Everything about The Amazons totally explained
The
Amazons (in
Greek, ) are a nation of all-female warriors in
Greek mythology.
Herodotus placed them in a region bordering
Scythia in
Sarmatia. Notable queens of the Amazons are
Penthesilea, who participated in the
Trojan War, and her sister
Hippolyte, whose magical girdle was the object of one of the
labours of Hercules. Amazonian raiders were often depicted in battle with Greek warriors in
amazonomachies in classical art .
In
Hellenistic and
Roman era historiography, there are various accounts of Amazon raids in
Asia Minor. The Amazons become associated with various historical peoples throughout
Late Antiquity. From the Early Modern period, their name has become a term for
woman warriors in general. While some regard them as a purely mythical people, others assume an historical foundation for them.
Etymology
This word is probably derived from an
Iranian ethnonym *ha-mazan-, with a meaning "warriors". A connected word is probably
Hesychius of Alexandria's gloss ἁμαζακάραν· πολεμεῖν. Πέρσαι (
hamazakaran: "to make war" (Persian), containing the
Indo-Iranian root
kar- "make" also in
kar-ma).
Among Classical Greeks,
amazon was given a
naive etymology as from
a- (privative) +
mazos, "without
breast", connected with an
etiological tradition that Amazons had their right
breast cut off or
burnt out, so they'd be able to use a bow more freely and throw spears without the physical limitation and obstruction; there's no indication of such a practice in works of art, in which the Amazons are always represented with both breasts, although the right is frequently covered. Other suggested derivations have included:
a- (intensive) +
mazos, breast, "full-breasted";
a- (privative)
masso, touch, "not touching" (men);
maza, a
Circassian word said to signify "moon", has suggested their connection with the worship of a
moon-goddess, perhaps the Asiatic representative of
Artemis. According to John Colarusso, the Circassian word
a-maz(ə)-áh-na, pronounced like the Greek
Amazon (stress on the last syllable), means "mother-of-the-forest", but could also be interpreted as "moon-mother".
Greek mythology
Amazons were said to have lived in
Pontus, which is part of modern day
Turkey near the shore of the
Euxine Sea (the
Black Sea). There they formed an independent kingdom under the government of a queen, often named
Hippolyta ("loose, unbridled mare"). The Amazons were supposed to have founded many towns, amongst them
Smyrna,
Ephesus,
Sinope, and
Paphos. According to the dramatist
Aeschylus, in the distant past they'd lived in
Scythia, at the
Palus Maeotis ("Lake Maeotis", the
Sea of Azov), but later moved to
Themiscyra on the River
Thermodon (the Terme river in northern Turkey).
Herodotus called them
Androktones ("killers of men"), and he stated that in the Scythian language they were called
Oiorpata, which he asserted had this meaning.
In some versions of the myth, no men were permitted to have sexual encounters or reside in Amazon country; but once a year, in order to prevent their race from dying out, they visited the
Gargareans, a neighbouring tribe. The male children who were the result of these visits were either
put to death, sent back to their fathers or
exposed in the wilderness to fend for themselves; the females were kept and brought up by their mothers, and trained in agricultural pursuits, hunting, and the art of war.
In the
Iliad, the Amazons were referred to as
Antianeira ("those who fight like men").
The Amazons also make an appearance with the
Argonauts, who came across the island of
Lemnos on their way to the land of
Colchis. They found Lemnos inhabited only by women and ruled by Queen
Hypsipyle. They named the island
Gynaikokratumene, a Greek word which roughly translates to "reigned by women".
Apollonius of Rhodes writes that the women received Jason and his companions in battle array -- "Hypsipile assumed her father's arms, and led the van, terrific in her charms." The young queen tells them that Lemnos was invaded in the past and all of the men were killed. The Amazons invite the Argonauts to take their fallen husbands' places. What the Argonauts don't realize is that the men of the island were slain by their own womenfolk. The Argonauts fortunately were not persuaded to stay long. As they sailed away through the
Hellespont and crept up the
Euxine they're told -- "flee the Amazonian shore, Else Themyscira soon, with rude alarms, Had seen the assembled Amazons in arms."
