Conversations: From the Mythical to the Very Real, Ancient Women in Power w/ Stephanie McCarter

Liv speaks with Stephanie McCarter, whose was last on the show to talk about her recent translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, this time it's all about ancient women in power, both the historical, the mythical, and the details somewhere in between. CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

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• 2:10Liv Albert?

  Hello nerds. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I am your host, Liv, here with a conversation with returning guest, Stephanie McCarter. You all remember Stephanie McCarter's name from her recent translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which, I mean, our conversation about that a year ago, two years ago, what is time, was absolutely amazing. But that translation is just chef's kiss. And so I was so thrilled to have Stephanie back to talk about her new book, this source book type thing, Women in Power. And this conversation was so much fun, because we were talking about women in power, like, in all forms.

• 2:56Liv Albert?

  Enjoy.

• 3:11Liv Albert?

  Conversations from the mythical to the very real. Ancient Women in Power with Stephanie McCarter.

• 3:34Liv Albert?

  I mean, honestly, I was just so excited, because I think I would have known you had this book coming out. But then, of course, it landed in my inbox, that Metamorphoses episode, and just your translation are still, they're very much talked about in our listener circles as well. So.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  That's wonderful. That's wonderful. It was one of my favorite things I've done to promote the Metamorphosis. So, yeah, that's great.

• 3:56Liv Albert?

  Such fun. And so, of course, you're right. Like, it's funny, because I feel like all we did was focus on the women in Metamorphoses, because of course I would. But if now you have a book called Women in Power, and I'm just like, okay, great. Well, obviously, yeah, I want to hear all about this.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  It's an interest, for sure.

• 4:13Liv Albert?

  So what led you to that?

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, interestingly, this book has been brewing probably for about sixteen years, I would say. So I have been teaching at the University of the South in Swanee since 2008. So that year, I taught a course on women and gender in the ancient world for the first time. And I knew I wanted to teach about the Amazons because the Amazons are amazing. And I said, well, I'll just go and find the stories about the Amazons and have them read them. And there was no place where I could just easily find that.

• 4:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  So I, you know, I ended up like literally copying and pasting a bunch of stuff for my students to spend on that day for the Amazons. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be nice if we had like a reader that included the Amazons? And then I often will teach the Assemblywomen of Aristophanes as well. And, you know, if you want to teach something like a play, you have to have them purchase an entire book. And so it just occurred to me that maybe it would be nice if a book kind of assembled some of these sources for ancient women. And particularly like under the the theme of like women who had power. But I didn't want it to just be, you know, influential women in the ancient world or badass women in the ancient world.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Because there were tons of those, right? But I wanted stories about women who wielded official power. And did not therefore like exercise power through men.

• 5:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  It was really important to me to do that because I think it gives you into a real view, a window into how Romans conceived not only of women and power, but also how they conceived of otherness too. Because almost all these stories are not set in Rome, right? They're, you know, Roman or in Greece, right? So these are stories where the idea of women ruling is really tangled up with ideas of ethnicity. And so to me, I just wanted to bring together these stories that would help us, my students and I explore this thing.

• 6:25Liv Albert?

  I mean, it's like a big smile on my face through all of this. Um, that's just, it's all I've ever wanted, you know, like, and of course, like my show exists for such similar reasons. And so I'm just, yeah, I'm so, so thrilled with this and the Amazons. I mean, I The Amazons are so interesting to me. And so maybe we're just like, oh, we're gonna talk about the Amazons. Because you mentioned them, and I'm not gonna say no. They're so interesting to me because of everything you were just kind of, you know, talking about there, which the way they do interact, or the stories of them do interact also with that otherness, that foreignness. And then like, what does that mean? That, you know, that they only understood women could rule a foreign people. And like,

• 7:08Liv Albert?

  based on the stories, like, they seem to have done it pretty well. You know, like, they're meant to be this like, big force against Theseus, and they certainly thought highly of Theseus. So like, it says a lot about them. And so, like, yeah, I mean, what are your thoughts on the Amazons? And that, and like, anything?

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Well, so many, yeah. I mean, if you just take Theseus and the Amazon, he's only one of the Greek heroes who had to fight against the Amazons.

• 7:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, they all do in little ways, right?

• 7:35Speaker 03

  They do.

• 7:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Hercules, of course, famously fights against the Amazons. And then you have, if you just take, just sticking with Theseus for a moment, you have the story that he marries the queen of the Amazons, who is Hippolyta. So so many of these stories are about the triumph of the Amazons. And, you know, Helen Morales talks about this a lot in her book, Antigone Rising, that this is just part of what makes a hero a hero, is that you have to defeat women. Because, and especially these women. Because power, I think fundamentally, at the heart of thinking about power in the ancient world, was that there's only so much of it to go around.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  And, and tied to that is, power is so entwined with masculinity, that there's only, not only so much power to go around, there's only so much masculinity to go around. And the moment that, you know, someone like Hippolyta, or Penthesilea, who's another really cool Amazon, as soon as they take some power for themselves, they're denying it from a man, right? And so, female power is by nature emasculating to the Greek and Roman mind. And so, if we want to have these virile heroes who have power, we have to show that they're always getting the upper hand over women.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And women come to symbolize not just the way that Greek men can have power, but the way Greeks in general can have power. Because Amazons, again, they're other, they're eastern.

• 9:10Liv Albert?

  Barbarians.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  They're barbarian. And so, you know, if you, again, just taking the Amazons, if you think about the myths that are pictured, not just told, but also pictured in the city, the, the Wadah with the Amazons, the Amazon Amaki, was pictured on the Parthenon, on the Metopes, and it's on lots of temples, but this is a place where the Greeks can articulate their triumph over the forces of Persians, right? And over the forces of otherness and chaos and monarchy.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  So the, the Amazons become really interesting figures with whom the Greeks can think about male, elite, democratic identity. So, you know, unfortunately, we don't really get a lot of historical accuracy in these stories about the Amazons, although they were certainly warrior women on the ancient, you know, eastern steppes. But, but we get a lot of, you know, illustrations of how the Greeks used women to think with and female power to think about male power.

• 10:15Liv Albert?

  What a fascinatingly dark concept to like,

• 10:18Speaker 03

  I know.

• 10:19Liv Albert?

  Try to just think about the, the idea that the reason they had to take it is just that they couldn't conceptualize both having power. And that, like, that is so distinctly patriarchal. Like, it reminds me, you know, when, when I talk about, like, I've recently been on a kick of looking back at, like, evidence of past, of matriarchy in, you know, the prehistoric record. But when I say matriarchy, so often people hear it as an opposition to patriarchy. And I, that's so interesting. Like, this idea that it has to, I mean, it's the same thing. It's that it has to be in opposition. Whereas what I mean is more like an egalitarian, just like, oh, what, big surprise, it turns out like both people can be in the same place

• 11:02Liv Albert?

  at the same time and nobody's going to die. Like, what is it about that patriarchal mind? I'm trying not to say the men, the male mind, because I'm like, I'm trying to be better. But like, what is it about that patriarchal mindset? That like means that we they they cannot conceptualize of both. It's horrifying and fascinating and horrifying.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Well, patriarchy is by nature a hierarchy. I mean, that's just how it that's how it functions. Um, there's the the male head of household, the male head of state, the male king. Um, and women's power has always been really crucial to upholding patriarchy. Um, this is something that Kate Mann, who's a philosopher at Cornell, explores brilliantly in her book Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny.

• 11:47Liv Albert?

  I'm gonna buy that book now, thank you.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Oh, buy it.

• 11:50Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God, the title alone.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  It was it's one of the most illuminating books I've read on this subject. But, um, you know, she she looks at the way women's power, their influence, their abilities are really valued by men as subordinate position, insubordinate positions, right? Um, and when women become potential usurpers for that male role, then the the this is where the title comes from, it's like Down Girl.

• 12:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  So I think that, you know, patriarchy harnesses women's pa- women's power and their abilities, but it doesn't support them at the top of the hierarchy. So, um, you know, it's, I think it it it testifies why you can say, well, you know, there are so many powerful women, even in these so-called patriarchies. I'm like, yeah, of course there were, because their power was being harnessed in support of that, right? You look at, this is why a lot of the Roman empresses don't get in the book, you know, someone like Livia, the wife of Augustus, who is was an incredibly influential woman, but insofar as the state went, she wasn't allowed to wield official power. But her her influence used was used and exploited to to hold up Augustus's power. So.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  What I like about all these women, most of them, there are a couple of other examples, is that they're threats to male power primarily. And also, what's interesting to me, and I could, I'm sorry, I'm talking so much.

• 13:16Liv Albert?

  No, no, I'm, I'm, please.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  None of the women in this book fundamentally overturn the hierarchy.

• 13:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Right?

• 13:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Because there aren't really other, you know, ways to conceive of power in the ancient world, except for it being hierarchical, and there's only so much to go around. So like the Amazons, they don't, you know, they don't kind of set up a equitable utopia between men and women. They get, usually they get rid of the men entirely.

