‘Making a Murderess’: Gender Bending Dracontius’ viragines

In the late fifth- and early sixth-century Latin poetry of Dracontius complex female characters abound. This article analyses Dracontius’ use of the word virago in reference to three women, all murderesses: Medea, the mother-cum-murderess, who kills Glauce, her husband’s betrothed and Glauce’s father Creon, before stabbing her own children to death; Clytemnestra, the mother of Orestes, who conspires with her lover Aegisthus to murder Orestes’ father Agamemnon; and Judith, the biblical heroine, who saves Israel by decapitating the evil general and tyrant Holofernes. It argues that Dracontius’ use of the word virago to refer to these women is a distinct attempt to gender the act of murder, as it is only by these characters’ murderous acts that they become viragines .