t, they have always become most excellent and famous in no
common way, as one might easily demonstrate by an endless number of
examples. Everyone, indeed, knows what they are all, without exception,
worth in household matters; besides which, in connection with war,
likewise, it is known who were Camilla, Harpalice, Valasca, Tomyris,
Penthesilea, Molpadia, Orizia, Antiope, Hippolyta, Semiramis, Zenobia,
and, finally, Mark Antony's Fulvia, who so often took up arms, as the
historian Dion tells us, to defend her husband and herself. But in
poetry, also, they have been truly marvellous, as Pausanias relates.
Corinna was very celebrated as a writer of verse, and Eustathius makes
mention in his "Catalogue of the Ships of Homer"--as does Eusebius in
his book of "Chronicles"--of Sappho, a young woman of great renown, who,
in truth, although she was a woman, was yet such that she surpassed by a
great measure all the eminent writers of that age. And Varro, on his
part, gives extraordinary but well-deserved praise to Erinna, who, with
her three hundred verses, challenged the fame of the brightest light of
Greece, and counterbalanced with her one small volume, called the
"Elecate," the ponderous "Iliad" of the great Homer. Aristophanes
celebrates Carissena, a votary of the same profession, as a woman of
great excellence and learning; and the same may be said for Teano,
Merone, Polla, Elpe, Cornificia, and Telesilla, to the last of whom, in
honour of her marvellous talents, a most beautiful statue was set up in
the Temple of Venus.

Passing by the numberless other writers of verse, do we not read that
Arete was the teacher of the learned Aristippus in the difficulties of
philosophy, and that Lastheneia and Assiotea were disciples of the
divine Plato? In the art of oratory, Sempronia and Hortensia, women of
Rome, were very famous. In grammar, so Athenaeus relates, Agallis was
without an equal. And as for the prediction of the future, whether we
class this with astrology or with magic, it is enough to say that
Themis, Cassandra, and Manto had an extraordinary renown in their times;
as did Isis and Ceres in matters of agriculture, and the Thespiades in
the whole field of the sciences.

But in no other age, for certain, has it been possible to see this
better than in our own, wherein women have won the highest fame not only
in the study of letters--as has been done by Signora Vittoria del Vasto,
Signora Veronica Gambara, Signora Cateri