• 13:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  They do the things that men do, and then they put the men, if they let the men stick around at all, they make them do the weaving and the house chores, right?

• 13:54Liv Albert?

  The assumption that that is, that is what would automatically happen, like, that male fear of like, oh my God, like, I literally cannot withhold or like, let go of any of this power because obviously they're gonna take over. And it's like, wow, that, like, what, you're showing your cards, right? Like that, like, that's what you wanna do. The assumption that that's what everyone would wanna do is wild.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I love looking at some of these myths in relation to like, political cartoons during the women's suffrage movement.

• 14:25Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Because you see this a lot where, you know, the, the women are kind of smoking cigarettes and discussing politics in the foreground, and in the background, you have the man back there holding the baby and washing the clothes, right? It's just, you know, this, this sort of flip. You see this with another mythical woman in the book, who's another favorite, her name is Omphalos, and she was a Rydian queen, and I'm sure you've talked about her.

• 14:48Liv Albert?

  As soon as, well, as soon as you said, the, the switch around, I'm like, well, okay, that's coming, great.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, she famously was the lover of Hercules, and he came under her power, both sexually and politically, right? And that reversal was demonstrated in the art between them, because she marches around wearing his lion skin and wielding his club, and he gets to, you know, we- Even wear her, her, um, you know, her clothes. There's a very funny, um, that I included. It's a description by Olive where he basically tries to put on her bra and it kind of breaks open and, um, but yes, I mean, the, the, this kind of visual representation of power is a zero sum game. You see it again and again and again and again.

• 15:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, it reminds me like, and I, before I say this, I'm going to specify that I'm talking hypothetical and I recognize the connection to the modern political climate in the country I do not live in. But, but you do. Um, but before I say this, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about the American election. I'm not, people have been making some assumptions lately and I have to remind them that I'm Canadian and sometimes I don't remember that it's happening. Um, and sorry, I say that lightly. I recognize how, how important it is, but sometimes I have to like, whoo. In any case, before I say this, that's that. But it reminds me of this notion that people or women often say, and I say this, I, white women, I want to make that clear. White North American women often say this idea of like,

• 16:19Liv Albert?

  oh, well, things would be so much better if a woman was in power and like, as if there would be this like switch that gets like flicked the minute a woman gets in power and like, things are going to turn around and like, news flash, um, most women of today, certainly those who have risen to a certain level of power are unfortunately completely conditioned by the patriarchy to continue on the exact same patriarchal thing. Like it's not likely to change. I think that if we went back in time 3,000 years and we never got to this patriarchal nature where this is like that, the power dynamic that you're talking about where like the zero sum game. I think if we never got to that, maybe that things would be different, but there's never going to be this moment. We've, we've gone too far past the line that there's this moment like,

• 17:00Liv Albert?

  doesn't mean there's not slow change. I don't want to suggest that change isn't possible. Obviously we should always be hoping for change and better, and it is baby steps, but like, There's often this mentality that it's like it will be immediate. And then when it's not, it's like somehow it's like that individual woman's fault. And it's like, well, that's not true either. It's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's so interesting to think in, in how it still plays out today. And I want to stick to the ancient world, but yeah, you know.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  If you, if you think, if you think in an intersectional framework, then if you want to, you know, really embed feminism in an intersectional, intersectional framework that, you know, e- you know, equality and equity will not be achieved simply by having a new, you know, a new face at the top of the hierarchy, right? You, I mean, the, the structure needs to be transformed.

• 17:50Liv Albert?

  Exactly.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  And also I think there's this idea that, you know, any kind of rule by a woman will be feminist rule.

• 17:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. That's wild. Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  It's wild because it, it kind of wants to reduce women to the stereotype. To, to a stereotype, like a lot of these stories do, right? But, but to me, one of the most like feminist ideas we can arrive at is the fact that women are morally complex human beings.

• 18:22Liv Albert?

  That's why I, that it's funny you say it that way. Cause like I've been dealing with, while we're recording this, it's, we're in the midst of my Euripides series. And that's why I say I love him is because I think he just thought women were complex moral or humans with like just complete, complex morality, exactly the same as men. And like the bar is in the ground, but that's why I would say that in whatever form, he could have been an ancient feminist, you know? And it's like, yeah, because you write shitty women alongside good women. Because turns out women are just as complex as men.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Such a revolutionary thought. We're fully, fully human.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  But, but I think you do see this in, um, you know, in the stories about these rulers, that women are, are considered to be, I mean, very complex in these stories. Unfortunately, so much of their complexity also gets kind of collapsed into stereotypes as well. You know, someone like. You know, Boudicca, she is extremely complex because on the one hand, she's almost out Romaning the Romans, right? She becomes um, um, like a spokesperson for freedom.

• 19:33Liv Albert?

  Can we pause for one sec?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 19:35Liv Albert?

  I want to hear more about Boudicca and I'll actually ask you to say even more, but first.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  I will back, let's back up.

• 19:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but before we got there, because I have one, there's one thing that I found in some, I, I wrote a, a piece for an upcoming book on Medusa. And so I did all the digging into ancient sources that reference her and the Gorgons. And one that will now live inside my brain, literally forever, is Diodorus Siculus, who writes about the Gorgons and the Amazons as if they're kind of the same. Do you know of that offhand? Yeah, like, he, he talks about how like, they were both races of warrior women and that Heracles killed them because in his like mandate to the power of man was not to allow women to rule. It's just like, he, it, it puts into words exactly what you're saying about this zero sum game.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  That's great, but it also, it doesn't surprise me in the least that you would align the Amazons with, with a Gorgon because Amazons are, and I don't, I'm not endorsing this idea, but in the, by the ancient view, they're monsters. Because a monster is a hybrid creature.

• 20:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  And Amazons become hybrids of men and women.

• 20:50Liv Albert?

  Wow, yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. Well, and yeah, and to me, it's also a reminder of like what the Gorgons served as more of in the ancient world than how we see them now, which is like of, of kind of a defensive, like they were.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 21:04Liv Albert?

  That, yeah, they, they, they defended themselves against men, which feels like kind of what the Amazons are doing too. So like linking that as a way to like, no, we had to put them down. Like, oh, it just, that lives in my head. And then so, yeah, hearing you describe this, I'm like, oh, that's literally what he wrote. Like, they put it into a myth. They were like, Heracles like could not allow women to rule under, in a world that he existed in, like.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 21:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So to return to Boudicca, though, so my listeners, I'm going to admit something, it's pretty bad. My listeners have no idea, well, through me, who Boudicca is, because I've just never gotten to talk about her at all. So yeah, an intro maybe.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. So the book is divided into three parts. Let me start there. The first part is about like the woman-run state. So you have the Amazons. And then I translated the entirety of Aristophanes' Assembly of Women because it's one of my favorite plays. It's so underappreciated. And then the second part is about just mythical queens. So Dido and Hypsipoly and people like that. And then the last part is historical queens.

• 22:11Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  I wanted to include all of these because ancient writers weave these different kinds of queens together. They don't sometimes, and you'll see like a historical queen will sometimes model herself on a mythical queen. For instance, for example, but Boudicca, I mean, if you have any listeners in Britain, as I'm sure you do, she will be well-known to them. They will know. She's a bit of a British hero at this point, but she was the queen of a Celtic group called the Iceni. And I'm probably not saying that, probably some people will say Iceni, people say it in different ways. And her husband, Prasutagus, was a Roman client king and he died. And he wanted to leave his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman emperor.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  But after he died, the Roman soldiers basically came and said, we're taking over here. And flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. And yeah, in response to this, she led one of the most successful and violent uprisings against Rome. This was when Nero was the emperor, but it's recorded later first by, first by Tacitus and then by Cassius Dio. And she's given these sort of amazing speeches and then ultimately she is defeated. And she dies either of poisoning herself or of sickness. So there's not.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  We don't know exactly how she died, but yeah, but the speeches are super interesting that she tells. As I said, she in Tacitus, a lot of the like northern, and I'm going to use the word barbarian just because this is how the Romans conceived of, you know, of non Romans, but northern barbarians were often given like ultra masculine attributes. And and also, not just that, but ultra Roman attributes. So the Romans, you know, they they valued freedom, but the way Tacitus will depict the Romans themselves is they're no longer free because they live under an emperor.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  And certainly under an emperor like Nero, there's no way the state can be free. So instead, this becomes an attribute for which northern barbarians especially will fight Germans and in Britain. And so Boudicca in her speech, she is calling, I mean, both speeches, both in Tacitus and Cassius Dio, it also gets said Dio Cassius. So if I go back and forth, I will apologize. But they both make her appeal to to freedom, right? So I mean, this is something that a Roman reader would probably certainly elite reader, such as Tacitus's readers were, would have been really sympathetic. But then, at the same time, in these stories, Boudicca does things that fulfilled all of

• 25:06Speaker 03

  the most negative stereotypes of barbarians. So can I tell you a really, really horrendous story?

• 25:13Liv Albert?

