On Famous Women

Nevertheless, because women count beauty among their chief gifts, and have already attained much glory through the undiscriminating judgment of mortals because of it, it is not superfluous to include beauty among their distinctions—as if it were a preeminent brightness original: "fulgor precipuus." Boccaccio often uses light metaphors to describe physical beauty and worldly fame.—both here and in the accounts that follow.

She Referring to Eve, the first woman. was made a citizen of Paradise by right of both her origin and her residence; she was clothed in a splendor unknown to us while she, together with her husband, eagerly enjoyed the delights of that place. The envious enemy of her happiness The serpent or Satan. instilled in her mind, through wicked persuasion, the idea that she could attain even greater glory by going against the single law imposed upon her by God. Because she gave credit to this enemy—with a female levity original: "levitate feminea." This reflects the common medieval view that women were more easily swayed or less rational than men. greater than was fitting for her or for us—and because she foolishly thought she would ascend to higher things, she first drew her flexible husband into her own opinion with a certain flattering suggestion. Then, acting against the law regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they tasted the fruit with rash daring. By this act, they thrust themselves and all their future descendants out from rest and eternity into anxious labors and a miserable death; they were cast out from a delightful homeland into thorns, clods of earth, and rocks.

For when the flashing light in which they walked departed, and they were rebuked by their blessed Creator and stripped of all their finery, they were driven out as exiles from that place of delights into the fields of Hebron A city in the Judean mountains; in medieval tradition, it was often cited as the place where Adam and Eve lived after the Fall.. There, this remarkable woman—famous for these deeds—became the first (as some believe) to assist her husband as he turned the earth with hoes, while she took up the distaff A tool used in spinning wool or flax. In art and literature, the distaff is a primary symbol of domestic womanhood. to spin. She frequently experienced the pains of childbirth, and her soul was equally squeezed by the narrow anxieties of the deaths of her sons and grandsons. Suffering miserably from cold and heat, and other inconveniences, she finally reached old age and death, exhausted by her labors.

Semiramis was a distinguished and most ancient queen of the Assyrians. However, the vastness of time has obscured the parents from whom she drew her lineage, except for a fable that pleases the ancients, which claims she was the daughter of Neptune The Roman god of the sea.—whom they erroneously believed to be the son of Saturn and the god of the sea. Although this should not be believed, it is nonetheless evidence that she was born of noble parents. She was married to Ninus The mythical founder of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire., the illustrious king of the Assyrians, and bore him an only son, also named Ninus.

Indeed, after Ninus had subdued all of Asia and finally the Bactrians original: "Bacheris" (Bactris). An ancient Iranian people located in modern-day Afghanistan and Uzbekistan., he died from the strike of an arrow. Since she was still a young woman and her son was a mere boy, she judged it unsafe to commit the reins of such a grand Eastern empire to such a tender age. She possessed such a great spirit that what a fierce man [would do] with arms...