Warrior Women in Ibn Rushd’s Commentary on Plato’s Republic: Mythico-Barbarian Geography in the Case for Female Guardians, an Unsolved Passage

Abstract

ABSTRACT In his commentary on Plato’s Republic, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) discusses the case for female guardians. Besides following Socrates’s argument for female warriors, which cites the efficiency of female guard dogs, Ibn Rushd introduces an additional argument: that the female capacity for warfare is evident from the inhabitants of certain regions. Unfortunately, the precise formulation of the regions or groups he intends to mention is obscure in the existing manuscripts. Rosenthal translates “the inhabitants of deserts and frontier villages”, Lerner’s translation says “the inhabitants of deserts and the City of Women”. This article aims to analyse these and other translations of this enigmatic passage, which has not yet been the subject of study. Concerning the second region mentioned, it seems that Ibn Rushd could be indicating Northern Spain, but he might also have been alluding to the legendary places at the coldest margins of the then-known world.