From Red Sonja comics, to Ellen Ripley and Leeloo on the silver screen, everybody loves a kick-ass female warrior. The TV show Vikings would have us believe that so-called ‘shieldmaidens’ were common in Norse culture, no doubt influenced by the memorable portrayal of Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings. But Eowyn was the sole exception in the entire, sprawling legendarium created by Tolkien, the serious scholar of Anglo-Saxon Britain.
How historically accurate is the ‘woman warrior’ trope, really? Contrary to the ludicrous fantasy of The Woman King, the real Agojie were the only known female army in modern history, likely formed as a consequence of excessive male de-population due to constant warfare and slaving. And they were regularly crushed in battle. In one of their last battles, against the French, nearly 500 were slaughtered, while the French lost just six soldiers.
What about Boudica? Thomas Thornycroft’s Boadicea and Her Daughters is a stirring, monumental, sculpture, based loosely on Tacitus’ account of the Iceni rebellion. Was Boudica a fearsome female warrior – or something else?
Boudica is described by Tacitus as haranguing her troops from the top of her war chariot and leading them into battle, but rather than a warrior woman, the picture that emerges is that of a woman leader.
Moreover, we are talking about a queen, therefore an exponent of the noble class, not a common Celtic woman, and who is also a widow and has become at the moment the only point of reference for her people in an exceptional moment of crisis, which has led the Iceni to clash against their previous allies, namely the Romans.
So a very particular figure in a very particular context.
Other Roman writers are less describing admirable Celtic Amazons, than brawling, savage barbarian fishwives. “In fact, a whole band of foreigners will be unable to cope with [a Gaul] in a fight, if he calls in his wife,” wrote Ammianus Marcellinus in the 4th century AD. That is, 350 years after Gaul was conquered by Julius Caesar. To a Roman audience, this would have been frankly hilarious, contrasting the ideal of the sober Roman matron with the wild, indomitable Gauls.
Remember whenever we read something we also need to know as much as possible about the people who write: their culture, their preconceptions, because if you don’t do that then you’re going to apply your own filters and read it differently to what it actually was meant to be.
To put Ammianus into a modern context, perhaps, consider the endless YouTube videos of black “ghetto” women brawling and shrieking in fast food joints.
Still, some Roman sources indicate that, like the African Agojie, Germanic women could, in extremis, step up to the fight. How effective were they?
Plutarch describes how, at the Battle of Aqua Sextae, as their own men are fleeing back to the encamped wagons containing the previously non-combatant women and children, the Germanic women tried to force the men back into battle, and attempted to repel the advancing Roman legionaries.
Here the women met them swords and axes in their hands, and with hideous shrieks of rage tried to drive back fugitive and pursuers alike, the fugitives as traitors and the pursuers as foes; they mixed themselves up with the combatants, with bare hands tore away the shields of the Romans or grasped their swords, and endured wounds and mutilations, their fierce spirit unvanquished to the end.
In other words, the women were making a desperate, last-ditch defence of their mobile homes.
So we're not facing a specific cultural warrior characteristic of the Celtic and Germanic women, but rather a reaction in a moment of maximum crisis that could manifest itself in any context of the ancient age.
Was the mythology of the Amazons based on reality? There is indeed archaeological evidence of actual women warriors within the Indo-Iranian cultures of the Eurasian steppes? Recurrent female burials have the deceased kitted out with military gear, such as a reflex bow, arrows, battle-axes and swords, and spears and armour. Such burials are not just confined to nobles. The remains also show evidence of recurrent injuries, such as may be sustained in combat. Extant literature also refers to women warriors.
So it is very probable that even though Amazons are of course a myth, they were based on a reality that probably impressed the ancient people such as the Greeks. [Because] they were not used to it. Because, as we said, in Europe they were less common.
When the emperor Marcus Aurelius waged war on invading Germanic tribes, Roman historians reported: “Among the corpses of the barbarians there were found even women’s bodies in armor”.
The presence of women warriors in the ancient world thus seems to have been more common in the cultures of Eurasia or Indo-Iranian peoples, but quite rare in Western Europe. Where technology – such as cavalry or ranged weapons like bows – acted somewhat as ‘equalisers’, we seem more likely to find women warriors.
Otherwise, women as combatants seems more often to have been a resort in extremis. When fighting men were depleted or groups faced existential defeat, women would necessarily take up arms.
In modern times, women as snipers on the Eastern Front were a function of both: a Soviet Union fighting for its very existence against the Nazi invasion, along with weapons that greatly levelled the combatant playing field.