The Amazons appear in
Greek art of the
Archaic period and in connection with several Greek legends. They invaded
Lycia, but were defeated by
Bellerophon, who was sent out against them by
Iobates, the king of that country, in the hope that he might meet his death at their hands (
Iliad, vi. 186). The tomb of
Myrine is mentioned in the
Iliad; later interpretation made of her an Amazon: according to
Diodorus, Queen Myrine led her Amazons to victory against
Libya and much of
Gorgon.
They attacked the
Phrygians, who were assisted by
Priam, then a young man (
Iliad, iii. 189). Although in his later years, towards the end of the
Trojan War, his old opponents took his side again against the Greeks under their queen
Penthesilea "of
Thracian birth" (
Quintus Smyrnaeus), who was slain by
Achilles, in the
Aethiopis that continued the
Iliad. (Quintus Smyrn. i.;
Justin ii. 4; Virgil,
Aeneid i. 490).
One of the tasks imposed upon
Heracles by
Eurystheus was to obtain possession of the
girdle of the Amazonian queen
Hippolyte (
Apollodorus ii. 5). He was accompanied by his friend
Theseus, who carried off the princess
Antiope, sister of Hippolyte, an incident which led to a retaliatory invasion of
Attica, in which Antiope perished fighting by the side of Theseus. In some versions, however, Theseus marries Hippolyta and in others, he marries Antiope and she doesn't die. The battle between the Athenians and Amazons is often commemorated in an entire genre of art,
amazonomachy, in marble
bas-reliefs such as from the
Parthenon or the sculptures of the
mausoleum of Halicarnassus.
The Amazons are also said to have undertaken an expedition against the
island of Leuke, at the mouth of the
Danube, where the ashes of Achilles had been deposited by
Thetis. The ghost of the dead hero appeared and so terrified the horses, that they threw and trampled upon the invaders, who were forced to retire.
Pompey is said to have found them in the army of
Mithridates.
They are heard of in the time of Alexander, when some of the great king's biographers make mention of Amazon Queen
Thalestris visiting him and becoming a mother by him. However, several other biographers of Alexander dispute the claim, including the highly regarded
secondary source,
Plutarch. In his writing he makes mention of a moment when Alexander's secondary naval commander,
Onesicritus, was reading the Amazon passage of his Alexander history to King
Lysimachus of
Thrace who was on the original expedition: the king smiled at him and said "And where was I, then?"
The Roman writer
Virgil's characterization of the
Volscian warrior maiden
Camilla in the
Aeneid borrows heavily from the myth of the Amazons.
Lists
There are several (conflicting) lists of names of Amazons.
Quintus Smyrnaeus (
Posthomerica i) lists the attendant warriors of Penthesilea: "Clonie was there, Polemusa, Derinoe, Evandre, and Antandre, and Bremusa, Hippothoe, dark-eyed Harmothoe, Alcibie, Derimacheia, Antibrote, and Thermodosa glorying with the spear."
Names of Amazons listed by ancient authors include:
- Ainiaan, enemy of Achilles and an Amazon, one of the twelve who accompanied Penthesilea to the Trojan War. Her name means "swiftness."
- Antianara, succeeded Penthesilea as Queen of the Amazons. She was best known for ordering her male servants to be crippled and castrated "as the lame best perform the acts of love".
- Antibrote, one of the twelve followers of Penthesilea in Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica (book i)
- Antiope
- Asteria, sixth Amazon killed by Heracles.
- Cleite, one of the twelve followers of Penthesilea . Her ship was blown off course and she landed in Italy, founding the city of Clete.
- Helene, daughter of Tityrus. She fought Achilles and died after he seriously wounded her.
- Hippolyte, the Amazonian queen who possessed a magical girdle she was given by her father Ares, the god of war.
- Melanippe, sister of Hippolyte. Heracles captured her and demanded Hippolyte's girdle in exchange for her freedom. Hippolyte complied and Heracles let her go.
- Otrera, the consort of Ares and mother of Hippolyta and Penthesilea.
- Penthesilea
- Thalestris, a queen of the Amazons in the Alexander Romance.
