Mulierum virtutes

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. I. Goodwin, William W., editor; Chauncy, Issac, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

At the time when the Tyrrhenians inhabited the islands Lemnos and Imbros, they violently seized upon some Athenian women from Brauron, on whom they begat children, which children the Athenians banished from the islands as mixed barbarians. But these arriving at Taenarum were serviceable to the Spartans in the Helotic war, and therefore obtained the privilege of citizens and marriage, but were not dignified with magistracies or admitted to the senate; for they had a suspicion that they would combine together in order to some innovation, and conceived they might shake the present established government. Wherefore the Lacedaemonians, seizing on them and securing them, shut them up close prisoners, seeking to take them off by evident and strong convictions. But the wives of the prisoners, gathering together about the prison, by many

supplications prevailed with the jailers that they might be admitted to go to salute their husbands and speak with them. As soon as they came in, they required them to change their clothes immediately and leave them to their wives; while the men, apparelled in their wives’ habits, should go forth. These things being effected, the women stayed behind, prepared to endure all hard usages of the prison, but the deluded keepers let out the men as if they had been their wives. Whereupon they seized upon Taygeta, exciting the Helotic people to revolt, and taking them to their aid; but the Spartans, alarmed by these things into a great consternation, by a herald proclaimed a treaty of peace. And they were reconciled upon these conditions, that they should receive their wives again, and furnished with ships and provisions should make an expedition by sea, and possessing themselves of a land and a city elsewhere should be accounted a colony and allies of the Lacedaemonians. These things did the Pelasgians, taking Pollis for their captain and Crataedas his brother, both Lacedaemonians, and one part of them took up their seat in Melos; but the most part of them, which were shipped with Pollis, sailed into Crete, trying the truth of the oracles, by whom they were told that, when they should lose their Goddess and their anchor, then they should put an end to their roving and there build a city. Wherefore, putting into harbor on that part of Crete called Chersonesus, panic fears fell upon them by night, at which coming under a consternation, they leaped tumultuously on board their ships, leaving on shore for haste the statue of Diana, which was their patrimony brought from Brauron to Lemnos, and from Lemnos carried about with them wherever they went. The tumult being appeased, when they had set sail, they missed this statue; and at the same time Pollis, finding that his anchor had lost one of its beards (for the anchor, having been dragged, as appeared, through some rocky

place, was accidentally torn), said that the oracular answer of the Pythia was accomplished. Therefore he gave a sign to tack about, and accordingly made an inroad into that country, conquered those that opposed him in many battles, sat down at Lyctus, and brought many other cities to be tributary to him. And now they repute themselves to be akin to the Athenians on their mothers’ side, and to be Spartan colonies.

That which is reported to have fallen out in Lycia, although it be fabulous, hath yet common fame attesting it. Amisodarus, as they say, whom the Lycians call Isaras, came from a colony of the Lycians about Zeleia, bringing with him pirate ships, which Chimarrhus, a warlike man, who was also savage and brutish, was commander of. He sailed in a ship which had a lion carved on her head and a dragon on her stern. He did much mischief to the Lycians, so that they could not sail on the sea nor inhabit the towns nigh the sea-coast.

This man Bellerophon pursued with his Pegasus and slew him, and also defeated the Amazons, for which he obtained no due requital, but lobates the king was most unjust to him; upon which Bellerophon went to the seashore, and made earnest supplication by himself to Neptune that he would render that country barren and unfruitful; and having said his prayers, he faced about. Upon which the waves of the sea arose and overwhelmed the land, and it was a dreadful sight to behold the lofty billows following Bellerophon and drowning the plain. And now, when the men by their deprecation, laboring to put a stop to Bellerophon, availed nothing at all, the women plucking up their petticoats met him full butt; upon which confounded with shame he turned back again, and the flood, as they say, returned with him. But some

