IV. THE WOMEN OF ARGOS1
Of all the deeds performed by women for the
community none is more famous than the struggle
against Cleomenes for Argos, which the women
carried out at the instigation of Telesilla the poetess.
She, as they say, was the daughter of a famous house
but sickly in body, and so she sent to the god to ask
about health; and when an oracle was given her to
cultivate the Muses, she followed the god's advice,
and by devoting herself to poetry and music she
was quickly relieved of her trouble, and was greatly
admired by the women for her poetic art.
But when Cleomenes king of the Spartans, having slain many Argives (but not by any means
seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven,
2
as some fabulous narratives have it) proceeded
against the city, an impulsive daring, divinely
inspired, came to the younger women to try, for
their country's sake, to hold off the enemy. Under
the lead of Telesilla they took up arms,
3 and,
taking their stand by the battlements, manned the
walls all round, so that the enemy were amazed.
[p. 491]
The result was that Cleomenes they repulsed with
great loss, and the other king, Demaratus, who
managed to get inside, as Socrates says,
4 and gained
possession of the Pamphyliacum, they drove out.
In this way the city was saved. The women who
fell in the battle they buried close by the Argive
Road, and to the survivors they granted the privilege
of erecting a statute of Ares as a memorial of their
surpassing valour. Some say that the battle took
place on the seventh day of the month which is now
known as the Fourth Month, but anciently was
called Hermaeus among the Argives; others say
that it was on the first day of that month, on the
anniversary of which they celebrate even to this day
the ‘Festival of Impudence,’ at which they clothe
the women in men's shirts and cloaks, and the men
in women's robes and veils.
To repair the scarcity of men they did not unite
the women with slaves, as Herodotus records,
5
but with the best of their neighbouring subjects,
whom they made Argive citizens. It was reputed
that the women showed disrespect and an intentional indifference to those husbands in their married
relations from a feeling that they were underlings.
Wherefore the Argives enacted a law,
6 the one which
says that married women having a beard must
occupy the same bed with their husbands!
