Of all the deeds performed by women for the community none is more famous
than the struggle against Cleomenes for Argos (494 B.C.), which the women
carried out at the instigation of
Telesilla the poet. 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 (I), king of the Spartans, having slain many Argives (but
not by any means seven thousand seven hundred and seventy seven [cf. Herodotus,
VII.148] as some fabulous narrative 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, and, taking their stand by the battlements, manned the walls all round, so
that the enemy were amazed. The result was that they repulsed Cleomenes with
great loss, and the other king, Demaratus, who managed to get inside, as
Socrates [
Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum IV, p. 497] says, 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 statue of Ares as a memorial of their
surpassing valor. Some say that the battle took place on the seventh day of the
month which is now known as the Fourth Month [
tetartou], 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 (Book VI. 77-83) records, but with the best of their neighboring 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,
the one which says that married women having a beard must occupy the same bed
with their husbands.