unriddle the fabulous part of this story, by telling us that it was not by execrations that he brought up the sea; but the fattest part of the plain lying lower than the sea, and a certain ridge extending itself all along the shore which beat off the sea, Bellerophon broke through this, so that the sea forcibly flowed in and overwhelmed the plain; and when the men by their humble addresses obtained nothing, the women assembling about him in multitudes gained respect from him and pacified his wrath. Some tell us that the celebrated Chimaera was a mountain opposite to the sun, which caused reflections of the sun’s beams, and in summer ardent and fiery heats, which spread over the plain and withered the fruits; and Bellerophon, finding out the reason of the mischief, cut through the smoothest part of the cliff, which especially caused these reflections. But on seeing that he was treated ungratefully, his indignation was excited to take vengeance on the Lycians, but was appeased by the women. The reason which Nymphis (in the fourth book concerning Heraclea) doth assign is to me not at all fabulous; for he saith, when Bellerophon slew a certain wild boar, which destroyed the cattle and fruits in the province of the Xanthians, and received no due reward of his service, he prayed to Neptune for vengeance, and obtained that all the fields should cast forth a salt dew and be universally corrupted, the soil becoming bitter; which continued till he, condescendingly regarding the women suppliants, prayed to Neptune, and removed his wrath from them. Hence there was a law among the Xanthians, that they should not for the future derive their names from their fathers, but from their mothers.

When Hannibal, the son of Barca, besieged the great city Salmantica in Spain, before he fought against the Romans, at the first assault the besieged citizens were

surprised with fear, insomuch that they consented to grant him his demands, and to give him three hundred talents of silver and three hundred hostages. Upon which he raised his siege; when they changed their minds, and would not perform any thing that they had promised. Wherefore returning again to his siege, he gave command to his soldiers to take the city by storm, and fall to the plundering their goods. At this the barbarians, struck universally into a panic fear, came to terms of composition, for the free citizens to depart the city with their clothes to their backs, but to leave their weapons, goods, slaves, and city behind them. Now the women supposed that, although the enemies would strictly search every man as he departed, yet the women would go untouched. Accordingly, taking scimitars and hiding them under their coats, they fell in with the men as they marched out. When they were all gone out of the city, Hannibal sets a guard of Masaesylian soldiers, fixing their post without the gate, but the rest of his army fell promiscuously into the city to plunder. But the Masaesylians, seeing them busy in carrying away much spoil, were not able any longer to refrain or to mind the charge of their watch, taking it heinously that that was their lot, and therefore left their post and went to take their share of the booty. Upon this the women raised a shout to animate their husbands, and delivered the scimitars into their hands, and they themselves some of them fell upon the sentinels; insomuch that one of them, snatching away the spear of Banon the interpreter, smote him with it, though he was armed with a breastplate. And as for the rest, the men routed and put some to flight and slew others, making their escape by charging through them in a great body together with the women. Hannibal, being made acquainted with these things, pursued them, and those he took he slew; but some betaking themselves to the mountains easily made their escape, and afterwards, sending

in their humble supplications, were admitted by him into the city, obtaining indemnity and civil usage.

A certain dreadful and monstrous distemper did seize the Milesian maids, arising from some hidden cause. It is most likely the air had acquired some infatuating and venomous quality, that did influence them to this change and alienation of mind; for all on a sudden an earnest longing for death, with furious attempts to hang themselves, did attack them, and many did privily accomplish it. The arguments and tears of parents and the persuasion of friends availed nothing, but they circumvented their keepers in all their contrivances and industry to prevent them, still murdering themselves. And the calamity seemed to be an extraordinary divine stroke and beyond human help, until by the counsel of a wise man a decree of the senate was passed, enacting that those maids who hanged themselves should be carried naked through the market-place. The passage of this law not only inhibited but quashed their desire of slaying themselves. Note what a great argument of good nature and virtue this fear of disgrace is; for they who had no dread upon them of the most terrible things in the world, death and pain, could not abide the imagination of dishonor and exposure to shame even after death.