Aretaphila of Cyrene: “Women’s Weapons” as Instruments for Political Action Authors María Dolors Mirón Pérez Instituto de Estudios de la Mujer, Universidad de Granada Keywords: Aretaphila of Cyrene, Plutarch, gender order, transgression, politics, memory Abstract Aretaphila is one of the most outstanding and complex characters in Plutarch’s Women’s Virtues, where he presents a series of women’s deeds deserving memory as examples for feminine virtue. Throughout the account, Aretaphila lives constantly on the borders of transgression, immersing in the masculine sphere of politics, and using typical “women’s weapons” that are deemed disturbing by classical thought. Nevertheless, the story’s end signals the “happy” return to political and gender order, and serves to “domesticate” the up till then transgressor, Aretaphila, who thus can be seen as an example of virtue. This story also invites us to reflect on the mechanisms of construction and transmission of historical and legendary memory when a woman is a main character. Downloads PDF (Català) Published 2012-11-05 Issue No. 18 (2012): Desorden y transgresión en el mundo antiguo Section Dossier License The Author retains ownership of the copyright in this article, unless the opposite is expressed, and all rights not expressly granted in this agreement, including the nonexclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, and display the article in print or electronic form, and grants, Lectora: revista de dones i textualitat the exclusive rights to print publication of the Article for a period beginning when this Agreement is executed and ending twelve (12) months after the first publicaton of the work in this Journal. After this time, the work will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license, by which the article must be credited to the Author and the Journal be credited as first place of publication. Beginning twelve (12) months after the article´s first publication, the Author is free to enter in seperate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the work as published in this journal. The Author is encouraged to post the work online (eg in institutional or subject repositories, or on their website) after the exclusivity period of twelve (12) months has expired, as it can lead to productive exchanges as well as a greater citation of the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
