3 Women You Didn’t Know Were Erased From History

Christine de Pisan, a Medieval feminist writer, who was an inspiration for both Emilia Bassano and Queen Elizabeth I, wrote a book entitled The Book of The City of Ladies. In her book, she provides more than a hundred examples of women who were erased from history. Did you know that the five women (listed below) had an enormous impact on history but were erased and are currently understudied? The examples below are drawn from Christine de Pisan and Giovanni Boccaccio.

Princess Nicostrata, who invented the Latin alphabet and established the basis of the Latin civilisation.

Nicostrata lived in the Bronze Age, before the Trojan War, and she was the Princess of Arcadia. Arcadia was a region in Peloponnesus renowned for its idyllic landscapes and pastoral lifestyle, a region that writers have romanticised in literature throughout history. Nicostrata was from the city of Pallantium in Arcadia. Nicostrata had such a brilliant mind and she was so knowledgeable in so many disciplines that the people associated her with Ermes, God of Communication, and believed her son, Evander, was generated by Ermes himself. At some point, the region of Arcadia went through a period of political unrest, and Nicostrata left with a group of followers. She sailed and reached central Italy. She settled near the river Tiber and went to live on a hill: she named the hill ‘Palatine’ after the city of Pallantium. She built her palace on the hill, which is why, in Latin, the word Palatium (Platine hill) also came to signify palace. Nicostrata contributed to the local culture by bringing a legal system and the Pantheon of Gods to the population. She devised a new alphabet and a new language, and called the new language Latin. The people who lived in the area were named after the language she invented, according to de Pisan (Latini). They worshipped her, and after she died, they turned her into a deity. In the myth, Romulus is credited with having founded the city of Rome on the Palatine hill in 753 BC, but Nicostrata had already put the seeds of civilisation on the Palatine long before the foundation of Rome. She was also known as Carmentis, a name meaning ‘song’.

The Queen of Sheba, contemporary of King Salomon.

King Salomon is a renown, mythical King, but few know the story of his contemporary, the Queen of Sheba. It is believed that the Queen of Sheba reigned in modern-day Yemen, although the exact location of her reign is uncertain. She was incredibly intelligent and wise. Because she intended to meet King Salomon and test his wisdom, she embarked on a long journey through Asia and Africa, with her train and camels, at a time when travelling was not as easy as it is today. She brought many gifts to Salomon, including spices and jewels, which is a testimony of how wealthy her reign was. Salomon welcomed her with pomp and splendour. The Queen of Sheba challenged him with a number of riddles to test his wisdom. Being satisfied with the answers he gave, she attested that his wisdom was God-given, and she subsequently returned to her land. Both Salomon and the Queen of Sheba are mentioned in the Bible, but while King Salomon is celebrated, the Queen of Sheba is often forgotten and her existence is questioned.

Dido, founder and Queen of Carthage.

Dido, Queen of Carthage, is well known because she appears in the Aeneid, in which she dies because of Aeneas’ deception, and she is also portrayed negatively, but less is known about the fact that she was a courageous and highly intelligent lady, so much so that she founded her own reign. She was originally a Princess from the region of Phoenicia, an area located in the Levant. She was the daughter of King Belus and she is also known as Elissa. Dido was married to a man named Sychaeus, and she loved him deeply. Dido’s brother, Pygmalion, became the King of Phoenicia, and he was a greedy and treacherous man: he envied the wealth of Elissa’s husband, Sychaeus. Dido tried to warn her husband against the King’s cruelty, and although Sychaeus followed her counsel and tried to be careful, eventually the King murdered him and stole his money. After her beloved husband died, Dido was in despair. She managed to hide a small part of her husband’s wealth, but she started to fear for her own safety. The King had many opponents among the nobility and the population: Dido assembled all of them and devised a plan to flee the country. At night, they all sailed from Phoenicia. Dido was so clever that she knew that the men of the King would have followed them, and so, she came up with an idea to safely escape them. Knowing the King was after her wealth, she packed caskets and boxes with items of no value, in a way that it resembled a treasure. When the men of the King reached her ships, she pretended to give up and handed them the fake treasure. They took the fake treasure and let her go, and this is how she managed to flee.

There was yet another occasion in which Dido showed how astute she was. After a journeying through the Mediterranean, the ships finally arrived to the coasts of North Africa, where Dido decided to settle and to start her new reign. She negotiated with the local leaders and asked them to sell her a piece of coastal land. They agreed that she would have taken as much land as a cowhide could cover. Dido was so clever that she took a cowhide and she cut it into thin slices: she then tied the slices together, like in a long string, and used it to surround a promontory near the coast. This is how she founded Carthage. The hill was named Byrsa, meaning ‘skin’ or ‘leather’ in Greek, a reference to the cowhide used to enclose the piece of land.

Emilia Bassano, too, was erased from history, and you will find out more by reading the book!

Works cited

Boccaccio, G. (2011). On famous women. (G.A. Guarino, Ed & Transl.). New York: Italica Press.

De Pizan, C. (1999). The book of the city of ladies. (R. Brown-Grant, Ed.). Penguin UK.

Preorder The Real Shakespeare here.