Female Warriors (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. Semiramis, Queen of Assyria ? Harpalyce, daughter of Lycurgus, King of Thrace?Atalanta (Argonautic Expedition) ?Camilla, Queen of the Volscians?Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae?Telesilla the Poetess?The Two Artemisias (i. and n.) Queens of Caria?Mania, Governess of Eolia?Crate- sipolis of Sicyon?Arsinoe, Queen of Egypt. IEMIRAMIS is the earliest femalewarrior of whose existence there is any certainty. But even her history is intermingled with much of fable and idle tradition. The exact period at which she reigned has never been positively determined. The following dates, assigned to her reign by various historians, ancient and modern, as compared by the antiquarian Bryant, show the diversity of opinion amongst chronologists upon the subject. According to Syncellus, she lived . 2177 Petavius makes the time .... 2060 Helvicus 2248 Eusebius Mr. Jackson Archbishop Usher 1215 Philo Biblius Sanchoniathan (apud Euseb.) 1200 Herodotus (about) 713 " What credit," indignantly asked the learned Bryant, " can be given to the history of a person, the time of whose life cannot be ascertained within 1535 years ? " The early life of this famous woman is enveloped in one of those mythological legends in which the ancients loved to shroud the origin of their heroes and heroines. According to tradition she was the natural daughter of Derceto, a Philistine goddess, and while yet a babe, was left to perish by her cruel mother in a wood near Ascalon, in Syria. But, as Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf, so doves came and fed the future queen. The birds were observed and followed by the neighbouring peasants; and Simma, or Sisona, chief shepherd of the Assyrian king, having no children of his own, adopted the babe, and gave her the name ofSemiramis, a Syr...