  Please, but I'm glad that you gave the warning for people.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  I'm gonna give you a warning. If you need to jump ahead, then this does involve some brutal violence. Cassius Dio tells us that after they they they took to three towns in Britain, including London, and burned them to the ground. But then Cassius Dio tells us that in one of these towns, she took the most elite women, Roman women, and she and her her troops would cut off their breasts and then sewed their own breasts into their mouths and then impaled them. So it's an absolutely brutal story in which Boodica answers her the

• 25:57Speaker 03

  the violence that she that her daughters have and she herself has have suffered with you know similarly brutal

• 26:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  violence. Yeah. So she's a real conundrum Boodica in trying to you know, one is very sympathetic. But then one is also taken back by by her. Yeah. And I think that's true of a lot of these women.

• 26:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and in in that case too, like, do we know anything about the actual like the historicity of that? Like, is it just that the guys are writing these things? We're like 50 50, right?

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Exactly. We have no idea if this is true.

• 26:31Liv Albert?

  Interesting.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  This is Cassius Dio, who is, you know, he's living quite a long time after this happened.

• 26:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  You know, a century after this happened. So may again, this is fulfilling stereotypes. So perhaps we're just making up things that fulfill those stereotypes.

• 26:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Because it's also what's giving Amaz on a little, right? Like, there was that.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:52Liv Albert?

  I I mean, it's not that prominent, I think, in the ancient world that they didn't have one breast or that they cut one off, right? But that did exist as like a conceptual idea. So, yeah, it's it's similar.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, the the thing about these stories is that they are inventions invented. They may have some historicity, but we we, you know, Tacitus made up this speech. Dio Cassius made up this speech. And so we don't know what the historical facts are. They tell us much more about how men were thinking about women than how women in power than how women in power were actually

• 27:31Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  behaving.

• 27:32Liv Albert?

  All of it. Like, that's that's all we have. That's what's so interesting and infuriating, but mostly interesting.

• 27:44Liv Albert?

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• 28:27Liv Albert?

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• 29:12Liv Albert?

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• 30:25Liv Albert?

  It reminds me of, you know, you've mentioned Aristophanes and I already, so I've never read The Assemblywomen and now you made me want to, but I also think maybe I just have you come on and talk about it if you're interested in the future. Because I've, I have qualms with Aristophanes because I think he was, or I think he was unkind to Euripides' legacy to us. I feel like probably, I come in, I really take, change my mind often about how Aristophanes might have felt, but he definitely gave us this world where people are like Euripides was a misogynist because women hated him. And it's like, it reminds me of that, just like, we only know about how women felt about Euripides through the writings of Aristophanes.

• 31:10Liv Albert?

  So like, are we believing this comedic playwright who wrote also like dick jokes into every second word, like, or are we, you know, believing the work of Euripides? It's so interesting to kind of, to pull apart. I mean, that's the, the truth with all ancient sources and it's why I love the ancient world, but it's, yeah, it's just such a weird thing to be, to be looking at, at these things that are the only thing we have that maybe tells part of the story and also are, have the potential to just be like so skewed and biased for all these other different reasons.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And what surprises me is how often like today, when we're talking about these women, we will choose a story that we think is kind of fun, right? And then we repeat it as though it's something that really is true. So I mean, we get very invested in the truthfulness of some of these stories. Like, we get very invested, say, in the, you know, the picture of the alluring Cleopatra, right? That we have, but so many of these stories were told actually to damn her by the man who conquered her, right? Even some of the things that we think are super cool. Were actually meant to, um, to just denigrate the idea of women in power.

• 32:23Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure you have lots of examples of that, but do any stand out? Like, do you want to talk about Cleopatra? I merely want to hear about anyone and everything.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  I mean, so there's this story that we're told about Cleopatra. I have so many authors in this book. I want to make sure I get this right. So this is a story by Pliny the Elder. And he tells us how she and Antony are having this dinner party and they're trying to outdo one another. And so she says, I can give you the most expensive meal you can imagine. And he's like, sure you can. So she, she has these two amazing pearls. And, um, so she, um, and she has a cup of vinegar brought in. This seems like some kind of magical vinegar that can dissolve a pearl. She drops the pearl into it, and they're earrings, I should say. And, um, when the pearl dissolves, she drinks it, apparently.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  And she's just on the verge of putting the other pearl in to dissolve when one of her, you know, one of her people, her, uh, the people who, who are perhaps, I can't remember who it is, but one of, one of her retinue, stop her. And, uh, and so, you know, don't do that. You've proven your point already. Um, but you know, this is not, this was a, this was a, uh, story meant to make us gape in awe of her, right?

• 33:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Like, it seems so amazing that someone would do this. And then apparently the other earring was taken and saw it in half and used to decorate a statue in Rome. But, um, there's so many, so often so many of these stories about women make them into what the Greeks would call a phalma, like a marvel, right? They become things we can marvel at. Um, they become beyond anything that we can imagine.

• 34:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  By making women something to marvel at, we're actually, again, that's another way of othering them.

• 34:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's like a freak show.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  A freak show. Exactly. Exactly.

• 34:16Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  You see it again and again. One of my favorite stories of that in this book is, um, Semiramis, who is the legendary founder of Babylon. And this is one of the figures, the, the Romans were obsessed with her. Um, but I couldn't, again, find a good translation of, um, what was written about her. So her story is told, and again, I'm gonna, um, make sure I have this right. Her story is told by, um, are you Semiramis? By Dido Rassiculus. And he tells us that she wanted to go to war against the king of India, but she didn't have any elephants. So she had all these cows just slaughtered and then heaped their carcasses on top of camel,

• 34:59Speaker 03

  on top of camels to make them look like elephants.

• 35:03Liv Albert?

  So that is impractical and horrifying.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Horrifying. And so she has like these fake elephants. And this is just, again, it's like, you want to have this reaction that you're having like, it's marvelous, right?

• 35:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's freaky. And so therefore it becomes a way of like making this eastern queen. She's incredibly clever.

• 35:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  She's beyond human, right? And.

• 35:29Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting. That's weird.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  It's, it's weird. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And Cleopatra operates within that same kind of,

• 35:42Speaker 03

  you know, that same kind of complex of ideas, you know, where we're told at one point, and again, so many authors. I think this is the bit by Cassius Dio, and who I know I've already called Dio Cassius a million times.

• 35:55Liv Albert?

  I feel like you've just said Cassius Dio, which is the only one I hear.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  No, but nobody knows. Nobody knows. So I go back and forth. And in fact, I may just, if I can find it, I may read you this little bit.

• 36:05Liv Albert?

  Please. Yeah. And take, I mean, feel free to find it.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can edit, edit this out. Okay, it's actually, this is by Plutarch in his Life of Antony. And Plutarch tells us,

• 36:18Speaker 03

  "Her beauty taken by itself was not altogether incomparable, nor such as to astound those who saw her. But just her presence held you in an irresistible grip. Her demeanor, together with the eloquence of her conversation and her character, which somehow pervaded her every interaction, all produced a certain stinging excitement."

• 36:38Speaker 03

  There was also a sweetness in the sound of her speaking. In her tongue, like a mini-stringed instrument, she effortlessly turned to whatever language she wished. So she rarely met with foreigners needing any translation at all, but for the most part, made their replies solely by herself, whether they were Ethiopian, Chogodite, Hebrew, Arab, Syrian, Med, or Parthian. She is said to have learned the languages of many other peoples, though the previous kings had refused to take up even the native Egyptian language. And this may be true, that Cleopatra spoke all of these languages. So there may be a kernel of truth here.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  However,

• 37:19Speaker 03

  what we're also doing is we're saying something about the power of the female voice and its seductive ability, right? The female voice here for Cleopatra, the way she speaks, it reels you in. I always compare this to the sirens, right? Where the voice will reel you in, but then, you know, at the end of this, you're going to encounter a woman who is extremely dangerous.

• 37:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  And, you know, so this is part of Roman propaganda. But we also love this about Cleopatra, right?

• 37:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  And so I think this is one place where we have to resist this, "Oh, my gosh, she was so amazing. She spoke all these languages." And think, "Well, why were they telling this story about her in the first place?"

• 38:01Liv Albert?

  Well, and the way they compare her to the earlier kings, they're also like, they're really, I mean, it sounds good to us now. But yeah, back then, they're like, "Oh, well, she's not that Roman. She's not that Greek. She's going with everyone," you know, like,

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 38:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah. She's like teaming up with the barbarians, almost, is what they're saying.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. But then we, yeah, but then this just gets repeated with our approval.

