Editing Semiramis (section)

==In later traditions==
{{Quote box|fontsize=100%|quote=<poem>
She is Semiramis, of whom we read
That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse;
She held the land which now the Sultan rules.”
</poem>|source=&nbsp;—Dante's ''[[Divine Comedy]]'', Canto V, lines 60 to 62}}

Although negative portrayals did exist, generally, Semiramis was viewed positively before the rise of [[Christianity]].<ref name="AE2014"/><ref name="AG2006">{{cite book|author=Julia M. Asher-Greve|editor=Steven Winford Holloway|title=Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2XEMAQAAMAAJ|year=2006|publisher=Sheffield Phoenix Press|isbn=978-1-905048-37-3|chapter=From 'Semiramis of Babylon' to ’Semiramis of Hammersmith’}}</ref> During the Middle Ages, she became associated with promiscuity and lustfulness. One story claimed that she had an incestuous relationship with her son, justified it by passing a law to legitimize parent-child marriages, and invented the [[chastity belt]] to deter any romantic rivals before he eventually killed her.<ref name="Archibald2001">{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Archibald|title=Incest and the Medieval Imagination|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qfqWgZETHdQC|date=24 May 2001|publisher=OUP Oxford|isbn=978-0-19-154085-1|pages=91–93}}</ref><ref name="McLeod1991">{{cite book|author=Glenda McLeod|title=Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05L_e9HhnOEC|year=1991|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=0-472-10206-0|page=66}}</ref> This seems to have appeared first in the reign of Augustus in the ''Universal History'' of [[Pompeius Trogus]], which survives only in the later epitome of [[Justin (historian)|Justin]]; the circulation of the story was likely popularized in the fifth century by [[Orosius]] in his universal history, ''Seven Books of History Against the Pagans'', which has been described as an "anti-pagan polemic".<ref name="Archibald2001"/><ref>Orosius, ''Seven Books of History Against the Pagans'', [http://attalus.org/translate/orosius1B.html Book 1]</ref>

In the ''[[Divine Comedy]]'' (''Inferno'' V), Dante places Semiramis among the souls of the lustful in the Second Circle of [[Hell]]. She appears in [[Petrarch]]'s ''[[Triumphs#Triumphus Cupidinis: Triumph of Love|Triumph of Love]]'' (canto III, verse 76). She is one of three women exemplifying "evil love", the other two being [[Byblis]] and [[Myrrha]]. She is included in ''[[De Mulieribus Claris]]'', a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the [[Florence|Florentine]] author [[Giovanni Boccaccio]] that was composed in 1361{{endash}}1362. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.<ref name="Brown_xi">{{cite book |last=Boccaccio |first=Giovanni |author-link=Giovanni Boccaccio |year=2003 |translator=Virginia Brown |title=Famous Women |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |series=I Tatti Renaissance Library |volume=1 |isbn=0-674-01130-9 |page=xi}}</ref> Semiramis always was admired for her martial and political achievements.

Her reputation partly recovered in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. She was included in [[Christine de Pizan]]'s ''[[The Book of the City of Ladies]]'', finished by 1405, and, starting in the fourteenth century, she was commonly found on the [[Nine Worthies| Nine Worthies list for women]].<ref name="Archibald2001"/><ref name="McLeod1991"/>