Artemisia I of Caria
480 BC
Internet's favorite badass warrior queen.
She ruled a vassal kingdom in
the Persian Empire and contributed a squadron of warships to the
Persian fleet. At every stage of the Persian invasion of Greece, she gave
sage
advice to Xerxes, but he foolishly ignored it, which doomed his
expedition to defeat. At the Battle of Salamis (480 BC) she was the
only
commander to successfully fight her way out of the Greek trap, although
she did so by mercilessly ramming through her own allies who got in her
way.
She was from Halicarnassus on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor.
Coincidentally, so was Herodotus, the primary historian of the Persian
Wars and the main source of everything we know about Artemisia. This
goes to show you,
if you want to look impressive in the history books, it helps to have
the future "Father
of
History" growing up next door. I'm not saying
Artemisia doesn't deserve her proud reputation. I'm just saying that
there
were probably many other badass women who are now forgotten because
they didn't have the good luck to be a hometown hero for a popular
historian.
We have no idea what she looked like, so I just had the AI draw a
typical 40-year-old Turkish woman because Caria was where Turkey is now, and 40 is a typical age to be a big shot. She was the
widow of the previous king and regent for
their young son, so she probably had a few years on her.
