The wounds and slashing of their bodies.

[**The following takes place during Gaius Marius’ campaign against an alliance of Germanic tribes that threatened Rome during the earlier part of his military career. In it, we find that the women often fought at least as fiercely as their men, staying behind the battle lines and shouting encouragement until their forces were in retreat, at which point they took up arms and fought everyone – their men fleeing the battle and the Romans that pursued them.**] >Those that got safe over, not daring to make head, were slain by the Romans, as they fled to their camp and wagons; where the women meeting them with swords and hatchets, and making a hideous outcry, set upon those that fled as well as those that pursued, the one as traitors, the other as enemies, and mixing themselves with the combatants, with their bare arms pulling away the Romans’ shields, and laying hold of their swords, endured the wounds and slashing of their bodies to the very last with undaunted resolution. _______________________ **Source:** Plutarch, John Dryden, and Arthur Hugh Clough. "Caius Marius." *Plutarch's Lives*. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 562. Print.