• 38:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, because it sounds great today. Well, yeah, I mean, oh, you mentioning the Diodorus again. I'm trying to remember what, because the way you described it earlier, sorry, my brain's just having a little hiccup. It just like the, the kind of the wildness of the way like he describes the people, which I recognize is not what you just read, but the, you said earlier. But because the way he described the Gorgons and the Amazons in that piece that I had read, like, it was something like that, where it's just like, So over the top, like before Heracles put them down, it was like they had done all these things that sound great, but really, if you break them down, are all these kind of like hits against them in that the contemporary kind of mindset. And I'm just kind of now

• 39:12Liv Albert?

  like, I read that piece so many times now that it's just like coming together in my head as you speak about what they're really doing. But in describing these women, God, it's just, okay, there's so many more. I want to, you've mentioned so many names already, and I really want to hear your thoughts on, no, no, no, no apologies. You've just given me more ideas. Well, no, I mean, so am I, which is why it works great. But that Dido and Hypsipoly you mentioned too. So because you're looking at the mythological, I really want to, I don't want to try to, you know, have us jam everyone into this, but I'm also just want to ask all of about all of the women. The problem is you've just come to me with all of my favorite things in the world, and I'm trying to fit it into one

• 39:52Liv Albert?

  episode. So, but yeah, like, I love Dido, obviously, like, I, you know, I've only talked about her in small contexts because of, I don't talk about Rome all that much, but Hypsipoly too. I was talking to Melissa Funky recently about Hypsipoly because she studies fragments, and talked about that. And so I've got sort of the Euripides fragments in my head by this time, but, but obviously Hypsipoly appears in so many ways. So like, I just, now I'm rambling, and I would just love if you could tell me about Hypsipoly.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  I'll tell you about Hypsipoly. So she is, she's the queen of Limnos, the island in the Aegean, and I include two versions of her story. And I should say that the book is compiled, it compiles translations by various people. And so only some of them are new, but some of them were previously published translations that I just really like. So I included the story about Hypsipoly from Aaron Puchigian's translation of Apollonius of Rhodes. So it's a great translation.

• 40:56Liv Albert?

  Good to know, yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, but by, if you, I really love his translation of Apollonius. But at any rate, and then I actually translated the story, the version of her story from Statius in the Thebaid. So these stories are so

• 41:14Speaker 03

  They have different features and comments, like the basic structure of her story is that she's a Limnean queen. Her father is actually the king, which brings me to an interesting point I'd like to dig into further is that these women tend to come into power in the, like when a male has died.

• 41:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's like an accident.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  It's an accident, almost always.

• 41:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  And

• 41:36Liv Albert?

  Even in the Dinochiculus, actually, now that you say that, when he's describing the Gorgons, or whatever sources I was looking for, for the Gorgons, they also are always like, oh, well, Gorgons came to power because their father died.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Exactly. That's right. Exactly. It's almost always the case, or the husband dies or something. But her dad is still around at the beginning of this story. But they have dishonored the goddess Aphrodite slash Venus in favor of her husband Hephaestus slash Vulcan. So Venus, I'm gonna say Venus because I'm a Romanist.

• 42:05Liv Albert?

  Go ahead. Yeah. You've been saying Hercules. We're, we'll keep going.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  It might grate to some, but she gets very upset at the Limneans because they refuse her worship. And so she basically creates repulsion between the men and the women.

• 42:23Liv Albert?

  Makes them smelly, as we like to.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Exactly. So in a lot of versions, yeah, she makes the Limnean women smelly and the men go off. And they start fighting wars and threes. And in the absence of the men, the women start plotting. And

• 42:38Liv Albert?

  Of course, that's what women do when men aren't around.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  And again, this is what all these stories would have us believing.

• 42:44Liv Albert?

  Like, I'm so ready. Yes.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  I, I want to say this, and then I'm going to come back to Hippolyte. These women almost get rejected from leadership because they have the very qualities that would make them good leaders.

• 43:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  They're intelligent. It's threatening. They're intelligent. They speak well. They're often seen as like, you know, making deals and, and, you know, wheeling and dealing. And we might say that they become conspiratorial, which is certainly what happens in the Limnean episode. So anyway, they conspire, they plot, they plan, they're clever. And when the men come back, they kill them all. And except for Hypsipoly. So she puts her father to sea on a boat to save his life. And then she only pretends to have killed him. But because she's his daughter, she becomes the queen. And so Hypsipoly is interesting because she usually becomes a foil in a lot of ways.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  So in the the biads, she's a foil, not just to the other women who were overtaken by fury, but she's a foil for the larger epic too, which is the seven. It's the story of the seven against thieves. And it's just an epic in which all the men are taken over by madness, lust for war, impiety, I mean, just you name it. And she's like this one lone figure of piety. I'm not going to kill my father. She's like a little Aeneas within this story that is all about just utter madness and bloodshed. And then in the Apollonia story, she's a foil to a much. She's a less threatening version of a much more threatening character who will come later,

• 44:29Speaker 03

  who is Medea.

• 44:30Liv Albert?

  She's like a that like, what's the, I mean, I don't even know the word I want. But, you know, yeah, she's, she's the way you described it like that. Yeah, she's like an introductory for Jason, right? Like.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  Exactly. But, you know, even this most positive exemplar for female leadership that we can find in the ancient world still comes to power in a bloody coup, right? So that's.

• 44:54Liv Albert?

  Well, and the smelliness is so like, like the, the addition of derogatory and of derogatory like nature about them. And then to also have it done by Aphrodite, like it, all of these things are these little dings against her, right? It's like, oh, women are, you know, predisposed to sort of that type of thing that would have Aphrodite curse you, you know, or, and, and I mean that, oh, can I, I, I forgot that it was so connected with her relationship with Hephaestus too, which is like.

• 45:27Liv Albert?

  Ah, I mean, also, again, feel free to use the Roman names. I realize I will automatically use Greek and not even notice we're doing both. So the listeners will get it if we just go back and forth between us. It's kind of fun. But it's so interesting to me that it's connected with that couple because we have so many, like Aphrodite herself, to me, is one of, is like these women in a lot of ways. Like, she could be all-powerful, and there are so many instances in the mythology of like, all of these different times in which she is brought to heel and like, lessened. And her relationship with Hephaestus is like, the major one, which is that she doesn't want to marry him. You know, she wants to marry war, and like, how powerful would that make her? They

• 46:09Liv Albert?

  recognize that she's already so powerful. And so to then like, have her relationship with Hephaestus also then be this catalyst for the Lepidian women becoming smelly, and like, becoming this obviously derogatory, like, stereotype kind of thing. Like, oh, it's so, there's so many layers in that.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Well, and it makes me think about the relationship between sex and power, right? I mean, Aphro- yeah, so Aphrod- Aphrodite slash Venus is, she derives so much of her power through her sexuality. And, and you see this again and again in these stories, that sex becomes an arena for contesting power, right? So women can wield power through sex, but sex as a sphere is usually controlled by men, right? And so we see this in, I think, the Lepidian episode really well. The women have, you know, this is the sphere over which they can, you know, try to have some control, having sex with, you know, this is their, you know, through sex

• 47:13Speaker 03

  with their husbands, the production of children, marriage, right? Men refusing them that, their husbands refusing them that, and so women will then take over and, and kill their husbands. I mean, sex becomes a battleground, right? Which is something that, I mean, certainly in ancient poetry, this was a common trope, that, that sex is, is like a battlefield. And

• 47:33Liv Albert?

  And in the mythology though, too, like they have this real obsession with women controlling reproduction, like you were saying. So like, even in, yeah, like, you know, all of the, the, the most ancient of mythology, all of that is really tied up in that idea, right? Like, that's why Zeus impregnates so many women. It's like, this idea that women control that, and like, how is that, you know, how can, how can men use that against them, essentially?

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Which is why so many of these stories involve women getting the sexual upper hand. You cannot have power unless you control sexuality, right? Unless you control reproduction. Who gets to sleep with whom? And so, in, like, the assembly women, and again, I could talk about that play for a whole episode, so I don't want to get into it too much, but the women dress up in their husbands' clothes, they go into the assembly, they vote to give themselves power. And so the whole play sets that up. But there's this very disturbing final episode where these two, three older women who are treated in remarkably sexist ways, with all kinds of stereotypes about old women, but they are fighting over who gets to have sex with this young man.

• 48:41Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  And the whole thing is just this argument that happens. And he, he's lost the ability to have any control over who he gets to have sex with.

• 48:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  He has no, you know, no say in the matter. But, you know, for, to enact a fully woman-controlled society, you have to show how they exert power over the sexual realm. I mean, the realms that you have to take control of are sex, speech, war, and money.

• 49:10Liv Albert?

  Wow. Oh, I thi- this episode is tied in really well with another that also hasn't come out, but which I recorded recently with Emily Hauser, uh, cause she is a newish book, When Women Became Poets. And it's just from mind, have you read it or or?

• 49:26Speaker 03

  I'm familiar with it. I have, I know of it certainly.

• 49:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So like i- it's connecting so much with this, like, cause she broke down all the ways in which like they refuse to call women poets, like even Sappho, like all these different ways they wouldn't do it. And it's just, oh, it, the connection is so solidly there, right? Like you're talking literal power there, talking like Emily was talking like artistic kind of power. And it's like all this same thing, this like struggle for control where it, the, the two sides are just so disconnected, like this, yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  And, and the way the stories are told too, um, for a, again, because it is, it's a struggle, right? Power is a constant struggle in these stories. So for a woman to have any kind of autonomy over her body, it requires deposing the man, right? Like there's, doesn't seem to be a world in which a woman can come to equal terms, right? Um, autonomy equals mastery in this, in this way of thinking.

