Talk:Women in ancient warfare

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Fair use rationale for Image:Agrippina minor.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

GA Review
I have failed this article because it does not fit the criteria for a Good Article. Because it takes the form of a list, I recommend nominating it for Featured List status instead. If you look at Featured lists, you can see that several timelines are currently listed as Featured Lists. A Good Article should be in a prose format, but this article contains no prose. Before nominating it for FA status, though, I recommend adding a lead to provide context and an introduction. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 02:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

semi-legendary or legendary entries
These should be moved to Woman warriors in mythology. There is an "Old Testament" section there. We should restrict ourselves to historical individuals here. --dab (𒁳) 08:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There are sourced dates for when the events that the legends are based on believed by scholars have occurred, so I think that they should be left in. These are semi-historical events, not purely legendary. Asarelah (talk) 18:07, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This basically the old "the bible is not a historical document" argument. Look wise guy, if it was any other contemporary document that was not the bible, with the same quality of information, you would accept it without blinking.  Your argument is without merit. 96.241.228.73 (talk) 13:52, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
 * No personal attacks please. Asarelah (talk) 16:07, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Refimprove: Intro section includes no references, appears to be WP:SYNTH
The introductory section of this article contains no citations at all and includes mention of the mythological Amazons while asserting that women had a "pervasive presence" in warfare until the adoption of agriculture. No references are provided, and this is in stark contrast to what we know of pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies today; all extant hunter-gatherer societies, including previously uncontacted people, maintain sexual division of labor, and I'm aware of no serious evidence that women play any considerable fighting role in warfare. Either appropriate references should be added or the section should be substantially reworked. Global Cerebral Ischemia (talk) 13:20, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Crappy entry, off by five centuries
"271 BC – A group of Gothic women who were captured by Romans while fighting in the same garb as their male peers, were paraded through Rome wearing signs that said, "Amazons"". This happened in 274 AD during Aurelian's triumph celebrating his victory over Zenobia. See. The primary source is the Historia Augusta: "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" .37.117.120.215 (talk) 19:10, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

A better source than some extreme right wing site?
Theres a great paragraph to Tacitus with an awful reference to the site http://library.flawlesslogic.com/tacitus.htm This is obviously some extreme right wing site, and it would be great to get a better, preferably more direct reference. TheEsb (talk) 13:49, 13 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Done, thanks for catching that. Kravk (talk) 17:39, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Np. Thank you! TheEsb (talk) 21:38, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Question about criteria for inclusion in the list
I think this is a really interesting and informative list—in the historical period I'm most familiar with, it brings together some facts in a revealing way. However, some items on the list seem to be acts of physical violence by women that aren't carried out in battle nor in the context of warfare as such. For example, female gladiators absolutely did exist, and it's possible or even likely that their existence speaks to skills acquired for the purpose of battle, but gladiatorial combat was staged in the arena as part of entertainment spectacles (ludi), so not an example of women in warfare unless a source is used to propose that explicitly.

And if a war captive kills her captor, is that evidence of women participating in battle or warfare as such? You might further your side's war effort if you slip the brute who's made you his concubine some poison, or grab a sword and behead him in his sleep, but have you participated in warfare as a warrior or commander through this act? Such nebulous inclusions may come across as special pleading or padding and end up diluting the topic. So what's notable to me about this list is women as warriors and commanders in periods when we've been taught to assume they didn't exist. Spies (mentioned in the lede) would not belong here any more than nurses, because while both roles are part of the culture of war and carry their own challenges and risks, neither espionage nor nursing is what we mean by "battle" or "warfare" as such, and Mata Hari and Clara Barton are rightly not listed. Just queries/wonderings about the criteria. Main point is to thank contributors for their care and attention. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:54, 6 July 2023 (UTC)