox, approvingly citing Aristotle on the ‘monstrousness’ of the Amazons, as he thundered against female rule in the mid-sixteenth century (‘their strength weakness, the counsel foolishness and judgment frenzy’) was in fact on firm historical ground.
¹³
It could even be argued that the perversity with which the French King Henri III had male
mignons
dress up as (female) Amazons at the court of the 1570s had something to be said for it historically: for it reflected the original concept of the Amazon kingdom as a place in which the natural order had been turned upside down.

The Warrior Queens cheerfully ignored all this. In any situation in which a female ruler had perforce to involve herself in war, an allusion to the Amazons was an appeal to history for the verification of her role. Queen Louise of Prussia, the exquisite fragile butterfly whom Napoleon would break on the wheel despite her valiant spirit, was contemptuously described by him as appearing on the battlefield ‘dressed as an Amazon in the uniform of her regiment of dragoons’.
¹⁴
Napoleon did not want pretty women on the battlefield dressed as Amazons or anything else; but to the Prussian soldiers who cheered the straightforward patriotism of their lovely queen (in contrast to the vacillation of her husband) the deliberate assumption of male uniform by a highly feminine woman was an inspiring symbol.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was the great feudal heiress whose
marriage to Louis VII of France in 1137, shortly after the death of her father, brought him vast possessions. At the time of her marriage Eleanor was only fifteen and the complicated future which awaited her, gifted as she was with beauty, riches and the intelligence to make use of her gifts, could hardly have been foreseen: the marriage itself would end in divorce, following which the heiress Eleanor would wed the rival monarch across the water, Henry II of England. Eleanor therefore was still a comparatively young woman on that Easter Day 1146 when she knelt before the celebrated orator, the Abbé Bernard of Clairvaux at Vézelay, and, moved by his eloquence, offered him her thousands of vassals for what was to become the Second Crusade.
¹⁵
She was attended by numerous ‘ladies of quality’ as she knelt, bearers of such heraldic names as Sybille Countess of Flanders, Mamille of Roucy, Florine of Bourgogne, Torqueri of Bouillon and Faydide of Toulouse.

It was one thing for a great lady to pledge her vassals, quite another for her to go on the crusade herself. This however was what Queen Eleanor proceeded to do, and opinions have varied concerning the reason. Did chivalry demand the presence of a woman at the centre of this pious procession? More humanly, did King Louis himself fear for the consequences of leaving his fascinating young wife at home? Whatever the reason, the chronicler who related the episode considered that the Queen’s departure, surrounded by her ladies, set an extremely bad example to the female sex as a whole. Furthermore the papal bull which promulgated the Crusade, and which was read aloud at Vézelay, expressly forbade the attendance of concubines on the expedition.

It was at this point, according to legend, that Queen Eleanor suddenly appeared among the crowds at Vézelay ‘taking the cross’, riding a white horse and herself dressed in the guise of an Amazon, with gilded buskins on her feet and plumes in her hair. Surrounded by her ladies, similarly if less gorgeously attired, the Queen galloped through crowds, urging on the faithful to join the Crusade in a deliberate imitation of Penthesilea and her ‘soldier– women’. Her squadron of ladies also distributed white distaffs to
the fainthearted – an early form of the First World War’s white feather.

According to Nicetas, the Queen kept up her enjoyable Classical charade along the route to the Holy Land. The Greek historian wrote of the ‘women dressed as men, mounted on horses and armed with lance and battle axe’ that they ‘kept a martial mien, bold as Amazons’. And he mentioned that at the head, ‘one in particular [presumably Eleanor] richly dressed … went by the name of the “lady of the golden boot”, the elegance of her bearing and the freedom of her movements recalling the celebrated leader of the Amazons’.
¹⁶

In a bold gesture, Queen Eleanor had thus separated herself from the category of mortal women, mere concubines (albeit royal) and other female companions; by her plumes and her bold buskins she had appealed ostentatiously to the past, and declared in so doing her right to accompany the Crusade. It should perhaps be noted in conclusion that the bull for the next Crusade – the Third Crusade of 1189 – expressly forbade women of all sorts to join the expedition by general agreement of all the Christian monarchs including King Louis. But by this time Queen Eleanor had been married to King Henry II of England for nearly forty years.