• 50:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and it's like, oh my God, how, how very relatable is that still today? This, yeah. Cause I mean, that's what the core of everything is, like i- in our world now is like that. It's still that, that deep desire to just control the things that women control over their bodies, over like, oh, wow. It's dark and also fortunately interesting. Um, cause you're the Romanist, I would love to hear all about Dido and then you don't have to use any of the Greek names.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  So I will say, um, I love teaching Dido, but she, it's, it's hard to teach again because I don't want them to buy like an entire Aeneid. I don't want to have to have my student buy these. So I included the bits about Dido from Fagel's translation, um, in this and Dido, in case your readers are not aware, she is, um, the queen in Carthage in, uh, Virgil's Aeneid, uh, when Aeneas and his men flee from Troy after it falls in the Trojan War, uh, he and his men kind of wander around the Mediterranean. Um, they end up in Carthage where they spend about a year. And Dido is the queen there. She gives them hospitality. She and Aeneas enter a relationship which she believes it's marriage.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  And Virgil doesn't tell us exactly what Aeneas believes about the relationship. He has to go because it's his duty to found Rome. And she builds a pyre and she dies by suicide by falling upon his sword on top of the pyre. But before she does that, she curses the future Romans and the Carthaginians always to be at odds with each other. So she single-handedly brings about the Punic Wars that will happen later in the story, according to Virgil. But she's interesting to read alongside Cleopatra. I like having them in the same volume.

• 52:25Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Because there's this idea that Aeneas, who is something of a prototype for Augustus later, as the, you know, he's the first founder of what will become Rome. And Augustus is the second founder. Aeneas is very much a figure of piety to the gods, duty to the state. These are, you know, values that Augustus would try to associate with himself later.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  But there's this moment when he becomes almost an Antony. And Aeneas is there in North Africa with his queen, right? And there's this moment when Mercury comes down after Jupiter basically says, you know, "Go down there and tell him to get the hell out." And Mercury refers to him as "uxorius" in Latin, which would become the English "uxorius", which is a man who's controlled by his wife, right? So this idea that Aeneas is momentarily emasculated by having spent this time in Carthage with Dido. And he leaves, even though it's pretty darn clear he'd like to...

• 53:33Speaker 03

  Stick around perhaps a bit longer. He seems pretty happy as he's helping Dino build her city. But this becomes kind of, she becomes a negative foil to Aeneas. In so many ways, she's like Aeneas. She was a refugee from Tyre.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  And Sidonia.

• 53:52Liv Albert?

  The reason she took power, there's also a death, right?

• 53:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. So her husband, Sicaeus, was murdered.

• 53:59Liv Albert?

  Oh, right. Okay. But it's still that she does take power because her husband was murdered.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 54:03Liv Albert?

  Whether it was her husband. Yeah. Okay.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's, that's exactly right. Yeah. This.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  I mean, it's strange. Monarchy produces more female empowered women because of this, you know, this, this feature of it that if the, if the king dies, then, and he has no, you know, adult sons, then it can go to the, the woman. And so that's how I saw all these women come into power, both in the myths and the history. You know, Boudicca, she comes into power when her husband dies, for example. So, um, but anyway, so she, um, she is the, the murderer of her brother. He is, he's, you know, she needs to flee him. And so she comes as a refugee to North Africa, just as Aeneas does. And she starts, she founds a city, just as Aeneas will do.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  And it's beautiful and successful. And the story illustrates, though, how she is a woman. Again, it's a negative stereotype. She's so susceptible to to love and, and to passion. And that ultimately will become the downfall of her city. So as much as we admire her, she, she too becomes an argument against female power because she doesn't have control of her feelings of passion. She can't turn away from them.

• 55:19Liv Albert?

  The way you phrased it with the, I mean, one Cleopatra, which I hadn't really thought of, but also like the, the, her being this cause of the Punic Wars, like. I mean, beyond the story of her, do you have like thoughts on on how intentional the Cleopatra might have been? Either, you know, I know there there's so many theories about Virgil writing the Aeneid and like whether he was like loving on Augustus, or whether he was like subtly putting down Augustus. And it's interesting to me to have that Cleopatra connection, because it it feels like it could be one of those like little underhanded like, I don't totally love how you came to power kind of digs, you know?

• 55:58Speaker 03

  I mean, Virgil, I have never thought I've never bought that he is pro Augustus. I've also never bought that he's anti Augustus.

• 56:05Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  You know, to me, I want to do with Virgil, what I do with women is allow him to be a morally complex human being.

• 56:12Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  And and so that means that he's he's capable capable of wrestling with complex stories and all of their complexity.

• 56:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  And and so he he presents a Cleopatra, or sorry, a Dido, who's really,

• 56:34Speaker 03

  I think she's a likable character in the story.

• 56:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  She's heroic, right? She she's she's she too is complex, right? And so I love I love this about Virgil. I mean, one of my favorite characters, and I'm going to get off women for just one second to say this about Virgil, is in the second half of the Aeneid, his Aeneid, his name is Mazzentius. He is a figure of horrendous impiety. He is killed. You would almost think that most writers would make him into a caricature of evil.

• 57:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  But Virgil Virgil refuses. He's this extremely sympathetic character because he loves his son so much. And then his son is killed, and it's so very sad. And we see Mazzentius grieving. And I just love that about Virgil. He never lets us.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  Reduce the characters to stereotypes or to simple, one-sided characters. And so he does this with Aeneas, too. Like, he's not gonna let him just be an Augustus figure. He's also gonna make him be a bit of an Antony. Maybe these two sides can coexist in one person. And that's what makes Aeneas, I think, fully human as a character.

• 57:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, I think when you, when you phrase it like that, I feel like he really also reached his goal a little of, of being very Homeric in that way. Because like, the Homeric is, I mean, he, no one's surprised to, to hear that the Aeneid is directly inspired by the Homeric epics. But also, the Homeric epics are so explicitly like, not on either side. There, you know, it, it, there's no like, good guys and bad guys. So that, that makes sense and it, it kind of works. And, and she is, she said, she fits the Cersei role very well. And, yeah, that's.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

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• 1:00:19Liv Albert?

  I love the story of Dido and also hate the story of Dido. And, you know, it's, but it's interesting to think of it that way. And the Cleopatra connection, I'm particularly interested in. And so close, too, like.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah. And I think it had to have been so on purpose. But then, of course, Cleopatra does appear in the Aeneid in book, in book eight.

• 1:00:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  And I did translate that bit myself and included it. And in fact, I can just read that, too. Is that okay?

• 1:00:47Liv Albert?

  That's the underworld, right? Please.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  This is not the underworld. This is actually on the shield of Aeneas where Cleopatra.

• 1:00:52Liv Albert?

  Oh, of course, okay.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, where Cleopatra herself appears. So I'll just read this little bit because here there's not a lot of moral complexity for Cleopatra herself. Okay, here, here is Cleopatra on the shield of Aeneas. So I'll just read it and then we can compare it to, to Dido. Since he, I think, by putting her there perfectly purposely does juxtapose them. So this is the, the Battle of Actium, which is right there on the center of the shield. And Aeneas has no idea what he's looking at. This is just armor.

• 1:01:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah, this is like a future shield.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  A future, it's like. I think that the phrase is often used to describe it is history and the future tense, right? This is what will happen. And Virgil tells us, like, he doesn't know what any of this means. It's just on this shield that his mom brings to him.

• 1:01:39Liv Albert?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  Okay, so we are told, "The queen amid this signals with her cistrom, not seeing yet the twin snakes at her back. All sorts of monstrous gods and barking Anubis find armed with Neptune, Venus, and Minerva. And in the conflict's center rages Mars engraved in iron. From the sky sad furies advance and discord, joyous, clothed in rags, trailed by Bologna with her bloody whip. Acting Apollo bends his bow, observing on high. In terror, each Egyptian flees, each Indian, Arabian, and Ceban. The queen herself appears to call the winds as she unfurls her sails, the ropes now slack. Amid the gore, the flame lord

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  made her peal at looming death as wind and waves conveyed her. Across, great-bodied Nile in mourning spreads his arms, his whole robe welcoming the conquered into his sea-blue bays and hidden streams."

• 1:02:37Liv Albert?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Well, she's, she's there, but he, on one side are the gods of Rome and Augustus, on the other side, the gods of Egypt and Cleopatra. So there's this real, like, us and them, Rome, Egyptian civilization and naught, right?

• 1:02:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  So so much of the complexity he gives Dido, he doesn't give to Cleopatra later. But I do think this image of the Nile welcoming the conquered into his embrace is kind of beautiful and perhaps a bit sympathetic, yeah.

• 1:03:10Liv Albert?

