Lamentations of their women

Lamentations of their women is the phrase Conan uses to define the best thing in life, delivered as a defiant answer to a Hyrkanian general while he is still chained as a Pit fighter. The expression crystallizes his warrior ethos of confronting enemies face to face and reveling in their defeat, and it becomes a recurring motif that links his early enslavement to his later stoic grief and his father's teachings on steel and the forging of the heart.

The Answer in the Yurt

Conan spoke these words in a Hyrkanian yurt, where he sat cross-legged on a low, circular dais in the centre of the room, clad in a warm tunic but chained as before. A Hyrkanian general had posed a question to the assembled company, asking what each man considered the best of life. A small, elderly man from Khitai, a land a year's journey to the east, had murmured that life was best when a man could boast a love of learning and had acquired wisdom and an appreciation for fine poetry. The general shook his head at this answer, then caught the intense gaze of Conan. With ill-concealed amusement, he asked what the young barbarian giant had to say. Conan's mouth twitched in a shadow of a smile as he replied, "The best of life is to confront your enemy face to face, to see his hot blood spill upon the earth, and to hear the lamentations of his women!"

The general's dark eyes lit with approval. He turned to Toghrul, Conan's owner, and warned him that the Pit had not broken the spirit of his champion, nor sapped his will, and that he should beware lest this young tiger some day turn and rend him. Toghrul only chuckled and replied, "He wears chains so that he cannot."

The Ethos of the Pit

This answer was not mere bravado but the distilled philosophy of a man who had survived the brutal life of a Pit fighter. Conan had grimly discovered that the life of a Pit fighter was not quite the worst of lives. To face an adversary and kill him was to enjoy, for a fleeting moment at least, the illusion of freedom. It was, in a way, to be a whole man again. The gruelling torment of the Wheel of Pain had dehumanized him, but the fierce battles of the Pit restored something of manhood and self-love. The frenzy of the audience and the adulation of the crowd were even more intoxicating than the strong ale, the generous portions of food, and the praise of his master. The expression thus captures the very essence of what made his enslaved existence bearable: the fleeting, violent assertion of selfhood through combat.

The Father's Teaching and the Riddle of Steel

The sentiment behind the phrase is rooted in the wisdom Conan received from his father, Corin, who had taught him the riddle of steel. Corin had told the boy that before a man is worthy to bear a sword of steel in battle, he must learn its riddle and understand the ways of steel. He had said that in all the world a man can trust no one, neither man nor woman nor beast, neither spirit nor demon nor god, but that he can trust a blade of well-forged steel. Corin had also taught that the heart of a man is like a piece of unworked iron, which must be hammered by adversity and forged by suffering and the challenges flung by the thoughtless gods, nigh unto the point of breaking. It must be purged and hardened in the fires of conflict, purified and shaped on the anvil of despair and loss. Only when the heart has become as steel will a man be worthy to wield a keen-edged sword in battle and win against his enemies. The lamentations of the enemy's women are the audible proof that the heart has been forged into steel and that the sword has been wielded worthily.

The Motif of Stoic Grief

The phrase also carries a deeper, more personal resonance in Conan's later life, when it is inverted in a moment of profound loss. After the death of Valeria, the woman he loved, Conan stood motionless by her funeral pyre as the fire burned to coals and then to ash, and the night wind scattered the ashes far and wide. His friend Subotai wept for him, explaining to the shaman, "She was a friend to me, but she was everything to him. But he is a Cimmerian and must not weep. So I do weep for him." The shaman nodded as he pondered the diverse ways of men from foreign lands. In this scene, the lamentations that Conan once relished hearing from the women of his defeated enemies become the grief that he himself cannot express. The Cimmerian code forbids him from weeping, so the mourning is performed by his friend on his behalf. The phrase thus traces a full arc: from the triumphant cry of the victor to the silent, internalized sorrow of the one who has lost everything, revealing that the same stoic code that allows a man to savor his enemy's defeat also forbids him from mourning his own loss.

Significance

The expression is a defining statement of Conan's identity as a Cimmerian warrior, encapsulating his values of direct confrontation, physical prowess, and emotional stoicism. It stands in stark contrast to the civilized philosophies represented by the scholar from Khitai, who valued learning and poetry, and it earns the approval of the Hyrkanian general, who recognizes in the young barbarian an unbroken spirit. The phrase also serves as a narrative motif that connects Conan's formative years as a chained Pit fighter to his later role as a free man and avenger, and ultimately to the tragic depths of his capacity for love and loss. It is both a declaration of his warrior creed and a subtle commentary on the cost of that creed, as the very stoicism that defines him also denies him the release of tears.