Fighting women of the Germanic tribesDuring the expansion of their empire, the Romans sometimes enco

Fighting women of the Germanic tribes

During the expansion of their empire, the Romans sometimes encountered female commanders and female fighters. Some of them belonged to the Germanic tribes. Most accounts depict these women fighting in desperate situations, but they are shown as deadly and uncompromising. 

Among these were the Cimbrian women. The Cimbri’s ethnicity is still subject to debate today. Some say that they were Germans, others that they were Celts. They had migrated from FrisiaandJutland and descended toward Italy and several clashes with the Romans followed. In 101 BCE, the Cimbri faced the troops of consul Gaius Marius at Vercellae. 

The Cimbrian warriors were defeated, which led the women to take arms, even though the extent of these activities remain unclear. Indeed, according to the account of Florus:

“There was quite as severe a struggle with the women-folk of the barbarians as with the men; for they had formed a barricade of their waggons and carts and, mounting on the top of it, fought with axes and pikes.”

The women sent a delegation to Marius, but failed to secure their freedom. They therefore killed their children and committed suicide. Plutarchgives a slightly different account of the battle, saying that the women fell upon the men who tried to flee and killed them, including their husbands and relatives, and then committed suicide.

Women of the Ambrones , an allied tribe of the Cimbri, displayed the same behavior at Aquae Sextiae.  Plutarch gives the following description of the Ambrones’ defeat:

“(…)The Romans kept slaying them until they came in their flight to their camp and waggons. Here the women met them, swords and axes in their hands, and with hideous shrieks of rage tried to drive back fugitives and pursuers alike, the fugitives as traitors, and the pursuers as foes; they mixed themselves up with the combatants, with bare hands tore away the shields of the Romans or grasped their swords, and endured wounds and mutilations, their fierce spirits unvanquished to the end.”

Cassius Dio also writes that during the war with the Marcomanni (166 until 180) the bodies of women wearing armor were found on the battlefield.

TheHistoria Augusta also mentions that during the triumph of Aurelian: 

“There were led along also ten women, who, fighting in male attire, had been captured among the Goths after many others had fallen; these a placard declared to be of the race of the Amazons — for placards were borne before all, displaying the names of their nations”.

This last source isn’t, however, a reliable one, so this story must be regarded with some skepticism.

Bibliography:

Cassius Dio, Roman history

Chrystal Paul, Women at war in the classical world

Florus,Epitome 

Historia Augusta

Plutarch,Parallel Lives