Me: I wonder if the specifics of how we talk about female rulers has changed in the past 2,000 years

Dio, writing about Boudicca: she was very big, actually too big, and her voice was very rough and bad, and also her hair was messy, which I didn’t like

(I know Dio never actually saw Boudicca or heard her speak! That, for me, makes it even more telling that he went out of his way to describe her rough, unpleasant voice, which has apparently been an easy path to criticizing/discrediting prominent women since forever)

(And he’s also working within the same rock and a hard place as Romans writing about Zenobia - they have to pass her off as being feminine enough to be loathsome as a leader, but masculine enough that her victories against the Empire aren’t totally emasculating)