«Γυναίκες σε πόλεμο και πώς να τις αφοπλίσουμε: διαμόρφωση ταυτότητας, δόξα και αισχρότητα στους πελοποννησιακούς μύθους».
Talk summary: This paper examines Peloponnesian stories of women in arms, at Argos, Tegea, and Sparta, asking how the motif of “women at war” functions in these narratives. Dr Bershadsky argues that for ancient audiences, women in battle marked a singularity, a breach of the world order during a crisis: that is, a myth. We cannot recover how each myth worked: one reconstruction for Argos that she sketches connects the female battle victory with the rise of the Argive annexationist democracy. Each story combines glorification of the armed women with lewd humour, transforming the mythical female power into a form manageable in the present.
Dr Natasha Bershadsky is a researcher at the University of Bonn and a former Lecturer in Classics at Harvard University. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago and was a long-term Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. Her research focuses on ancient Greek warfare, political use of myth and ritual, and the ways Greek communities shaped and reshaped their identities through memories of past conflicts. She has published on Greek historiography, epic, and Hesiod. She is currently completing a monograph on archaic warfare and ancient contestation of the past and editing a volume on the Battle of Plataea.
Dear CSPS Friends, Colleagues, Students, and Alumni,
You are cordially invited to our next CSPS AGIDO Webinar which will host Dr Natasha Bershadsky (Bonn) with a talk on “Women at war, and how to disarm them: identity-making, glory, and bawdiness in Peloponnesian myths”.
The online talk will take place on Monday 20 April, 17:00 BST (19:00 Athens time) via MS Teams. The event is free and open to everybody, but you should register in advance via this link: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/3e572c69-bda0-4bdd-845b-a9c81061d49b@67bda7ee-fd80-41ef-ac91-358418290a1e
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