10 Badass Women of Antiquity

These women weren’t content to be the handmaids of men but lived life on their own terms.

Most everyone has heard of the famous men of antiquity, individuals like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Augustus, and the like. They are the colossi of the ancient world and, since history has often been written by men, they’ve gotten a lot of the attention. However, it’s also important to turn out attention to the many powerful women that strode across the stage of ancient history, many of whom were just as, if not more, powerful than the men that surrounded them.

Cleopatra VII

In all of antiquity, there is probably no woman whose name is more well-known than Cleopatra’s. She was the last of the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt, and with her death the control of that ancient land passed into the hands of the Romans. She has appeared in countless representations: painting, poetry, film, television, novels, and historiography, and she continues to haunt the popular imagination. All of these cultural representations have tended to obscure her true genius as a political leader, a woman who, despite all of the obstacles thrown in her way, managed to not only survive numerous threats to her life but came tantalizingly close to remaking the Mediterranean in her own image. Like many of her ancestors, she…