Artemon (Ancient Greek: Ἀρτέμων) of Magnesia was a writer of ancient Greece known only as the author of a work on the virtues of women, the title of which is generally translated as Accounts of Deeds Done Courageously by Women (περὶ τῶν κατ' ἀρὴτν γυναιξὶ πεπραγματευμένων), but also sometimes Tales of Feminine Virtue or Stories of the Virtuous Exploits of Women.
We know from later authors that the 4th-century Sophist Sopater of Apamea made an abstract of this work; both the original and the abstract are lost. Our knowledge of Artemon comes almost exclusively from one reference in the Bibliotheca of Photios I of Constantinople, in which he describes Sopater's abstract. Some scholars have suggested this work is one of the sources of the (still extant) anonymous work Women Intelligent and Courageous in Warfare.
Later scholars have used the existence of this Artemon's work, as well as that of a few others, and some comments by, for example, Plutarch in his Gaius Marius, implying that it would be cliche for him to rehash "overdone" stories of women's accomplishments, that such books were at least somewhat commonplace in ancient Greece. Other scholars point out that we should not assume that Artemon's and related works uniformly portrayed their subjects in a positive light based on modern assumptions about what these titles would signify, as authors of this period were fascinated by paradoxography, and books praising subjects generally assumed to be not praiseworthy were themselves not uncommon.
References
- Turner, Martha (2020). The Gospel According to Philip: The Sources and Coherence of an Early Christian Collection. Brill Publishers. p. 94. ISBN 9789004439672. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Edmonds, John Maxwell, ed. (1922). "Sappho". Lyra Graeca: Being the Remains of All the Greek Lyric Poets from Eumelus to Timotheus Excepting Pindar. Vol. 1. Heineman. p. 179. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Adams, Sean A. (2013). The Genre of Acts and Collected Biography. Cambridge University Press. p. 94. ISBN 9781107041042. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Photios I of Constantinople, Bibliotheca p. 103 a;
- Gera, Deborah (1997). "The Genre of DM". Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus. Brill Publishers. p. 34. ISBN 9789004329881. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- McLeod, Glenda (1991). "A Fickle Thing is Woman". Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance. University of Michigan Press. p. 19. ISBN 9780472102068. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Westermann, Anton (1839). Paradoxographoi, scriptores rerum mirabilium graeci. Braunschweig. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Morton, James (2010). "Polyaenus in Context: The Strategica and Greek Identity in the Second Sophistic Age". In Brodersen, Kai (ed.). Polyaenus: New Studies. Verlag Antike. p. 124. ISBN 9783938032398. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Engels, Johannes (2005). "Ἄνδρες ἔνδοξοι, or 'men of high reputation' in Strabo's Geography". In Dueck, Daniela; Lindsay, Hugh; Pothecary, Sarah (eds.). Strabo's Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia. Cambridge University Press. p. 129. ISBN 9781139448437. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- Plutarch, Gaius Marius 243d
- McInerney, Jeremy (2003). "Plutarch's Manly Women". In Sluiter, Ineke; Rosen, Ralph (eds.). Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity. Brill Publishers. p. 326. ISBN 9789047400738. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Artemon (5)". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 377.