Writer: Fiorella Hossain Bhuiyan
One of the ways the societal structure of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece can be summarized is by saying that in those days, misogyny and oppressive patriarchy were badges worn with pride and honor. They were flaunted accordingly as well, in ways as gruesome as they were unspeakable. Being born a woman was nothing short of a curse. If you were born a female, your cognitive worth was considered to be a little higher than that of the insects crawling on the dirt. Your body, however, was invaluable in the sense where it would be the equivalent of currency.
The roles assigned to women back then were repulsively simple: get married to strengthen your father’s connections with his political and business allies. After you were married off to a suitor only your father had the right to choose for you, you were to be a slave at your husband’s feet. Your obligations were to look pretty for your grotesque abomination of a husband. You were to silently abide by whatever hell he implemented on you physically, verbally and emotionally.
After you bore his children, you were to completely fade in the background while you raised them. You would raise a son to be a reflection of his father. You would raise a daughter to pass on your fate. Most girls were married off at ridiculously young ages, some of them being prepubescent. There was a way out of the matrimony, of course. If you disobeyed your overlord, if he deemed you unfit for the position of his wife and the mother of his children or if he simply grew bored of you, you would either be killed or sold into slavery. Being murdered was likely the more preferred choice for these women.
Needless to say, women were not allowed to own businesses and property. They were not allowed to have any part in making political and economic decisions. Their access to the world outside of the hellfire in their homes was impossibly limited, restricted in many cases. They were educated only until they could be viewed in a higher regard than farm animals. If we were to recount all the horrors women had to unilaterally and unwillingly experience in those times, we could write an entire novel. What is written above does a decent job at depicting the morbidly grim picture.
Generations went by and nothing changed. The women felt that they neither had the courage nor the strength to fight back. They had begun to intrinsically believe that such was a life they had no choice but to live, as excruciating and maddening it could be. They had yielded themselves as slaves to oppressive patriarchy. There was not a speck of hope in their hearts for justice and freedom.
That was before Otrera came along.
At first glance, Otrera seemed to be as helpless as every other woman in her town. She cooked, she cleaned and she serviced her husband the way everybody else did. She seemed to be silent and submissive in a similar fashion as the other housewives. But that wasn’t Otrera’s true nature at all. No, no, Otrera’s silence was of the menacing kind. The way in which she moved hinted at a murderous intent abysmally deep and twisted, like a poisonous vine encrusted with thorns. The very air she exhaled felt like a deadly threat. One could possibly even see the kindles of a roaring fire in Otrera’s eyes. Those were eyes of demonic rage- of hate, of disgust and of a vengeful sorrow.
Otrera never understood why things had to be the way they were. Whatever misogynistic ideals were attempted to be instilled into her, she regurgitated it all out. She refused to believe that women were any less worthy than men. In fact, she believed that civilization had no requirement of a male at all. She believed that not only could women take on every single aspect of a man’s role in society, she also believed that women could do everything better than a man could ever dream to do. She saw the silent agony and suffering encapsulating her. She saw it all and she took it all in. She never barricaded this widespread torment from her heart. No, her heart was the furthest thing from fragile. She hardened it even further, her fury and desperation fuelling her determination to bring a stop to an injustice which had terrorized their land for far too long to be let on.
When she had completed her chores for the day and her husband was tucked away for the night, Otrera surreptitiously crept out to the woods with her husband’s sword and bow and arrows. She had always watched the soldiers of the town practicing for wartime, in secret. She learned their tactics and strategies by heart and she now mimicked their bodily movements, her targets being the tree trunks around her. Night after night, she practiced. Night after night, she grew stronger. She shifted her focus from trees to moving animals to birds in quick flight. She practiced and fought against whatever beast in the woods dared to challenge her. Soon, Otrera became confident in her abilities and rightfully so. She moved like the wind on a summer night, as stealthily and silently and swiftly as a shadow. Her agility and strength dared to challenge that of the strongest male warriors. Like a ghost, she could seemingly materialize out of thin air and strike her prey down. And just as quickly as she had appeared, she could remove all traces of her mangled target and set off in search of another one.
Otrera finally became as strong as she deemed was rudimentarily necessary; although, she never stopped trying to learn more and more. She knew that the women in her town were just as furious and exasperated as she was. Their aggravation and accumulating fatigue solely needed a catalyst and Otrera, with fierce enthusiasm, would volunteer to be one. She then rounded up the women in the town and trained them night after night, just as she had. Eventually, all of these women transformed from silent housewives to vicious warriors. They all became just as strong as, if not more than, Otrera. She had organized her own army, a means by which she can finally deliver justice which had been due for too long. She was finally going to deconstruct a long-standing, repulsive belief system and build a new one from scratch.
One night, while her husband was asleep, Otrera felt that she had bided her time long enough. She took her sword and slashed her husband to death. Her followers had been on standby in their homes, waiting for her signal. When Otrera gave the signal, the women all murdered their husbands. The town was quickly ravaged by chaos and utter pandemonium. Whoever tried to stand up to those women was cut down in a flash. When circumstances became dire, soldiers and warriors were dispatched to contain these beasts. And yet again, the women brought down these brute, strong men the same way they would swat a horsefly to death. They were too overpowering for the townsmen to try and retaliate against. Therefore, they all fled to neighboring areas. They spread the news far and wide, the story terrifying anyone who heard of them. They were right to be bone-chillingly horrified; the women were absolutely ruthless. After generations of pent-up uproar had exploded, the women knew no mercy. Macerated and castrated bodies, severed heads and amputated limbs were not even an iota of all the things which had happened.
However, the neighboring cities knew better than to underestimate Otrera. Soon, a well-assembles army was marching straight towards Otrera and her warriors. Even Otrera knew that she was cornered. She was proud but not daft. She and her followers were definitely not strong enough to tackle an entire army. She knew she was compelled to stand down. Thus, she and her followers retreated to a region beyond the Black Sea. They took with them their loot and male slaves and they made an oath to come back and vanquish the land they had suffered at the hands of.
Otrera continued to train harder than ever, her warriors following suit. Soon, they were annexing entire cities and towns as if it were child’s play. They had grown stronger, both in terms of willpower and combat. Whenever they took control of an area, they made sure to kill all males so that word of their objectives did not spread. This way, no city or town was ever able to predict Otrera’s arrival and the horrors which befell them. They had no other choice but to completely surrender their lands to Otrera’s forces.
They became notoriously fearsome around the world as the Amazons. Otrera was knows as the queen of the Amazons; an ever-growing group of violent desperados who serve to deliver justice in their own convoluted and bizarre ways. With the aid of their male slaves and a neighboring male tribe, the Amazons reproduced. The strongest male children were given to the male tribe while the weak ones were left on rocks in the woods to die and rot. All of the female children were kept and raised to become savage warriors like their predecessors. Thus, Otrera’s legacy was kept alive.
You wouldn’t find many stories about Otrera in the ancient archives. She was simply a madwoman, after all. A rogue beast who had caused despair, corruption and upheaval during her time. Who would write stories about a monstrosity who had annihilated the peace of her land?
But then again, sometimes madwomen have voices of reason far superior to that of an educated male. Pioneers are not remembered by who they were but what they had accomplished. One such brave and relentless pioneer was Otrera, the maddest woman of them all.
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