  Well, and I, yeah, I mean, to me, it just sounds like sort of equally powerful, but I recognize what he's doing. It's not necessarily meant that way in, in that work. But she just sounds, I mean, she sounds badass. But again, like we're, like you were saying, a lot of things that we now almost are forced to think sound badass is just because they are in opposition to the patriarchy. But yeah, no, that's, the twin snakes. Isn't like, was that a reference to how she died?

• 1:03:38Speaker 03

  It's a reference to how she, well, okay.

• 1:03:40Liv Albert?

  Or how she quote unquote died.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's this, this story about Cleopatra drives me crazy.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Because I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a second. I don't believe that Cleopatra, in this moment where, you know, she's a, she's really literally afraid she's going to be taking captive, that she is going to be marched in Roman triumph. Antony has already fallen on his sword. He is dead. Her options are limited and she makes a desperate choice to keep her own sense of control over her own life and die by suicide. Right? It's a very, I mean, it's a very powerful choice that she makes. I don't believe for a moment that she, in this very serious

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  um, choice that she makes to keep autonomy, that she says, how can I die in the most histrionic way possible?

• 1:04:32Liv Albert?

  No, yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Somebody bring me some snakes.

• 1:04:36Liv Albert?

  That feels like it's a, it is a dig against a woman. It's the way you said histrionic that immediately flagged it in my head. It's like, oh, right. No, it's like, it's hysteria. It's all of these things. Women are over dramatic. Like, of course, she wouldn't just kill herself. She would find a couple of snakes to bite her. Like, yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 03

  Which, you know, it's so interesting. My son and I just went to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. And this, this is something that happens in that movie where this woman in this moment of just, she's being histrionic, purposefully so, and the snakes are involved. But I thought, oh, my gosh, it's Cleopatra. This is how we're presenting her. But so the snakes are a Roman invention.

• 1:05:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  And, and, um, and they're there to make her, again, look kind of over the top, overly passionate, theatrical and, and feminine.

• 1:05:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  And I, and I don't mean that as a compliment in this particular instance, because they didn't mean that as a compliment necessarily.

• 1:05:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  But it, but we've, you know, and if you, if you Google Cleopatra painting nowadays, it's going to give us that. That's what we will see, her death scene with those snakes. Because we still lean into it. We, we are still seduced by it.

• 1:05:47Liv Albert?

  I think of the Waterhouse Cleopatra painting. Sorry, if I was to Google, that's the one I want. I can see you doing it.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  I am. I'm sure I know it, but I, oh, yes. Okay. Yeah.

• 1:05:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's my Cleopatra. Actually, a listener years and years ago had sent to me this enormous art piece that has that painting, but then over top is painted the words, "I am the work of art."

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 1:06:12Liv Albert?

  Love it. So I think it would always, but yeah, but yeah, you're right. Like it is, it's that iconic thing of like, oh, she killed herself by snakes. But really, I mean, it's propaganda and also just, yeah, I mean, made to make her look bad. And hysterical.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Can, since I would love to make, um, since Cleopatra is the most famous, right? She's there in Egypt. She dies in the year thirty BCE. But there are two other queens who bookend her, both geographically and temporally, who we don't talk about, who we never talk about. And so I wanted to, I wanted to include them. The reason we talk about Cleopatra is because she was conquered, right? And they make

• 1:06:53Liv Albert?

  And by the Romans.

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  And by the Romans. They make her into this mythical creature. But then there are two women who they don't really. Um, the first is Salome Alexandra, who was a Hasmenean queen in Judea. And, um, she was the only Hasmenean queen. And her dates, oh gosh, I'm going to go find them because I will get them all. I'm the worst person with dates. But, um, I have written down here, she ruled from seventy-six to sixty-seven BCE.

• 1:07:20Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  And, um, her story is recorded in Josephus. Um, he's very ambivalent about her. He like, she seems to have been, you know, a very wonky, capable administrator, right?

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  Which doesn't quite work well, right? For, um, for our over the top, uh, amazing, marvelous women that we want in these stories.

• 1:07:46Liv Albert?

  It's almost like women are just, uh, you know, complex people who capable of all things.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, but she, she increased the size of the military. She, um, but you know, he, he talks about the fact that she became too deferential to the Pharisees. And so this, this is not something that he really, uh, likes so much. And he, but you know, she doesn't do a whole lot. I mean, what ends up happening is that her sons get involved in a war of succession. But eventually Josephus kind of just blames her for that.

• 1:08:13Liv Albert?

  Of course.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Like, of course.

• 1:08:15Liv Albert?

  Naturally.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  And yeah, you know, she's fine, but she's a woman in power. We can't have that. She's weakening the state. And this explains why Herod can later, if you're Josephus, come in and bring it into the Hasmenean dynasty. But um, the other woman, the other woman who I would like to think about in relation to Cleopatra, she's also on the cover, I will say. She's right here. She's amazing. Her name is Ammoni Renus. And she was the queen in Kush. She was really the king, the queen in the Kingdom of Meraway, which was in Kush, which is roughly equivalent to modern Sudan, bits of southern Egypt.

• 1:08:53Liv Albert?

  Is it? Yeah, I was gonna say, okay, south.

• 1:08:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Liv Albert?

  I was like, oh, I immediately realizing I don't, I know about Sudan. Could I point to it on a map? Not great. Okay, so got it. I figured Kush was, so now you just taught me the connection between Kush and Sudan.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  But we only know, okay, so we don't know much about her, except um, there is a story that's told about her from the Roman perspective. It's told by um, Strabo. And he, I'm gonna make sure it's by Strabo. Yes, Strabo. She was actually the queen when Cleopatra was defeated, which is interesting. You never hear about her. So just south of Cleopatra, you have this other queen. The um, Strabo refers to her as Candace because that, but that's just a title that the queens of uh, Meraway were given.

• 1:09:38Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  And her name is Ammoni Renus. And she was, as I said, the queen when Cleopatra was defeated. And then the Romans come in, of course, and Egypt becomes a, the personal possession of Augustus. And of course, their eyes are gonna start to look to expand south.

• 1:09:55Liv Albert?

  Romans?

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  Imagine. So she actually leads a um, incursion and invades several Roman towns. Um, and Strabo tells, he describes her very, very briefly. In Strabo, he describes her very briefly. He says, "Among this group were the generals of Queen Candace, who in my own time ruled the Ethiopians, a manly woman, blind in one eye."

• 1:10:24Liv Albert?

  They're making her look great. I can tell already.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  But uh, so this is basically the only glimpse we get of her in Strabo, but we're told about her. I mean Ethiopians was like a blanket term that was often used here, of course. It's describing the, the, the people of Kush and Meraway. But um, So the Romans are starting to go south. She invades several Roman towns. We're told that her troops toppled lots of statues of Caesar, of Augustus.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  And, and eventually what ends up happening is that this is settled through diplomacy. The, she sends some ambassadors to Augustus. And he says, okay, fine, we're going to slightly make the border a bit south. So Cosum Ibrim becomes like the, the permanent southern border of the Roman Empire. And, but, but, but Kandake and Kush itself become exempt from Roman taxation. Kush never becomes a Roman province. She remains queen for, until about 10 BCE or so. And we never hear about her much in the Roman sources, except here in Strabo. Why? Because she wasn't conquered, right?

• 1:11:36Liv Albert?

  Because she wasn't a good example for them to, yeah, be angry about women.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Exactly. What is so cool is, you know, Strabo mentions that these, the temples were toppled. We know that they at least took one of these statues, not temples, but these statues. We know that she took at least one of these statues back with her to Meroway. Because there was this temple to victory. And the head was actually buried under the steps. And that way, anybody who walked up the steps of the temple could trample upon the head of Augustus.

• 1:12:13Liv Albert?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:12:15Speaker 03

  And if, if anybody Google, if anybody Googles Augustus of Meroway, M E R O E, they will see this amazing bronze head of Augustus. This must have been one of the statues that, that they toppled. And so, I mean, she gets presented as a defeater of Rome, right? That does not fit the narrative easily. So I like to ask my students, why do you know about Cleopatra, but you don't know about Amoni Ranus? Whose, whose stories have you been told?

• 1:12:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it makes me, I can only think about the connection to modern Sudan too. You know, I mean, one of the most horrific, like, just crises in human morality is going on there. And caused entirely by the West because it just, that kept going, right? Like you just, it, it, it's Rome started it. You know, like ignore the people down there because they can't be like crushed in the way they wanted. And then, you know, over the years, like just, oh, the power develops like around them almost. I don't know, phrasing it. So, yeah. But that's, that's so dark. And I mean, well, good, I'm glad that she existed and clearly like was doing fine. So that's a great part of the story.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Liv Albert?

  But just the way they erase it because of that. And then we have it erased because in the West, like, I mean, everything we have is formed by the, the ancient Romans and Greeks and, you know, peripherally, but.

• 1:13:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:13:44Speaker 03

  You know, this story, every story, in every way we tell a story has an agenda. There's no narrative that's free of that.

