Category Archives: Legend

Sister princesses of Greek myth

Italy The following is excerpted from “Female Warriors: Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era,” by Ellen C. Clayton (Mrs. Needham), published in […]

Greece The following is excerpted from “Female Warriors: Memorials of Female Valour and Heroism, from the Mythological Ages to the Present Era,” by Ellen C. Clayton (Mrs. Needham), published in […]

Semiramis, a celebrated queen of Assyria, round whose personality a mass of legend has accumulated. According to Diodorus, the Greek historian, she was the wife of Ninus, the founder of Nineveh, and flourished about 2100 B.C. She is said to have founded Babylon, and made it the most magnificent city of the world, and everywhere through her dominion she left monuments of her greatness.

Long, long ago, there lived an old bamboo wood-cutter. He was very poor and sad also, for no child had Heaven sent to cheer his old age, and in his heart there was no hope of rest from work till he died and was laid in the quiet grave. Every morning he went forth into the woods and hills wherever the bamboo reared its lithe green plumes against the sky. When he had made his choice, he would cut down these feathers of the forest, and splitting them lengthwise, or cutting them into joints, would carry the bamboo wood home and make it into various articles for the household, and he and his old wife gained a small livelihood by selling them.

In traditional Hinduism, Ahalya is held up as the first of the panchakanya (“five virgins”), archetypes of female chastity whose names are believed to dispel sin when recited.

Two Messinese women who raise the alarm and helped repel an attack on their city.