Quote Originally Posted by pseudocaesar
I think they played a more inspirational role, if the woman you loved was in the front line you would fight a hell of a lot harder wouldnt you. Same could be said for jealousy, the males would want to outperform the females. I read in Tacitus' The Germania an interesting thing, the women went to the battle and rallied the men by flashing their breasts and behinds at the warriors while shouting encouragement.
Um, actually the exact opposite argument was used to not allow women into the front line in modern armies. If women are standing next to men then the men will suffer from a slight sense of over-protectivness and their battle ability will be hindered. Personally I think that can be solved with uni-sex training, but I imagine that was often an argument in our era as well.

Anyway, thats neither here nor there as social mobility was nothing like it is today, both in the sense of class and gender. Women were expected to stay at home at look after the bairns, but when your home is on the back of a horse I imagine that this often turned into a moot point.

As to women appearing at the battlefield in auxillary roles (such as encouragement), well that is quite obvious once its understood that an army must have had a large supply train, which would by necessity have included large numbers of women. Obviously a society that placed a lot of merit on individual martial prowess would look to encourage that in anyway, including women acting as "cheerleaders".

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