• 1:13:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Speaker 03

  And so I think that what I wanted to bring out by presenting the original versions of these stories as they are presented by the Greeks and Romans is I want people to be aware of what the original agenda was.

• 1:14:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  Because, you know, there are all these books that are written about these women and these, and I'm not calling out a specific book or ways of telling stories because they have their own agendas too. But they take the information and they present it as fact. But then I want, I would like, because I find that so much of the, the primary material is simply inaccessible to most people. I wanted to make it accessible. So if you are interested in, say, you know, Zenobia, you can go and read about her in the primary

• 1:14:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  materials that we have and ask yourself, what was the agenda of the original telling? And what can that illuminate for the ways that we talk about women in power today? And how we use our own narratives to just still to discredit the very idea.

• 1:14:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I am so excited for this book. Like, I just feel like your, your, your goals were everything that I want. You know, like. It's funny, the, the, the piece I have on Medusa, which is, uh, the book's coming out next month. Um, but the, I, I had a really similar intention and like, it's just, it's a, well, it was like 25,000 words. So it's like a decent chunk on Medusa, but my whole goal was to look at what actually exists in the ancient sources and what were the, what was the agenda behind them? And how does that influence us today? And what are the alternative possibilities based on the ancient sources of like, and versus the agenda? Like, so I'm just obsessed with all of this. I'm like, oh, these are, this is what I want to know. I want to know

• 1:15:39Liv Albert?

  behind. I want to know that, that to, to, yeah, to, to look at the ancient sources. But as what they were and what was maybe going on. And yes, this is all that survives, but it doesn't mean it's the actual thing, like in whatever way we're looking at it. I mean, history is so biased depending on what, what you have, what survives and why.

• 1:15:58Speaker 03

  Right. And I think that one thing that also we can see is like, despite the fact that I think these stories are told ultimately to uphold patriarchy.

• 1:16:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Is that we can still see really incredible things in them, right? We can see how we can find positive, um, messages still there. So like, Buddha cut is motivated to, to step into the arena of power because of sexual, you know, the sexual violence that was done to her daughters.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  In the assembly women, the women realize that they have to work together, right? To, to, to take over, to have some say in what the state, um, is going to do. No single woman can do that on her own. In the story of Amanarenas, we can see how, um, you know, a, a woman leader can resist an imperial power. I mean, she can be the Luke Skywalker in that story, right? I mean, there is, you know, there are really cool messages, I think, to take out of these stories, but

• 1:17:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  before you can do that, you have to be able to scrutinize the whole story.

• 1:17:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Okay. You just saying that gave me such an idea. So I'm curious if you touched on it or have thought about it at all, because again, this came to me while researching the Gorgons, because I was looking at all of the different kind of what, what could be going on in that story. Cause obviously Medusa's messy, but what comes up a lot is, I mean, you know, she is from North Africa in the mythos, right? She's from like the far west and

• 1:17:31Liv Albert?

  So like, there's so many connections kind of to possibly what was going on in Africa when it came to queens, like the Diodoro Ciculus thing, where he's like, the Amazons and the Gorgons, they were queens, they were bad, Hercules killed them. That was because they were probably seeing African queens and obviously were threatened by them. And so the, the story comes to us that way, you know, and, and people, people like to speculate that, that Medusa is based on some kind of like African goddess or queen. What, I don't think that's true, but I do think that like, the stories of her, they were come, there's parts of it were coming from that notion. And so, like, you know, you, you also mentioned Zenobia, which I don't, I know the name, but like, so, but in addition to Imani Remus, am I saying it right?

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm on a, well, I always said Imani Renus for a long time, and then I started saying Imani Reinas, yeah.

• 1:18:21Liv Albert?

  Reinas, okay, yeah. And they, they did, that seems like evidence for, for these, like, yeah, African queens. Do we know, can you tell more about African, ancient African queens? Do you have?

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, certainly, I think going back to Egypt, I mean, you have the example of female pharaohs, you have, for example, I mean, I think perhaps in North Africa, you have a lot of, you know, brother sister rule that come, you know, in the pharaonic period that comes over into the, you know, the Ptolemaic period. You have the, and Imani Renus is certainly not the only woman who had that title of Kendake. Yeah, I mean, so perhaps there was just a lot of evidence for queens in North Africa, but also, I mean, gosh, even in the myths, I mean, the, the, the lands, you know,

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  outside of, of Greece, right? I mean, it's, it's women's rule becomes a feature there, but I think especially of the east and perhaps of, of Africa as well.

• 1:19:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  Not being a historian, I don't want to speculate too much on what kind of historical reality this might present, but I think it's important that.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  I think it's important that we don't just say, okay, well, there are these queens because the Greeks were othering these places. But also to recognize that this was, I mean, this was a reality, that there were, that there were women queens.

• 1:19:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah, the depiction of the stories includes othering, for sure, but yeah, that doesn't mean there weren't women queens, same with the Amazons, right?

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:19:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Did, were there any more examples that made it into your book of, of just sort of beyond the Greco-Roman world that you're particularly interested in?

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  Um, most of the ones that I, um, that I included were, were at least people, women who had come into contact with the Greco-Roman world in some way, right? Um, I mean, Zenobia is another one that I, that I love. I love the description of her. Um, she was, she, she was a Palmyrian, um, Palmyrian queen, um, who, again, upon the death of the male, Zenobia was her husband, Odenophus, he was assassinated, and she became into power, and then she, um, he was a client king of Rome, and this is often what happens, like, you have these client kings, and, uh, the, they will die, and then the woman will come into power and immediately come into conflict with the Romans, right?

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  This happens with, we have Brutica, we have Zenobia. Um, she's great too. I mean, ancient Palmyra was such an interesting place, because it was at a real, um, you know, crossroads. Um, and so she, she, um, she, she wanted, she wanted, she had imperial ambitions of her own. I mean, she took over a lot of Egypt, and, uh, she was defeated by Aurelian. He marched her in a triumph in Rome, so what Cleopatra was so frightened of happened to her. Um, her story is told in the Historia Augusta, which is this really weird fourth-century historical text. Um, and, but he tells us, um, that the Senate had questions, uh, had questioned Aurelian's

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  manliness because he had defeated a woman and marched her in triumph. So he, so Aurelian, in order to demonstrate his own manliness, has to show that Zenobia was a worthy adversary. So there's this very interesting, like, speech or letter that he wrote to the Senate where he praises her. Um, and some of the, yeah.

• 1:21:51Liv Albert?

  Just the need to do that, that there's so many layers in there.

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the Historia Augusta is very complimentary towards her. Um, it says things like, You know, she only had sex with her husband for the purpose of procreation.

• 1:22:09Liv Albert?

  Oh, what a good woman. What a good woman.

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  And she spoke with the voice of a man, which we've.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  But this is interesting to me because again, two of the realms that women needed to exert control over were sex and speech.

• 1:22:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 03

  And we see her doing that in those stories. And women were often thought to be very sexually voracious. Men.

• 1:22:37Liv Albert?

  Pre-Christian times, right? Wow.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  You know, men, Greeks thought that men possessed naturally, more naturally than women, the quality of sophosune, which is like self-control, right? And that comes to be associated with sexual self-control.

• 1:22:54Speaker 03

  So the fact that Zenobia can exercise sexual self-control means that she has this quality, a very masculine quality, that would make her a good ruler.

• 1:23:03Liv Albert?

  Well, and it, I mean, even the description, you know, describing her as man-like in those varied ways, like, and, and you mentioned it with Imani Reinas.

• 1:23:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Manly woman, we are told, yes.

• 1:23:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So it's interesting because it's like, it's both a dig at them, it's a dig at their femininity, but also like a bit of like respect to their power. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's kind of hard to, to like piece apart how, how those actually end up coming across in the end.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's, it's meant, it is meant as a compliment, which sounds a little.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  Which, you know, does strike the modern ear as very odd. And, and yeah, it is, it is denying them their femininity, but again, it's showing that, it's giving some explanation for why they were successful rulers.

• 1:23:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, because they can't, it's a compliment only because they can't face the idea that women could be feminine and competent rulers. So it's like, it's a compliment?

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:24:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, okay, I'm not gonna keep you forever, but do you have any that you, any women or any stories that you haven't gotten to tell that you are really obsessed with in this?

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, I'm obsessed with them all. I mean, basically, there will be, I know, complaints. Why didn't you include this person? Why didn't you include that person? Because these are my favorites, and that's why.

• 1:24:30Liv Albert?

  And you know what? You make the rules, because you wrote the book. I know the feeling.

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  So I made the rules. I mean, yeah, there are just so many great ones. I mean, I guess one that we haven't touched on would be, um, oh, okay, I have to choose between Lavinia and Artemisia.

• 1:24:46Liv Albert?

  Oh, Artemisia, please. Can we? Because that's Greek. It's not Greek. She's not Greek, but she's Greek.

