Paduan captain, who, after defending valorously a post on the walls of Bassano, a fortress in the march of Tresvina, finding the place suddenly taken by treachery, and her husband made prisoner and put to death by the tyrant Ezelinus, and perceiving she had no means left to escape falling a victim to the brutal passion of that ravisher, who was furiously enamoured with her beauty; she threw herself out of the window of an upper room; but being afterwards, against her inclination, cured of the bruises she received, and enduring with anguish and regret under that oppressive barbarian, the shame of having been forced, she, to relieve the bitterness of her grief, and to extricate herself from continuing in a state of violation to her conjugal faith, deprived herself of life in the sepulchre of her husband, which for the purpose of doing it there she had caused to be opened. We could instance many other women of heroic courage, and particularize the occasions on which they exerted it; but, to avoid the recital appearing prolix or tedious, we shall omit the relation of them. XLV. The reason of my not having yet mentioned the Amazons, which is a case so applicable to this matter, is, because I think it will be better to treat of them separately. Some authors, in opposition to many others who affirm it, deny their existence; but without engaging in this dispute, we must allow, that much fable has been mixed with the history of the Amazons; such as that they destroyed all their male children; that they lived in a total state of separation from the other sex, and only consorted with them once a year for the sake of becoming pregnant. Of a piece with these, are the tales of their encounters with Hercules and Theseus, and the succour given to afflicted Troy by the fierce Penthesilea, and perhaps that also, of the visit of queen Talestris to Alexander. But with all this, against the testimony and credit of so many antient authors, it would be rash to deny, that there was a formidable body of warlike women in Asia, who went by the name of Amazons. XLVI. But in case this should be denied, in lieu of the Asiatic Amazonians they deprive us of, we should be supplied with another set, drawn from the other three parts of the globe, ready to stand forth and take their places. The Spaniards discovered American ones, navigating armed, on the river Maranon, which is the largest in the world, and to which, for this reason, they gave the name of the river of the Amazons. There are some of them in Africa, in a province of the empire of Monomotapa: and, it is said, they are the best soldiers in all that territory; there are not wanting geographers, who made Monomotapa a distinct state from the country these warlike women inhabit.