Hero cults
According to ancient sources, (
Plutarch Theseus,
Pausanias), Amazon tombs could be found frequently throughout what was once known as the ancient Greek world. Some are found in
Megara,
Athens,
Chaeronea,
Chalcis,
Thessaly at
Scotussa, in
Cynoscephalae and statues of Amazons are all over Greece. At both
Chalsis and
Athens Plutarch tells us that there was an Amazoneum or shrine of Amazons that implied the presence of both tombs and cult. On the day before the Thesea at Athens there were annual sacrifices to the Amazons. In historical times Greek maidens of
Ephesus performed an annual circular dance with weapons and shields that had been established by
Hippolyte and her Amazons. They had initially set up wooden statues of
Artemis, a bretas, (
Pausanias, (fl.c.
160): Description of Greece, Book I: Attica).
In art
In works of art, battles between Amazons and Greeks are placed on the same level as and often associated with battles of Greeks and
centaurs. The belief in their existence, however, having been once accepted and introduced into the national poetry and art, it became necessary to surround them as far as possible with the appearance of not unnatural beings. Their occupation was hunting and war; their arms the bow, spear, axe, a half shield, nearly in the shape of a crescent, called
pelta, and in early art a helmet, the model before the Greek mind having apparently been the goddess Athena. In later art they approach the model of Artemis, wearing a thin dress, girt high for speed; while on the later painted vases their dress is often peculiarly
Persian – that is, close-fitting trousers and a high cap called the kidaris. They were usually on horseback but sometimes on foot. They can also be identified in vase paintings by the fact that they're wearing one earring. The battle between Theseus and the Amazons (
Amazonomachy) is a favourite subject on the friezes of temples (for example the reliefs from the frieze of the temple of
Apollo at
Bassae, now in the
British Museum), vases and sarcophagus reliefs; at
Athens it was represented on the shield of the statue of
Athena Parthenos, on wall-paintings in the
Theseum and in the
Stoa Poikile. There were also three standard
Amazon statue types.
In historiography
Herodotus reported that the Sarmatians were descendants of Amazons and Scythians, and that their females observed their ancient maternal customs, "frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men". Moreover, said Herodotus, "No girl shall wed till she's killed a man in battle". In the story related by
Herodotus, a group of Amazons was blown across the
Maeotian Lake (the
Sea of Azov) into
Scythia near the cliff region (today's southeastern
Crimea). After learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, on the condition that they not be required to follow the customs of Scythian women. According to Herodotus, this band moved toward the northeast, settling beyond the
Tanais (
Don) river, and became the ancestors of the
Sauromatians. According to
Herodotus, the
Sarmatians fought with the Scythians against
Darius the Great in the
5th century B.C.
Hippocrates describes them as: "They have no right breasts...for while they're yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm." But experts agree that the Amazons wouldn't have had the medical knowledge to manage the inevitable massive hemorrhage or infection if such ablation of the breast actually occurred. Others claim that amputation of the breast followed by cauterization could have been performed with instruments specifically designed for this purpose. (See also
breast ironing, a current practice in which breast growth is deliberately stunted.)
Amazons came to play a role in
Roman historiography. Caesar reminded the Senate of the conquest of large parts of Asia by
Semiramis and the Amazons. Successful Amazon raids against Lycia and Cilicia contrasted with effective resistance by Lydian cavalry against the invaders (
Strabo 5.504;
Nicholas Damascenus).
Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus pays particularly detailed attention to the Amazons. The story of the Amazons as deriving from a Cappadocian colony of two Scythian princes Ylinos and Scolopetos is due to him.
Diodorus relates the story of Hercules defeating the Amazons at Themiscyre.
Philostratus places the Amazons in the
Taurus mountains.
Ammianus places them east of
Tanais, as neighbouring the
Alans.
Procopius places them in the Caucasus.
Although Strabo shows scepticism as to their historicity, the Amazons in general continue to be taken as historical throughout Late Antiquity. Several Church Fathers speak of the Amazons as of a real people.
Solinus embraces the account of
Plinius. Under
Aurelianus, captured
Gothic women were identified as Amazons (
Claudianus). The account of
Justinus was influential, and was used as a source by
Orosius who continued to be read during the European Middle Ages. Medieval authors thus continue the tradition of locating the Amazons in the North,
Adam of Bremen placing them at the
Baltic Sea and
Paulus Diaconus in the heart of Germania.
Renaissance literature
Amazons continued to be discussed by authors of the European Renaissance, and with the
Age of Exploration, they were located in ever more remote areas.
Orellana in 1542 reached the
Amazonas River, naming it for the warlike women he encountered there. Amazons also figure in the accounts of both
Christopher Columbus and
William Raleigh.
