This edited collection originates from a 2009 symposium at the Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3, where the topic of women and war in antiquity was the main focus. It lays emphasis on ancient Greece and Rome while covering diverse periods, genres and evidence. The book's overall agenda is to give women a wartime voice through our sources’ representations of them in literature and history. The cover of this volume clearly sets the tone for the subsequent discussion. A scene of a warrior fighting an Amazon, depicted on the renowned fourth-century sarcophagus of the Amazons from Tarquinia, foreshadows the content of the volume.
What ties the chapters together is the emphasis throughout on the concepts of the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ in the context of war. By the nature of the topic, gender transgressions receive special treatment in most of the authors’ analyses. What happens when women do not conform to ancient ideals of the féminin? And how do ancient authors portray these women? These analyses are examined throughout the volume with anthropological theory in mind (often following the work of N. Loraux). But what is special about this volume is that it goes beyond the traditional approach of seeing the feminine and the masculine as a reversal.
The strength of the volume lies in the analyses of mythological women and wars, not on the historical analyses. Real women receive less treatment throughout, but they are occasionally present in some of the more historical chapters. One is left wanting more on what was actually happening on the ground. Few chapters which take a historical perspective (in ancient Greece) go beyond women throwing roof tiles and stones or enduring the terrible aftermath of war.
The volume is divided in two parts. The first, appropriately titled ‘From Words to Deeds: Between Genres’, generally considers women in Homer, Greek tragedy, Roman epic and art. Of notable mention is P. Rousseau's new interpretation of Hector's advice to Andromache (pp. 15–33). The famous advice in Book 6 of the Iliad, which is repeated in modern scholarship (often without critical approach), is interpreted in light of two similar passages in the Odyssey (1.356–9, 21.350–3). Rousseau shows that the passages in the Odyssey cannot be understood without the Iliad. Although it is not altogether convincing that Homer completely ignores the convention that war is for men and the loom and distaff for women, Rousseau nonetheless brings to our attention a remarkable interconnection between these three passages so similar in language, style and form.
F. Lissarrague's analysis (pp. 71–81) of arming scenes in Greek painted pottery is worth mentioning. By exploring the story of Polynices bestowing Harmonia's necklace to Eriphyle, Lissarrague demonstrates the complex association (and balance created) between arms (for men) and jewellery (for women) in vase paintings. While it is unfortunate that this is the only chapter that deals with the representation of women and war in art, this chapter enriches the volume, which considers (for the most part) written texts only.
Philosophy is paramount to any exploration of women and war in the ancient world, not least because of the differences between the sexes that ancient men maintained, but also because concepts such as ‘virtue’ (arete in ancient Greece and virtus and also genus in Rome), in relation to women, are intimately embedded in these discourses. F.-S. recognises this in her stimulating chapter (pp. 100–18). She focuses on the emotions of individual women (Hecuba, Polyxena, Helen and Andromache) and collective groups (Trojan captives) which are intimately connected to war, namely, pain, suffering and lack of control. She convincingly shows how Seneca's representation of these women as enduring the worst of war with great and, at times, honourable comportment is connected to larger Roman ideologies and to Stoicism.
The second part of the volume examines historical representations of women in war narratives. It complements the preceding contributions with (for example) analyses of historiographical traditions on the queens of Caria (Chapter 13) and how women are moulded by ancient authors (Fulvia in Chapter 14). Ever since D. Schaps’ article (CPh 77 [1982], 193–213) on the women of Greece in wartime, scholarship on women and war has followed a single line of enquiry: active (direct and defensive roles) versus passive (impact, victims) women at war (see, for instance, W.D. Barry, GRBS 37 [1996], 55–74 and, more recently, K.L. Gaca in Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World [2015], pp. 278–97). P. Ducrey's analysis (pp. 181–99) of the active participation of women in war and what happened to them afterwards follows this traditional approach. Given the scarce evidence we have for the explicit (or implicit) association between women's roles and the outcomes of conflict, one is not convinced that ‘in ancient warfare … the part played by women could prove decisive’ (p. 184). The strength of this chapter lies in the numerical data that Ducrey employs in his analyses of fortifications (pp. 195, 197).
It is good to see different points of view within the scope of this volume as it is representative of the diverse opinions in the field. For example, Ducrey mentions (p. 198 n. 3) how his interpretations differ from P. Payen's views, and the latter says (p. 226 n. 13) how his analyses differ from Rousseau's (Chapter 1).
The critical approach employed by S. Georgoudi (pp. 200–13) is welcome in a field that often follows old-fashioned views on women and war. Georgoudi is critical of modern analyses of women's actions in war. In particular, she argues against the ‘theory of reversal’ – that women's roles in war are always a reversal of the established conventions of the sexes.
War, however, is often conceptualised throughout the volume in a very narrow way, and hoplites and phalanxes are frequently mentioned as synonymous to war (unreasonably, in my view). Payen, for example, claims that during urban conflict men adopt women's way of waging war because phalanxes cannot be deployed in the streets of cities (p. 220). Problematic phrases like ‘the type of war waged by women’ and ‘the feminine way of war’ (p. 220) are left unexplained and unexamined. One cannot help but notice that seminal works on ancient warfare, which would have placed some perspective on these analyses, are missing from the bibliography (e.g. H. Van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities [2004]).
What emerges from this volume is not the over-idealised image that women's role in warfare was ‘identical to that of men’ (as the introduction claims, p. 3), but instead that they are part of the world of war in a vast range of ways which previous scholarship has ignored. One wishes that the contributions ventured beyond the usual tradition of active versus passive women in war. The contributions by A. Sharrock, F.-S. and Georgoudi show that this is indeed possible. This collection is the start of a much larger conversation on women and war that deserves further exploration.
This volume contributes more to gender studies than to warfare studies. Both students and academics will find this a useful book. J. Hallett's chapter on Fulvia (pp. 247–65), for instance, has been class-tested by the reviewer and has had a good response. The only worrying note is that Plutarch's Apophthegmata are on occasions taken at face value for the classical period, ignoring crucial scholarship that has disproven the authenticity of some of the Sayings (S. Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta [2009], p. 254; M. Dillon, Hermes 135 [2007], 149–65). Ducrey (p. 188), for example, accepts as true the saying of a Spartan mother telling her son to come with his shield or on it. Ultimately, this important volume has made us aware that, whether women appear as constructs in narratives or as mothers in arming scenes in vase paintings, women cannot be separated from ancient Greek and Roman conception(s) of war.
