DE MVLIERIBVS CLARIS Concerning Famous Women

A woodcut depicts an architectural interior. On the left, a group of women gathers around a seated queen. On the right, a group of men stand near a tall column topped with a statue of a warrior holding a banner.

ON SEMIRAMIS, QUEEN OF THE ASSYRIANS. Chapter Two.

Semiramis was a distinguished and very ancient Queen of the Assyrians. Antiquity has obscured from which parents she drew her lineage, though the ancients, in their fondness for fable, claim she was the daughter of Neptunus Neptune, whom they erroneously believed to be the son of Saturnus Saturn and the god of the sea. Even if this is not to be believed, it remains an argument that she was born of noble parents. She married Ninus, the illustrious king of the Assyrians, and bore him an only son, also named Ninus. Indeed, after all of Asia and finally the Bactrians had been subdued by Ninus, he died by the strike of an arrow while she was still a young woman and their son was a mere boy. Considering it unsafe to entrust the reins of such a great and rising empire to so tender an age, she was of such a great spirit that she dared to assume the role of ruler, using art and talent to govern the nations that her fierce husband had subdued with arms and coerced with force. For, by a certain feminine guile, she devised a great deception to deceive the army after her husband's death. Semiramis was very similar in facial features to her son; both had smooth cheeks, her feminine voice was not discordant with a boy’s at that age, and in bodily stature, she differed little or nothing from her son. Aided by these facts, and to ensure that she would not be hindered in the process by the exposure of her fraud, she covered her head with a tiara and concealed her arms and legs with garments. Since this was until then unusual for the Assyrians, she acted so that the novelty of the habit would not offer cause for wonder to the locals, and she ensured the whole population adopted similar attire. And thus, once the spouse of Ninus, pretending to be her own son and a boy, she managed the royal majesty with wondrous diligence.