Can Women Be Heroes?
Can Women Be Heroes?
The literature and sources paper does not only ask what makes a hero — it also asks whether that definition includes women at all. Two of the seven prescribed passages centre on named women: Sempronia, described by the historian Sallust as a dangerous, badly behaved noblewoman, and Camilla, a warrior maiden praised by the poet Virgil for fighting like the finest men. Comparing how each writer describes a woman acting outside her expected role reveals a lot about Roman ideas of gender as well as heroism.
Roman writers usually praise a hero for physical courage, self-sacrifice for the state, and loyalty to Rome’s traditions. Sallust and Virgil test whether these same qualities can be praised in a woman, or whether they become a fault when a woman shows them.
A Badly Behaved Woman: Sallust’s Sempronia
Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae describes the noblewomen who supported the conspirator Catilina. Sempronia, an aristocrat married to a former consul, is picked out for a long character sketch even though she appears only once more in the whole work. Sallust opens by saying she had multa saepe virilis audaciae facinora commiserat — “often committed many deeds of a boldness more fitting for a man”. The Latin word virilis is doing a lot of work here: Sallust cannot simply say Sempronia was bold, because boldness on its own was a virtue he associated with men.
Sallust then lists Sempronia’s accomplishments with an unmistakable double edge. She was litteris Graecis et Latinis docta — “learned in Greek and Latin literature” — and psallere et saltare poterat elegantius quam necesse est probae — “she could play music and dance more elegantly than is necessary for a respectable woman”. In a man these skills would be straightforward praise. Applied to a woman of high birth, Sallust turns them into evidence of excess.
Notice the grammar Sallust chooses for these accomplishments. In psallere et saltare poterat — “she could play music and dance” — the two infinitives simply complete the verb poterat. Later, however, Sallust drops the finite verbs altogether: posse versus facere, iocum movere, sermone uti — “she could compose poetry, make a joke, use language…” — where posse, movere and uti are historic infinitives, a form used for rapid, repeated action in the past. Sallust piles these up quickly, giving the impression of a long list of talents rehearsed almost too smoothly.
Sallust then adds the judgement that matters most: ei cariora semper omnia quam decus atque pudicitia fuit — “everything was always more precious to her than honour and pudicitia”. Decus and pudicitia are exactly the virtues a conservative Roman male reader expected of a well-born woman. By showing Sempronia lacking them, Sallust signals that her talents cannot redeem her.
Sallust judges Sempronia by traditionally feminine virtues (decus, pudicitia) even while borrowing masculine vocabulary (virilis audaciae) to describe her crimes. The mismatch between the words used for her and the values expected of her is the source of his condemnation.
The Warrior Woman: Virgil’s Camilla
Camilla is a very different kind of woman in arms. She is a princess of the Volsci, raised as a huntress after her father fled into exile with her as a baby, and dedicated from childhood to the goddess Diana. In Aeneid 11 she leads her own troops into battle alongside Turnus, and Virgil gives her a sequence of individual killings — an aristeia — of the kind usually reserved for male champions such as Achilles or Hector.
Virgil introduces her mid-battle: at medias inter caedes exsultat Amazon — “but in the middle of the slaughter, the Amazon runs wild” — delaying her actual name, pharetrata Camilla — “quiver-carrying Camilla” — until the end of the next line. Naming her an Amazon first tells the reader immediately how to read her: not as an ordinary woman but as a legendary type of fighting female.
Camilla’s most striking moment comes when she kills the strangely-dressed hunter Ornytus and taunts his dying body. She says the Etruscans mocked women’s fighting, but advenit qui vestra dies muliebribus armis verba redargueret — “the day has come which might disprove your words by means of a woman’s weapons”. This is a battlefield vaunt — the boast a Homeric warrior makes over a fallen enemy. Virgil also uses apostrophe in this passage, but it is the poet himself who addresses Camilla: quem telo primum, quem postremum, aspera virgo, deicis? — “whom do you strike down first, whom last, fierce maiden?” Unlike Sempronia, Camilla does not hide from fighting with muliebribus armis — “a woman’s weapons” — she turns the insult into a boast, telling Ornytus he will carry home to his ancestors the news that he “fell by the spear of Camilla” — telo cecidisse Camillae.
One of the prescribed picture sources shows a bas relief of Tullia the Younger driving her chariot over the body of her own father, the murdered king Servius Tullius. According to Livy, after her husband Tarquinius Superbus had her father thrown down the senate house steps, Tullia deliberately drove her chariot home over his corpse rather than take a longer route — horrifying even her own household gods.
The source works the same way as Sallust’s account of Sempronia: it presents a woman’s crime as a warning about where ambition and disregard for family duty can lead. Livy says that Tullia carried her father’s blood to her own and her husband’s household gods, and that their anger meant the evil beginning of the reign was before long followed by a similar end — the overthrow of the monarchy. When you write about this source, be specific — say whose body it is and why the act was shocking to a Roman audience — rather than describing it only as “a woman being cruel.”
Gender and Reputation
Placed side by side, Sempronia and Camilla show two opposite answers to the theme’s question. Sallust measures Sempronia against feminine virtues she fails to meet, so her intelligence and talent read as further proof of moral danger. Virgil measures Camilla against masculine heroic standards she meets easily, so her femininity becomes a weapon rather than a weakness. Neither writer treats a woman’s gender as irrelevant — both use it deliberately to shape how their reader should judge her.
Sallust condemns Sempronia through the virtues she lacks (decus, pudicitia); Camilla defends herself through the very fact that she is a woman (muliebribus armis). Both passages use gender as the key to their verdict on the woman’s character.
When answering an extended evaluative question on this aspect of the theme, draw on evidence from across all the prescribed material — not only Sempronia and Camilla, but also visual sources such as Tullia’s relief — to build a sustained argument about whether Roman writers could imagine a woman as a true hero, a true villain, or something that resists either label.