Princesses Behaving Badly

"Women in third-century-BCE Sparta were all-around badasses. But Queen Arachidamia, wife of Eudamidas I, was among the toughest. About 272 BCE, the mercurial military genius Pyrrhus of Epirus was persuaded to lay siege to Sparta by a jealous lord who had been passed over for the throne. Pyrrhus’s armies were better equipped and far greater in number, so the Spartan Senate decided to gather the women and children and send them to safety in nearby Crete.

According to the classical historian Plutarch, that decision didn’t sit well with Arachidamia. She marched into the Senate, sword in hand, and declared that the women were going to stay in Sparta to face the Epirians alongside the men. Part of the Spartan defense plan was to dig a deep trench parallel to Pyrrhus’s camp. Arachidamia organized the women and children to help with the digging, completing a third of the trench themselves. Once the fighting began, these battle-hardened broads stayed to fight and nurse the wounded. Pyrrhus was forced to flee before the Spartans’snarling rage (and, it must be said, an infusion of fresh reinforcements from Macedonia)."

-- Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie