Looking Stuff Up: The Ancient History Encyclopedia
Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time in the distant past, writing about women who fought against the Roman empire,against the Persian empire, as part of the Persian empire or here and there around the edges of the Mediterranean.* I’ve been fascinated with the ancient world since childhood, but it is definitely Not My Field in academic terms. When I need to find my way into a specific topic about the ancient world,** my first stop is the Ancient History Encyclopedia The AHE is an on-line encyclopedia that makes full use of the benefits of the digital world with videos, interactive features etc. More important from my perspective, it features clear narratives, with timelines, links to related materials,**** a useful bibliography and the name of the person who wrote the entry, so you can check him on line and see if you think he is a reliable guide to a new topic or a crackpot. (So far I have not found a crockpot, but it’s always nice to be able to check.)
For my purposes, the AHE is no more than a doorway, but for the casual user it could be a source of many happy hours looking stuff up. Nerd, you say? Guilty as charged.
* I haven’t even tried to deal with the myths about or historical roots of the Amazons. For that I recommend Adrienne Mayor’s excellent The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World.
**Say, Alexander the Great’s older half-sister, Cynane. Also spelled Cynna, or Cynnane, transliteration being a moving target. (And not just for ancient languages. I am currently tracking down a woman who formed a resistance group during the German occupation of Greece during World War II. Her name is alternately spelled Carayanni and Karagianni. This doubles the research time.***)
***If anyone can point me to a good source, I’d be grateful.
****For instance, the article on Boudicca includes a link to the relevant passages of Tacitus, who is one of our main sources for her revolt against the Romans. Very useful for a quick and dirty check on the details.
From the Archives: From Confucius to Air Traffic Control
In 130 BCE, the Chinese emperor Han Wudi came up with a new idea for how to choose government bureaucrats. He established a civil service of Confucian scholars, known in English as mandarins, who earned their positions by passing a standardized examination. The system still favored those from privileged families who could afford to give their sons* a formal education. But at least in theory, getting a government job in imperial China now depended on what you knew instead of who you knew or what family you were born in.
In Wudi’s day, the examinations tested candidates’ understanding of the tenets of Confucian moral and ethical thought on which Han dynasty government was based–the equivalent of asking candidates for jobs in the United States government to pass a test on the Magna Carta, the Constitution, and the Federalist papers. Over time, the examinations became more and more divorced from the realities of government. By the Manchu dynasty of the seventeenth century, candidates were tested on their knowledge of Chinese history, their ability to compose poetry, and the quality of their calligraphy.
Wudi’s civil service exams controlled who got a government job in China from the seventh century CE through 1905, when the system was abolished in response to pressure from a new western-educated elite. The west didn’t adopt the concept until the nineteenth century. In 1853, the British East India Company was the first European power to use competitive examinations as a means of reforming an increasingly corrupt system in which positions were acquired through patronage and purchase. The East India Company consciously copied the Chinese exam system, creating a class of “new Mandarins”.
Other western governments, faced with the hazards of civil service based on “who you know”, thought Wudi’s idea that government employees should pass a test proving their fitness for government service was a good one. The United States entered the game in 1883, after a disgruntled would-be federal employee assassinated President James Garfield. Civil Service exams controlled who got a job in the United States civil service until 1978, when the general civil service examination was abolished. Today, civil service exams are still required for jobs requiring a specific set of skills, such as air traffic controllers and intelligence agency linguists.
* Just to put this in context: roughly 2000 years later Clara Barton was one of only FOUR women to work for the United States Federal government in the years just before the American Civil War. At the time, plenty of people thought the presence of women in government jobs was a sign that the system of patronage had gone awry.
Image credit: iqoncept / 123RF Stock Photo
Fighting the Roman Empire
Back many moons ago when I was writing the proposal for this book I’m writing,* one of the first women I wrote about was Boudica, the Celtic woman who led an uprising against the Romans and almost kicked them out of Britain in 60 BCE. One of key elements in her story, at least from my perspective, was how horrified the Romans were at the idea of a woman fighting, let alone a woman leading troops. It seemed to them as unnatural as a two-head calf.
Since then, I’ve stumbled over more examples of women who fought against Rome–women who I never heard of before. Some of them won. Most of them at least made a good effort. And in each case, the Roman historians who tell the story repeat some variation of surprise/shock/horror/shame at the idea that Roman legions have suffered even a temporary defeat at the hands of a woman commander. After a while you’d think the novelty would have worn off.
I’ve told as many “women fighting against Rome” stories as the book will hold. ** I’d like to share some of the bounty here:
- Boudica (see above)
- Cleopatra commanded the Egyptian fleet as a reserve in the Battle of Actium (31BCE), the great naval engagement that was the decisive battle in the war with Octavia,—obviously she was more than just a pretty face.
Mark Antony and Cleopatra–two sides of the same coin
- Soon after the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, round 25 BCE, the one-eyed Kushite ruler*** Amanirenas the Brave took advantage of Rome’s distraction to do a bit of expansion. When Rome decided to take the land back, she successfully defended her country for five years, when Rome sued for peace. About fifteen years later, another kandake, Amanikasheto, defeated another Roman army.
- Zenobia, the ruler of Palmyra in what is now Syria, rose up against Rome, conquered the eastern third of the Roman empire**** and proclaimed herself Augusta before she was defeated by the emperor Aurelian in 272 CE.
Zenobia
- A hundred years later, in much the same neck of the empire, the Arab leader Mawiyya revolted against Rome and defeated them so thoroughly that Rome sued for peace on Mawiyya’s terms. Later that year, once again allies of Rome, Mawiyya and her troops came to the aid of Constantinople, which a group of Goths, Huns, and Alans had beseiged. At least one Roman historian, Amiantus Marcellianus, claimed Mawiyya’s Arabs saved the city. (Of course, he also claimed the Arabs terrified the Goths into submission by running shrieking into battle naked and that they sucked the blood from the throats of their fallen enemies Obviously a source to use with care.)
Anyone I’m missing who ought to be part of this list? Perhaps a woman who disguised herself as a man and fought on the Roman side? Let me know.
*I mentioned that I’m writing a book on women warriors, right?
**In fact, I suspect my editor may tell me to cut one or two. So many women warriors from so many times and places.
***Just to save you looking it up, Kush was an ancient Nubian kingdom in what is now the central Sudan. Their queens were known as kandakes, which the Roman geographer Strabo mangled into Candace, which he thought was the name of a single queen.
****About the same size as what would become what is often referred to as Byzantium, though the people who lived there thought they lived in the true Roman empire. Go figure.
For anyone who’s wondering why most of these women come from the Middle East, I refer you to this map of the Roman empire at its height in 117 CE. As you can see, the Roman empire was heavily weighted to the east.