Abstract
‘Women in history, women in The Histories’ explains how, throughout The Histories, Herodotus uses women to illustrate the dangerous proclivities of men, but at the same time women interest him as actors in their own right. This pattern echoes the treatment of non-Greeks in the ethnographies. Since it goes without saying that war will make women its pitiful victims, it is their agency that is most noteworthy. The wider issues that play key roles in Herodotus's narrative include the propensity of autocrats to mistreat women; the dangers of exhibitionism; the prominence of female agency in history; and the need for men to treat women with dignity.
