Ὡς νῷν ἀπεχθὴς δυσκλεής τ’ ἀπώλετο.
Soph. Antig. 49.
“Remember, how he perished odious and infamous!”
XXVII. “Nor dauntless Manuela be unsung * *
Nor thou, Burita, sprung from noblest bed.”
These heroines were by no means singular in their courage and constancy, at that eventful era. Blanca is, I trust, no inaccurate type of that multitude of heroic women who sprang up in all parts of Spain during the Peninsular War, who rose superior to the weakness of their sex in the face of invasion and its attendant horrors, and who resembled more the Antigones than the Ismenes of ancient history. It was theirs to falsify the familiar reproach:
——γυνὴ γὰρ τἄλλα μὲν φόβου πλέα,
Κακή τ’ ἐς ἀλκὴν, καὶ σίδηρον εἰσορᾷν.
Eurip. Med. 266.
“For Woman is full of fear, and weak for the combat and at sight of steel.” The heroic plebeian Maid of Zaragoza, and the not less heroic patrician, Burita, were not of Ismene’s way of thinking, which is nevertheless expressed with beautiful feminine propriety (for common occasions):—