• 1:24:51Speaker 03

  Well, she is Greek. She is Greek. She's a, you know, she's a Greek woman, a Greek queen. And, and again, we're told she came to power when her husband died. Artemisia, this is Artemisia the first. She was the queen of Cerya. We know about, we know, so not the second.

• 1:25:06Liv Albert?

  Sorry, not the one on the boat in Salamis. That's all I've got.

• 1:25:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is the one. This is the one on the boat in Salamis. Yes.

• 1:25:12Liv Albert?

  Great. You can tell how good I am at history, even if it's Greek, to say the one on the boat in Salamis. In theory, I know what I'm talking about.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  Because there's, there's also the later Artemisia, who's the wife of, of a name I can never say correctly, but Mausolus. Um, she built the mausoleum. But anyway, this is, this is Artemis the fir-, Artemisia the first. And she is, um, the queen of Halicarnassus, which is where Herodotus is from, and Herodotus tells her story. He's so filled with admiration for her. She's his queen, right? And, um, but she does not side with the Greeks. She sides with the Persians because she's also, um, Cerya was a Persian satirist. So she's, she's kind of a client monarch of, um, of Xerxes. But she's constantly, like, the only Greek in the room, right?

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  When Xerxes is having these conversations with his Persian advisors and these other advisors from these different allied groups. And she's the only one who can speak with any sense of freedom with Xerxes. And so he's coming to her and saying, what do you think I should do, Artemisia? She gives him very good advice and he says, you're a great person and I admire you, but I don't think I'll do what you say. And then he promptly goes and gets defeated and things like that. And she's very clever. It's about the Battle of Salamis. She's in between an enemy ship behind her and a friendly ship in front of her. And she knows she's about to get into trouble. So she decides just to ram the friendly ship.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  But so she doesn't really have a sense of loyalty to her allies. And she's like saving her own life.

• 1:26:52Liv Albert?

  I mean, she's Greek, but she's working with the Persians. Like, you know, I guess I get it.

• 1:26:56Speaker 03

  But Xerxes sees this and he doesn't realize that she's rammed an enemy ship. And he says, man, the only man out there is Artemisia.

• 1:27:05Speaker 03

  And so, but what is so fascinating to me about this is that I would love to think that Herodotus just sees her as a really cool, capable queen. Like, we finally, we have found someone. But what he's doing is he's using her as a foil to Persian masculinity.

• 1:27:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:24Speaker 03

  And so you cannot disentangle any of these stories from ethnic prejudice. It shows up in all of them.

• 1:27:30Liv Albert?

  And he's also, you know, he's from Halicarnassus, like you say, but he's Greek, considers himself Greek. And so is writing about like someone from where he's from and he considers himself Greek, but she was on the Persian side of the big, bad Persian war that he's talking about. So that's really interesting. Yeah, there's so much going on there. And we still have that moment where Xerxes calls her a man in order to clarify that she's good as a leader.

• 1:27:59Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's the zero sum game, right? I mean, it's an interesting lesson that the way that we think about gender is not linked to biology at all here, right? The person who's the man in the situation is the one who's exerting control and power.

• 1:28:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Speaker 03

  But it's a commentary on Eastern masculinity because Artemisia, the Greek woman, outmans the Eastern men, right? And so. You see a lot of anti eastern prejudice in so many of these stories.

• 1:28:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, and that's like a running theme, the feminine femininity of of the Persian so specifically too. So it's like the easy way to get a dig at them.

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:28:36Liv Albert?

  That's really, that's really interesting. And it led me to a thought, oh, when you were, the gender thing that you just said. My, my ADHD is going a little wild today, I apologize, but we're there. The, when you mentioned the gender, um, the, the way that it's not about biology in this moment. Right? It reminds me of Ovid, just bring it back to the last time you were here and specifically Canis slash Canius. And, you know, the, the sort of transformation transgender story in there, which is such a great example of that. Like this reminder that to back then, it didn't, the biology was not really their concern. They were very much open to, to having biology be not an issue. It was all about actions when it comes to your gender or, or, and also like power.

• 1:29:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And, and so to have that, like she, Canius, when a man becomes like all powerful. And that's why, that's why he's a man, because he's like unbeatable on the battlefield, you know, like, and obviously there's, there's more to it. And there's some like, there's really nice trans readings of that. But it's in this moment to me, it's just like, oh, well, of course, Canius is a man because battle.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  But, but I will say that for, for Canius to have that, I mean, there is that physical transformation that takes place.

• 1:29:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  So I think that the ideal is usually in the ancient world, like you take Hercules, for example. It's that, um, that physical power, I mean, Hercules is so powerful, physical power, um, the power of, you know, in war.

• 1:30:09Speaker 03

  Power of our armies, that these will converge upon a masculine body, right? But in the absence of that, if, if, if the masculine body is not doing, you know, behaving as it should, then that will converge on a woman. Right? And I mean, this is, um, you know, this is a way that Zenobia's success gets explained that.

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  That all the men around her aren't doing what they're supposed to do. They're not acting like men. So in the absence of that, she has to occupy the role, right? So, yeah, I think, but I think that the relationship between, you know, gender and the body in the ancient world is always one that was subject to debate and thinking about. And it was not an automatic assumption that, that there was a clear relationship there, right?

• 1:31:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think I could talk about all of, I mean, all of this literally forever. And truly, no pressure, but if you do want to come back on sometime and talk about the Assemblywomen, I think that would be amazing.

• 1:31:16Speaker 03

  It is, it is its whole thing. I mean, it is a little bit, it stands out a little bit in the book because it's not about a queen, right?

• 1:31:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:24Speaker 03

  It's, it's taking these stories, and I'll just say this, now, it's taking these ideas, but saying, now let's throw them into a democracy and see what happens.

• 1:31:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  This isn't a monarchy, somewhere else where women come to power. This is what happens when women come to power in a democracy. It seems really cool.

• 1:31:42Liv Albert?

  Athens, specifically. And Bayrystoph, and he's like, now I'm excited, which is saying a lot for me with Aristotle. I love the idea of him. But do you want to, I mean, the book is called Women in Power, but is there anything more you want to share with the listeners?

• 1:31:58Speaker 03

  The last thing, I want to give a shout out to my fellow translators, because as I said, some of the things that were included were pre-existing translations. We have Fagels, Aeneid, I have Matthew Fox's Lucan, some passages from there, Aaron Pachyian's

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  Apollonius translation, but lots of new things. And so I'm going to shout out to Erica Zimmerman Dahmer, who is at the University of Richmond, and she did a beautiful translation of Ovid's Heroides VII, Dido to Aeneas, which is great. My student Paige Graff, she worked with my colleague Chris McDonough to do a wonderful translation of Boudicca's Speech in Tacitus, which they did a great job on. And then my My other colleague, Daniel Holmes, who also happens to be my spouse, he translated tons of stuff for this. He was, I could just like go throw things at him and say, "Translate!" And so he's a Hellenist and he did a lot of the translating too. So it was a real, real group effort, I must say.

• 1:33:00Liv Albert?

  That's so fun!

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  So grateful to all of them for contributing.

• 1:33:04Liv Albert?

  Oh, I'm thrilled to hear all of that. That's great. And yet you did the Aristophanes, even though he's the Hellenist.

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  And you know what? My husband's actually written a book on Aristophanes. So it was great. I really, I wanted, I just wanted to translate an Aristophanes play. I'm like, this is gonna be my chance. I'm a Latin poetry person, but I'm gonna do it. But there were moments when I would go to Daniel and say, "What in the world does this joke mean?"

• 1:33:33Liv Albert?

  I can see that.

• 1:33:35Speaker 03

  He was able to help me out there. But yeah, I did a lot. I did a bunch of Statius, a bunch of Perpursus, Virgil, Aristophanes. I mean, I was translating plenty for this thing. So it was a way I could really stretch myself.

• 1:33:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that sounds like it was really fun, too.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  It was just a fun book. And in fact, when it came out, I said to some students of mine, like, "I barely remember writing it because it was just so much fun."

• 1:34:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's so nice. Well, honestly, like, I mean, I've been excited about it since I found out it existed. But now I'm like, oh, I'm excited for the translations too. Like, this is just, I'm gonna go buy it on ebook because then it serves as my source so much easier. I'm really excited, basically.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you so much.

• 1:34:20Liv Albert?

  I mean, thank you for coming on the show again and just being so lovely to chat with. It's been so much fun.

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. It's been great.

• 1:34:44Liv Albert?

  Nerds, thank you so much for listening. As always, it was such a joy to have Stephanie back. I, again, recorded these recent conversation episodes a little while ago now, but returning to thinking about that and remembering them for editing, honestly, is so much fun. I love talking to Stephanie, and I'm certain we'll have her back. Not least because, apparently, maybe she can make me like Aristophanes. Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes to my Olympians, the producer. Select music by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or wherever

• 1:35:27Liv Albert?

  you get your podcasts. Keep up to date on loads of new things coming from Let's Talk About Myths, Baby by signing up for our new newsletter, Iris's Rainbow, at mythsbaby.com/newsletter. I am Liv, and I love this shit.

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