This essay offers an array of anecdotes where women’s courage played an important public function. The accounts range from the more inadvertent consequences of burning vessels to end a trajectory of exile leading to the founding of the site of Rome, to the various strategies through which women were able to inspire male warriors to fight more valorously, or through which women were the masterminds behind heroic escapes from the enemy. In addition to being inspirations and indeed sly tacticians in battle, women are also acknowledged to be successful negotiators helping to resolve conflict (as in the example of the Celtic women). Overall, while some of the examples are distressing and involve acts of violence, the stories demonstrate how the prominent virtues of Roman imperial culture were also attributable to women playing a public role, if only momentarily, for Plutarch.