The Cambrian Women Dying by Suicide

From the Getty Museum record

According to a legend catalogued by Boccaccio in Concerning Famous and Noble Women, a baggage train became the final battleground in the war between the Cimbrians (a Germanic people) and the Romans. Their men having been defeated, the remaining Cimbrian women created a stockade out of the carts and prepared to use swords, sticks, and rocks as weapons. Upon realizing that they could not hope to defeat the immense Roman army (indeed, in the image a series of helmets extends endlessly into the background) and after failing to establish a peace treaty, the women decided to end their lives and those of their children to preserve their freedom. Their pitiful bodies hang from the trees in the forest that was the location of their last stand. Though described as an episode from Antiquity, the artist of this image has decided to contemporize the clothing and setting, making it more engaging for the sixteenth-century viewer.