Legend Archives - Infinite Women

Kaasteen

The girl who called a glacier

Procne and Philomela

Sister princesses of Greek myth

Deirdre

Tragic protagonist of the early medieval Ulster cycle

Camilla, Queen of the Volscians

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 […]

Atalanta

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 […]

Nafanua was an ancient Samoan war goddess and ali’i, or chief. Her peaceful conduct of politics influenced the modern used of the fono communal meeting place for the fa’amatai system of decentralised government.

Draupadi

India This article, written by Naomi Appleton, has been republished with permission from the Dangerous Women Project, created by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University […]

Semiramis

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.

Princess Kaguya

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.

Ahalya

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.