“Of Hope and Expectation”–My December Pick

by: E.J. Lawrence





by K.P. Kulski











Nursing Madonna





Nursing Madonna 2










by K.P. Kulski



Roman woman laboring in a birthing chair – Ostia




Wolf nursing the mythological founders of Rome – Romulus and Remus






Pero Nursing Cimon – Pompeii














Metis: Mother of Wisdom

by Meagan Logsdon

The ancient world often portrayed its wisdom figures—whether literal divinity or personification of virtue—as feminine. The Greeks gravitated toward this in the form of Athena, wisdom-warrior goddess, and later in the form of Sophia, one of Plato’s four cardinal virtues. Yet before these two more renowned figures was Metis.

Housefly_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_18050Hesiod’s Theogany[1] places Metis among the second generation of Titans. She is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and her siblings numbered in the thousands. Hesiod calls her the wisest among both gods and mortals. Zeus took her as his first wife, perhaps desiring to have constant access to her counsels as he was establishing his rule. However, Metis was prophesied to bear children who would inherit her great wisdom and who could potentially overthrow Zeus. To prevent this, Zeus deceived Metis into transforming herself into a fly, whereupon he swallowed her, unaware that Metis had already conceived a child. For Zeus, it was enough that he had corralled Metis in such a way that she would never bear her fated children but would still “devise for him both good and evil.”

Lodged in the belly of her husband, Metis did not sit idle. She crafted weapons and armor for her daughter, Athena, and when she sprang from Zeus’s head on the banks of the river Trito, she was fully matured and battle-ready. Pindar, in his Seventh Olympian Ode[2], tells further that Hephaestus split Zeus’s head with an axe so that Athena could emerge, perhaps because the smithing of Metis was so painfully cacophonous to the thunder god.

Pallas Athena by Franz von Stuck (1898)

Neither Hesiod nor Pindar shed any light on how Zeus was able to trick Metis, and so here we enter the realm of speculation. Could it be that Metis perceived her husband’s fears in light of the prophecy and, rather than leaving him and risk the world crumbling into chaos in her absence, altered herself to perpetuate the effects of her own wisdom in Zeus’s rule? She knew his might alone would not be sufficient to maintain order. Into his depths she went, creating a somewhat blurred symbiosis of masculinity and femininity from which issued Athena, out of her mother’s womb first but then her father also—a womb containing a womb.

This dependence of rulers on feminine wisdom is carried over into Plato’s Republic[3], where he envisions the head of his utopia as a philosopher king, a friend to the feminine embodiment of Wisdom or Sophia. Plato also calls Sophia the noblest of the parts of virtue in his Protagoras.[4]

A similar personification of Divine Wisdom as feminine can be found in the Hebrew scriptures. The first chapter of Proverbs entreats the hearer to heed Wisdom’s voice and avoid disaster.[5] Some of the early Christian Fathers, including Justin Martyr and Origen, would eventually attempt to marry Platonic philosophy with these passages, describing the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) as an aspect of the Logos—the pre-incarnated, cosmic Christ—from John 1.[6] Here in Christianity, too, is the universe born and sustained through the partnership of masculinity and femininity.

Thus, when vehicles change—Greek mythology to philosophy to Christianity—Divine Wisdom, following in Metis’s metamorphosing footsteps, changes with them. Yet always, in whatever form, she persists as a creative force, a vital bulwark against disorder.

Minerva by Jacques Louis Dubois

[1] http://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodTheogony.html#n30

[2] http://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/4043.html

[3] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

[4] http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/protagoras.html

[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+1%3A20-33&version=NRSV

[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A1-5&version=NRSV

Monolithic: Kandakes of Kush, Queens of Stone

by K.P. Kulski

By the early portion of the 1st century, it seemed that all the world knew of Rome and its might. Further, it knew of the great Caesar Augustus that reigned at the helm of the Roman state. But in the land of Kush[1], at the edges of Western interest, this was not the case. The feeling was mutual, or more accurately, mutual disinterest and ignorance, neither Rome, roman culture or the man that ruled it meant very much to the Kushites or their great queens, the Kandake.[2]

