They say history is written by the winners, but that's not entirely true - or at least, it is not the whole truth. History is written by the literate, and even the literate tend to focus on telling the stories of people who look and sound like them. Given that literacy was a privileged reserved primarily to men generally and men of means in particular, this means that most of history has shamefully ignored most of the deeds of women. From entrepreneurs to inventors to adventurers to leaders, women's agency has been diminished and erased at every turn.

This means that where women were able to break through cultural, social and financial taboos against participating in public life, we often don't hear about it - and in no field of human endeavor is this more clear than war. Female soldiers have been considered such an aberration that some nations still insist on banning women from the military, or at least from specific combat roles. However, there have always been women who fight. Simply staying alive sometimes required it. In other cases, women disguised themselves or leveraged privilege, smarts or sheer determination to break through a glass ceiling and serve - and they've been doing it since antiquity. What sort of warrior from those times would you be?