For they abhorred all dainty living, and used to harden their minds and bodies with toil and endurance.

They put away all the softness and lightmindedness of women, and inured their womanish spirit to masculine ruthlessness.

They sought, moreover, so zealously to be skilled in warfare, that they might have been thought to have unsexed themselves.
Those especially, who had either force of character or tall and comely persons, used to enter on this kind of life.

These women, therefore (just as if they had forgotten their natural estate, and preferred sternness to soft words), offered war rather than kisses, and would rather taste blood than busses, and went about the business of arms more than that of amours.

They devoted those hands to the lance which they should rather have applied to the loom.