How did it get to be November already?

So here's what I should be working on:

Barbarian Women at
War in the Works of Tacitus

In Rome, only as a victim of war could a woman be excused for becoming
directly involved in military affairs; such interference invariably leads
to disaster and the breakdown of military discipline. Nonetheless, the
works of Tacitus contain many examples of women at war. Though most of
these are "barbarian" women, Tacitus' portrayal of these figures serves
to provide insight into his view of the character of Romans of both sexes,
and of the state of the empire as a whole.

Barbarian women participate in war unwillingly, as hostages or, when
(as often happens) the Roman army chooses to show no pity, as casualties
(so Germanicus' army: non sexus, non aetas miserationem attulit,
Ann.
1.51, or Suetonius Paulinus' forces in the defeat of Boudicca at Ann.
14.37; in the sack of Cremona by Vespasian's forces one sees the same merciless
treatment of other Romans, Hist. 3.33). Barbarian women also participate
willingly: most often as hortamenta victoriae (Hist. 4.18) behind
the lines, begging the men to save them from the terrors of captivity,
or offering reproof for cowardice. This motif is so common in Tacitus that
women are invoked by barbarian leaders even when absent--and this motivation
for battle is often explicitly contrasted with that of the Romans (e.g.,
in the speech of Calgacus, Agr. 32.2). Finally, barbarian women
fight in the front lines--like the Germanic women of Ger. 18--or
even lead men in combat like Boudicca. This is such a bizarre concept for
the Roman reader that Tacitus has Boudicca stress the fact that Britons
often fought under the leadership of women (Ann. 14.35; cf. Agr.
16.1)--in a speech addressed to Britons, who would conceivably not need
the reminder. Roman women in Tacitus also become involved in battle: e.g.,
the women at Cremona, aiding the Vitellians studio partium (Hist.
3.32), or Verulana Gratilla at the siege of the Capitol, drawn by the attractions
of war itself (3.69). But this, it seems, is in Tacitus only possible in
the madness of civil war, when societal values no longer hold (a point
already made by A.J. Marshall in "Ladies in Waiting," 1984). Such women
have become barbaric, like Vitellius' wife Triaria, armed with a sword,
alleged to have found in the capture of Tarracina an apparently suitable
outlet for her cruelty (3.77).

This paper will investigate several passages in Tacitus where women
are involved in war, looking for shared motifs, stereotypes, and recurring
vocabulary; comparison will be made, where appropriate, with other ancient
sources. Such passages fall roughly into four main categories: those where
women are victims of war, those in which women give encouragement in war
or are even a cause of war themselves, those in which women actually fight,
and those where women stay out of battle but influence or even seek to
control military affairs. In the first three categories, barbarian women
predominate. The fourth is largely the domain of "bad," or at least problematic,
Roman women like the notorious Plancina, wife of Cn. Piso, or the two Agrippinas,
but in the barbarian world they have their counterpart in Veleda, the Germanic
prophetess revered by the participants in Civilis' Gallo-Germanic revolt
against Rome--although not so revered as to prevent some war-weary Batavians
from suspecting that Roman emperors might make better leaders than Germanic
women (Hist. 5.24). As in Boudicca's speech, a Roman sentiment is
reinforced by placing it in a barbarian mouth where it does not necessarily
fit, underscoring the unnaturalness of women's becoming entangled in warfare.
Roman women who intrude into the masculine military sphere are thus behaving
like barbarians.

Tacitean stereotypes of barbarian women at war color the reader's perceptions
of Roman women (and men) and, ultimately, the institution of the Principate
itself. The developing picture suggests a world where norms of civilized
behavior are breaking down.

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I need to turn that into a 15-minute presentation. You wouldn't think a 7-page paper would be so hard, but it's really much harder than, say, a 25-pager.

Blah.

Last night J. and I and some of her friends submitted to the horror that is Halloween in Salem. And I don't mean horror in a good way. The company was good, though, and we didn't have *too* many beer cans thrown in our yard, so that's all right, then.

Now until late spring Salem transforms itself from Witch City to Ghost Town. Sigh. Neither is particularly appealing.

I should futz about with barbarian babes until it's time to go to my extremely part-time job at the Salem Athenaeum.