It is uncertain when the Kush royal heredity moved from male to female, but we do understand that a series of women headed the state as independent sovereigns. These women were rulers by their own right, not by widowhood, regency nor marriage. Additionally, Kandakes did not lose or diminish their power when they married or bore Meroe_1sons. Instead, it was the husband who took up the position as consort. It is from the period of Kandake rule that we have a significant collection of art and inscriptions that depict the nature of their authority. In these the queen often towers, sometimes in the throes of smiting her enemy. In others, her hands are lifted in religious devotion. In all of them, she is the central or only theme of the work. If husbands appeared at all, they were small in stature compared to their queens, if a male appeared of any significance is was most often the Kandake’s son. Frequently, consorts went completely nameless in the record.[3]

She often towers, sometimes in the throes of smiting her enemy, in others, her hands are lifted in religious devotion.

Kush already practiced a form of matriarchal succession common among the cultures of East Africa (and beyond) where royal males inherited rule through their mothers. These mothers were female relatives of the king, often a sister. It is thought that the title of

amanirenas-5Kandake meant “queen mother,” revealing the preexisting importance of the position and offering an easily identifiable reason for the transition to singular female rule. The importance of women goes beyond the royal world, but includes a special regard for the role of wives and mothers in society. Many societies recognize motherhood as a crucial position yet it occupies a support role to male authority. In Kushite culture women were esteemed as vital monolithic entities that were active in both domestic and public worlds. Further, roles were fluid particularly when it came to power. Female roles within society embodied strength, an attribute needed for ruling a kingdom.

It appears that in Kushite culture, women were esteemed as vital monolithic entities that were active in both domestic and public worlds.

When the Romans and Kushites finally crossed paths at Premnis, a fort located near the Nile in Upper Egypt, it was the Kandake Amantitere who led her forces and brazenly brought them down the Nile and into Egyptian territory. Kushite Amanirenas-4women were known to arm themselves in everyday life, so the appearance of a queen a the helm of a military effort is not surprising. According to Roman accounts, “the Candace[4] attacked the garrison with an army of many thousand men.”[5] Dio Cassius recorded the Kush army “with Candace as their leader, ravaging everything they encountered.”[6] Kandakes were not gilded rulers, decked in lace, delicate and breakable. Formidable in spirit as well as appearance, Strabo paints a picture of Amantitere that captures the imagination: masculine and in possession of one eye, having lost it is some unknown circumstance. [7]

Perhaps from gender egalitarianism, depictions of Kandakes belie beauty standards of the inheritors of the Hellenistic world as well as Egyptian ideals. Instead we are shown Sibyl Abraham Paintingimages of strong capable bodies. UNESCO describes a relief of Shanakdakhete, the first known true queen, as a women with, “a wide and powerful body adorned with many jewels…these traits which combine the promise of fertility and the exterior signs of wealth, symbolize prosperity and power.”[8] Kandakes harnessed feminine vitality and strength, there doesn’t appear to be a need for symbols of male authority nor titles to legitimatize their rule. The adherence to a separate standard is interesting as it is clear from artwork that Kushite culture had strong Egyptian influences, this included the adoption of several Egyptian deities.


What stories and images left to us about these remarkable women only serve to inspire and leave us curious. What can Kush society teach us about the role of women in modern society? What things can it teach us about beauty standards? Just to know these stories and even to discover their faults would be a pursuit of new and worthy perspectives. While we can only continue to wonder, we can learn from what we do know: that women’s social roles were places of authority and that strength carried Kandakes to power.

We can be further inspired by the discovery of the stone head of Caesar Augustus buried at the entrance of Kandake Amantitere’s palace, where she tread over it with the confident legs of a monolithic and uncompromising queen.


[1] Also called Nubia. This region is part of modern day Sudan and Ethiopia as well as the location of a series of significant historical kingdoms (such as Axum).

[2] There is some uncertainty concerning the true title of the Kush queens. Some sources argue that the title “Kandake” specifically means Queen Mother and that women who held both the title of kandake and king were true independent rulers. Understanding the actualized extent of the title may not be possible until Kush hieroglyphics are fully deciphered.

[3] Women in Anquitity: Real Women Across the Ancient World, ed. Stephanie Lynn Budin, Jean Macintosh Turta. (New York: Routledge, 2016).

[4] Kandake is romanized as “Candace” in some sources

[5] Strabo, “Geography,” Fordham University Sourcebook, 03 May 2017, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/nubia1.asp.

