Why did Xena head East?
[02] After Caesar tried to execute her in DESTINY (36/212), why did Xena head east? Why did she not hang around the known world, taking revenge on Caesar, or at least killing Romans (as she did ten years later in THE DELIVERER [50/304] and WHEN IN ROME… [62/316])? Why did she head off into a strange and remote country? What made her think she could survive there? [03] The answer is in Steve Richey’s excellent article “The Horse Nomads of Asia, the Real Amazons, and THE DEBT”, (Whoosh! #23), where he points out that women in nomadic tribes enjoyed a status not found in the ‘settled’ world, due to the fact that a woman could ride and fight on horseback as well as a man. For Xena, who at this time was unable to walk properly, but formidable in many ways on horseback, this was the obvious and only choice. “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” [04] Another possible explanation is that Xena was a fugitive with no troops left, hated all over Greece, and would not have lasted a week in a Roman-domin
