Perhaps partly out of patriotic sentiment, Herodotos gives an extremely favorable portrayal of Artemisia and gives her pride of place in his account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Artemisia I would have been the only ruler of Karia Herodotos knew for his entire childhood and early adulthood. 484 – c. 425 BC) in his book The Histories.Īs I discuss in this article I wrote in September 2019, Herodotos was born in the city of Halikarnassos, which was, at the time of his birth in around 484 BC, the capital of Karia. She is written about extensively by the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. Queen Artemisia I of Karia became the Greek queen of the Persian satrapy of Karia in around 484 BC immediately following the death of her husband, the former ruler of Karia. I am sure there are probably a few others that I have missed as well. For the main part of this list, I am confining myself strictly to Greek female rulers who ruled in their own names in Greece or western Asia Minor during the Classical and Hellenistic Periods, although there will be section at the end briefly listing some others who ruled outside of Greece. Many of the others on this list, such as Kratesipolis of Makedonia, are fairly obscure, but deserve more attention.
Several of the ancient Greek female rulers on this list, such as Artemisia I and Artemisia II of Karia, are still relatively famous today. Although female rulers were certainly very rare in ancient Greece compared to the number of male rulers, there were, in fact, surprisingly many of them overall. Nonetheless, the picture we have of women in ancient Greece being totally excluded from any semblance of power is not completely accurate. To a large extent, it is true that the rights of women in ancient Greece were extremely restricted. We are often accustomed to hearing how utterly oppressed women were in ancient Greece.
0 kommentar(er)