[6] Cassius Dio, “History of Rome,” Fordham University Sourcebook, 03 May 2017, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/nubia1.asp


[8] “Statue of queen and prince of Meroe,” United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 08 May 2017, http://www.unesco.org/culture/museum-for-dialogue/item/en/84/statue-of-queen-and-prince-of-meroe.

Boudicca: The Celtic Queen Who Refused to Bow to Rome

by Erica Millard

A few months ago, I read the book “Mr. Churchill’s Secretary,” a fictional novel by Susan Elia MacNeal. I have read twenty books since then, but there is one scene about which I can’t stop thinking.

It haunts me.

In the first chapter of the book, a woman named Diana is coming home from where she works as a secretary for Winston Churchill. She exits the car of a stranger who has given her a ride home. When she gets out, a man is standing there in a dark mask. He tells her to turn around and put her hands on the car hood. She complies despite the fear that something is wrong. “Without preamble, she felt the hot shock of the metal blade as it pierced through her flesh and could hear the tearing as it went through cloth and skin and muscle” (MacNeal 8). She dies there, in a puddle of rain and blood, without trying to run or fight back.

It was about that time that I stumbled on the history of Boudicca, Warrior Queen of the Celts.

Boudicca was a queen of the Iceni Celtic tribe in 47 A.D. Briton was under the rule of the Roman Empire, and Boudicca’s husband was the Icenian King Prasutagus. Although he was the King of the Celts, he was also a “client king” of the Romans, and therefore had full Roman citizenship. By extension, his wife would also have been a part of the ruling class of Rome (Collingridge 173-178).

King Prasutagus died, and instead of passing his kingdom to his daughters which had been his wishes, Rome decided that the kingdom was rightfully theirs. They beat Boudicca and raped both of her daughters, the very women that King Prasutagas thought would be the queens of his kingdom. The bodily harm and the rapes were seen as great insults in both the Roman and Celtic cultures. But they were designed for one thing: to terrify both Boudicca and the Celts into submission to the Romans.

It did not work.


After hearing of what had happened to Boudicca, the Iceni tribespeople gathered near the home of their queen, “Showing their support for their queen and their hatred of the Romans” (Collingridge 184). Roman rule was tenuous at best, with a previous Celtic rebellion squashed thirteen years previous and the tentative peace only possible through King Prasutagus’s pro-Roman stance.

Other Celtic tribes joined Boudicca and made a massive army, and according to Collingridge, “There was only one response, only one plan of action – and that was to wipe out all trace of the Romans’ polluting culture and their gross abuse of every man, woman and child in the conquered territories” (Collingridge 185). Boudicca and her army attacked and razed three Roman cities. Her army was brutal and harsh, taking the lives of thousands of Britons and Romans alike in an attempt to win back their independence and freedom.

The historian Tacitus recorded Boudicca’s statement:


Boudicca and her army lost in a final battle with Rome, and because of that loss, Briton was then ruled by Rome for another 350 years. Of Boudica, Dio wrote, “The Britons mourned her deeply and gave her a costly burial. The Roman conquest had brought to the Iceni misfortune that ripened into disaster after their rebellion failed. But as time passed, Britannia became an orderly and respected part of the Roman empire. It remained so for another three centuries. Boudica’s people finally won what it seems they had wanted all along: respect, peace and a government that treated them with justice and honor” (Donsbach).

Boudicca died defending her rights and doing what she thought was best.

What do these two women, one fictional and one not, have to do with one another? Both of their stories end in death and that is the very point. One died without even an attempt to fight. The other fought for what she believed in.

If I had a choice, I know which one I would choose to be.


Works Cited:

Collingridge, Vanessa. Boudica. London: Ebury, 2005. Print.

Donsbach, Margaret “Boudica: Celtic War Queen Who Challenged Rome.” HistoryNet. N.p., 09 Aug. 2016. Web. 26 Mar. 2017. http://www.historynet.com/boudica-celtic-war-queen-who-challenged-rome.htm

MacNeal, Susan Elia. Mr. Churchill’s Secretary: A Novel. New York: Bantam Trade Paperback, 2011. Print.

Pruitt, Sarah. “Who was Boudica?” History.com. A&E Television Networks, 31 May 2016. Web. 26 Mar. 2017. http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-was-boudica