Artemisia
historical figure · 4 works · 5 mentions · 13 anchored passages
Artemisia daughter of Lygdamis · a woman
in the texts
The Histories
Queen of Halicarnassus who took over her deceased husband's rule and joined Xerxes' expedition of her own will, commanding ships from Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyrus, and Calydnos.
Artemisia was her name, and she was the daughter of Lygdamis;
I see no need to mention any of the other captains except Artemisia.
Her ships were reputed to be the best in the whole fleet after the ships of Sidon, and she gave the king the best advice of all his allies.
Tusculan Disputations
Queen of Caria, wife of Mausolus, who built his famous tomb and mourned him until her death.
As that Artemisia, wife of Mausolus king of Caria, who made that famous tomb at Halicarnassus, as long as she lived, lived in mourning, and, worn out by it too, wasted away.
For the Liberty of the Rhodians
The Carian ruler after Mausolus, discussed as controlling or influencing Rhodes and as unlikely to resist decisive Athenian action strongly.
Then would it not be discreditable, men of Athens, if when the commons of Argos feared not the authority of the Lacedaemonians in the day of their might, you, who are Athenians, should fear one who is at once a barbarian and a woman?
But if the reports are true and he has failed in all his attempts, she must argue that this island would be of no use to him at present-which is true enough—but might serve as a fortress to overawe Caria and check any move on her part.
No one has come forward to dissuade Mausolus when he was alive, or Artemisia since his death, from seizing Cos and Rhodes and various other Greek states, which the King, their overlord, ceded by treaty to the Greeks, and for which the Greeks of those days faced many dangers and won much honor in the field.
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom
Historical queen invoked as an example of a woman ruling despite patriarchal norms.
Nevertheless, these Slavonian phenomena suggest that, even in the primitive militant communities, eminent capacity in a woman might overweigh the disadvantages of sex, and that every now and then a Deborah or an Artemisia might rule the tribe as the house-mother rules the house community.