British women served at the same guns with their husbands, and during a contest of many hours, never shrank from danger, but animated all around them.
—Admiral Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, reporting on the Battle of Algiers
"Not all women living in naval vessels disembarked when the crowds of prostitutes were sent ashore shortly before the ships sailed. From the late seventeenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, it was customary for wives of warrant officers to go to sea. A warrant officer was assigned to a particular ship “in constant employ,” unlike both commissioned officers and seamen, who were signed onto a vessel only for a single commission, and who were often transferred to another ship before the commission was completed. A warrant officer and his wife might continue to live in a ship even when she was taken out of commission.
The wives of the ancient triumvirate of warrant officers—the boatswain, the gunner, and the carpenter—went to sea as a matter of course. So did wives of the purser and the master, who associated with the commissioned officers on the quarterdeck, as well as those of lower rank: the cooper, the sailmaker, and the cook. Petty officers—men who were selected from among the able seamen to direct the less skilled—and a few seamen, usually experienced men who made the navy their career, also sometimes brought their wives to sea.
The ROMAN THEATRE OF ORANGE (Vaucluse, France) is the best preserved Roman theatre in Europe.
Built in the 1st century AD, it served the Roman colony of Arausio which was founded in 40 BC. The stage, which is 61 meters (200 ft) long and raised about one meter from the ground, is backed by a 37-meter-high (121 ft) wall whose height has been preserved completely. It is decorated with low reliefs commemorating the establishment of the Pax Romana, the central niche contains a monumental statue of the emperor Augustus. Mime, pantomime, poetry readings were the dominant forms of entertainment. Today, it is still used as its former function, primarily for opera and plays, alongside its use as a tourist spot.
"The King [Edward IV] was wedded to Elisabeth Gray [Elizabeth Woodville], widow, the which Sir John Gray that was her husband was slain at York field in king Harry's party, and the same Elisabeth was daughter to the Lord Rivers, and the wedding was privately in a secret place, the first day of May the year above said [May 1, 1464]"
The Workworth's Chronicle
"The trade in women was a fundamental component of the global slave trade. Markets from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia were stocked with women who had been uprooted from their homelands, their value determined by a complex calculus of youth, beauty, and perceived exoticism that reflected the vast geographic reach of the trading networks." — Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas (2018), edited by Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris
ALEXANDER (2004, dir. Oliver Stone)