Female Characters In The Story Of Canduales And Sardis

One of the first stories presented by Herodotus in the Histories features a powerful female character and her character plays a crucial role in the story of Candaules and Gyges. In this story, Candaules acts wrongly in two manners. First, he “conceived a passion for his own wife” (1.8). Second, he forced his bodyguard, Gyges, to see his wife (who remains nameless) naked. When sneaking a peak at the queen, however, Gyges does not go unnoticed. The queen, feeling ashamed, for “with the Lydians…it is thought highly indecent even for a man to be seen naked,” devised a plan for revenge upon her husband (1.10). She manipulates Gyges and gives him an ultimatum: he can either kill Candaules and take over the throne, or kill himself. Gyges decides that

While Xerxes was in Sardis, he fell in love with his brother’s wife. After many failed attempts to seduce Masistes’ wife, Xerxes decided that the best way to get her would be to marry his son to their daughter. However, after the marriage took place, Xerxes “forgot the mother and transferred his affections to the daughter” (9.108). Xerxes managed to seduce Artaynte, and was very pleased with her, so he told Artaynte that she could have anything she fancied. When she requested the robe that Xerxes’ wife, Amestris, had made for him, he is forced to give it to her, though he tried to dissuade her. Amestris found out about this and became livid, directing her anger towards Masistes’ wife, whom she deemed responsible, and “consequently plotted her destruction” (9.110). As revenge, Amestris had the breasts, nose, ears, lips, and tongue cut off of Masistes’ wife. In response, Masistes began planning a revolt against Xerxes, but Xerxes “discovered his purpose and sent an armed force in pursuit, which…killed him together with his sons” (9.113). Xerxes’ inability to keep it in his pants ultimately resulted in the destruction of brothers’ entire

In the article Persian Gender Relations as Historical Motives in Herodotus, Boedeker claims that in the Histories, love is a madness only experienced by men. She then states that Herodotus uses eros nine times and “each time the erotic impulse is associated with a king or tyrant, is wrongly directed, and has disastrous, usually large-scale, consequences” (Boedeker 2011: 231). Some examples of this seen in the stories of Canduales and Gyges, Xerxes and Artaynte, and Cambyses. In the case of Candaules, the consequence was his own death and the loss of the Heraclid’s power. As for Xerxes, there are multiple consequences for his “madness;” one consequence is the mutilation of Masistes’ wife and another is the eventual destruction of his empire. Lastly, Cambyses went “completely out of his mind” (3.38). This argument by Boedeker makes the men in these stories responsible for their own demise; however, Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg makes the point that Artaynte’s “adventure is frequently used to demonstrate the weakness of Xerxes’ character,” and the same can be said for the other female characters in relation to Candaules and Cambyses (Sancisi-Weerdenburg 1983: 27). The use of female characters as a way to demonstrate the weakness of their male counterparts shows that the