Medieval and Renaissance authors credit the Amazons with the invention of the
battle-axe. This is probably related to the
Sagaris, an axe-like weapon associated with both Amazons and Scythian tribes by Greek authors (see also
Aleksandrovo kurgan).
Paulus Hector Mair expresses astonishment that such a "manly weapon" should have been invented by a "tribe of women", but he accepts the attribution out of respect for his authority,
Johannes Aventinus.
Ariosto's
Orlando furioso contains a country of warrior women, ruled by Queen Orontea; the epic describes an origin much like that in Greek myth, in that the women, abandoned by a band of warriors and unfaithful lovers, rallied together to form a nation from which men were severely reduced, to prevent them from regaining power.
Historical background
P. Walcot spoke for most
mythographers when he wrote, "Wherever the Amazons are located by the Greeks, whether it's somewhere along the Black Sea in the distant north-east, or in Libya in the furthest south, it's always beyond the confines of
the civilized world. The Amazons exist outside the range of normal human experience."
Nevertheless, there are various proposals for a historical nucleus of the Amazons of Greek historiography, the most obvious candidates being historical
Scythia and
Sarmatia in line with the account by
Herodotus, but some authors prefer a comparison to cultures of
Asia Minor or even
Minoan Crete.
Speculation that the idea of Amazons contains a core of reality is most recently based on archaeological findings from burials, pointing to the possibility that some Sarmatian women may have participated in battle. These findings have led scholars to suggest that the Amazonian legend in
Greek mythology may have been "inspired by real warrior women", though this remains a minority opinion among classical historians.
In recent times, readers have understood Amazons as "an emblem of Otherness in its many guises", as Josine Blok begins her Preface to
The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth (1995): "This people of female warriors was generally held to have been rooted in reality, as the (once) living alternative to Western practices and values."
Scythia
Archaeological evidence seems to confirm the existence of Women-Warriors, as Sarmatian women's active role in
military operation and social life. Burial of armed Sarmatian women comprise about 25 percent of the military burial in the group, and are usually buried with bows.
Russian archaeologist Vera Kovalevskaya points out that when Scythian men were away fighting or hunting, nomadic women would have to be able to defend themselves, their animals and pasture-grounds competently. During the time that the Scythians advanced into Asia and achieved near-
hegemony in the Near-East, there was a period of twenty-eight years when the men would have been away on campaigns for long periods. During this time the women wouldn't only have had to defend themselves, but to reproduce and this could well be the origin of the idea that Amazons mated once a year with their neighbours, if Herodotus actually intended to base this on a factual base.
Before modern archaeology uncovered some of the Scythian burials of warrior-maidens entombed under
kurgans in the region of
Altay Mountains and
Sarmatia, giving concrete form at last to the Greek tales of mounted Amazons, the origin of the story of the Amazons has been the subject of speculation among classics scholars. In the 1911
Encyclopædia Britannica speculation ranged along the following lines:
» While some regard the Amazons as a purely mythical people, others assume an historical foundation for them. The deities worshipped by them were
Ares (who is consistently assigned to them as a god of war, and as a god of
Thracian and generally northern origin) and
Artemis, not the usual Greek goddess of that name, but an Asiatic deity in some respects her equivalent. It is conjectured that the Amazons were originally the temple-servants and priestesses (
hierodulae) of this goddess; and that the removal of the breast corresponded with the self-mutilation of the god
Attis and the
galli, Roman priests of
Cybele. Another theory is that, as the knowledge of geography extended, travellers brought back reports of tribes ruled entirely by women, who carried out the duties which elsewhere were regarded as peculiar to man, in whom alone the rights of nobility and inheritance were vested, and who had the supreme control of affairs. Hence arose the belief in the Amazons as a nation of female warriors, organized and governed entirely by women.
Minoan Crete
When Minoan archeology was still in its infancy, nevertheless, a theory raised in an essay regarding the Amazons contributed by L.R. Farnell and J.L. Myres to Marett,'s
Anthropology and the Classics, 1908, placed their possible origins in
Minoan civilization, drawing attention to overlooked similarities between the two cultures. According to Myres, (pp. 153 ff), the tradition interpreted in the light of evidence furnished by supposed Amazon cults seems to have been very similar and may have even originated in
Minoan culture.
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