The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World

Praise for The Amazons

A beautiful book. . . . The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor is required reading.

—Anna Meldolesi, Corriere della Sera

Mayor’s fascinatingly readable book convincingly argues that many of their characteristics may have derived from real nomadic womenwarriors of antiquity. . . . It represents a remarkable scholarly breakthrough: no one will ever be able to discuss the Amazon myths again without taking into account the historical evidence she provides.

—Tassos A. Kaplanis, Journal of Historical Geography

Driven by a detective’s curiosity, Mayor unearths long-buried evidence and sifts fact from fiction to show how flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes were mythologized as Amazons, the equals of men. The result is likely to become a classic.

—Peter Konieczny, History of the Ancient World blog

Mayor writes elegant, jargon free, frequently witty prose.

—Barry Baldwin, Fortean Times

Clearly, with this clever, systematic and engaging work by Mayor, Amazons got their classic book. And it is a riveting read, too.

—Ephraim Nissan, Fabula

For anyone who thinks Amazons were as mythical as centaurs or sphinxes, this pleasurable book proves that misconception is wondrously wrong. . . . Mayor’s beautifully illustrated book, truly encyclopedic on all things Amazonian, reclaims the historic image of these dauntless figures in the heroic frame they deserve.

—Fran Willing, Bust.com

Mayor’s book is popular history at its best. Much of her archaeological evidence is new—such as her descriptions of ‘Scythian’ female graves with horses and weapons. She chooses wonderful illustrations which makes the book enjoyable and easy to read.

—Zenobia blog

"In her groundbreaking book, Adrienne Mayor has gone above and beyond all past works in making the Amazon women of legend real. The stories of who the Amazons were, how they really lived, and why they loved their lives with such timeless vivacity make the reader of this sensational work want to stand up and raise her sword to the sky to cheer! Never before has one author so seamlessly merged the iconic lives and lore of the Amazons with genuine images, facts, and research. With the depth of a textbook and the easy conversational style of a good friend, Mayor rapidly dispels myths about one of the strongest female cultures in history while uplifting the hearts of readers with dreams of strength and adventure. The Amazons is an absolute must-have for any person who yearns to learn about how women in the ancient world really lived and for those modern heroes and heroines who will surely be inspired by the rich, vibrant history of our world’s cultures."

—Virginia Hankins, actress-stuntwoman

"The Amazons is a stupendous achievement—a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn’t put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course."

—Anne Fortier, author of The Lost Sisterhood: A Novel

Nobody brings ancient history and archaeology to life like Adrienne Mayor. From the Russian steppes to China, and from Roman Egypt and Arabia to the Etruscans, she leads the reader on a breathtaking quest for the real ancient warrior women reflected in myths—their daring, archery, tattoos, fine horses, and independence from male control. The book’s rich erudition, communicated in sparkling prose and beautiful illustrations, makes it a riveting read.

—Edith Hall, author of Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

Adrienne Mayor’s inquiry into the myth—and surprising reality—of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably.

—Steven Saylor, author of Raiders of the Nile: A Novel of the Ancient World

Adrienne Mayor excels at demonstrating the truth that lies behind what seems simply storytelling, and there is no more exciting confrontation of myth and history than in the story of the Amazons. This is a great book—at once exhaustive, scholarly, thrilling, and imaginative, spanning the history, art, and imagination of ancient peoples from Italy to China.

—John Boardman, University of Oxford

One can only wonder at the courage and conviction of the ancient warrior women who dared to defy their peers, and who became such powerful inspirations that their memory lives on for millennia. We owe it to them to remember their stories. Adrienne Mayor’s fabulous book illuminates a complex picture of ancient lives. It gives us the chance to understand these amazing female fighters, and to recognize their daughters in our midst, those who fight with courage and conviction for what they know is a better world.

—Samantha Swords Catto-Mott, medieval long-sword champion and creator of special effects in film

THE AMAZONS

THE AMAZONS

LIVES AND LEGENDS OF WARRIOR WOMEN ACROSS THE ANCIENT WORLD

ADRIENNE MAYOR

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS     PRINCETON & OXFORD

Copyright © 2014 by Adrienne Mayor

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press,

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

Cover image: Saikal, the Kalmyk warrior-heroine of the Central Asian Manas epic, illustration by Teodor Gercen featured on postage stamp, Kyrgyz Republic, 1995.

All Rights Reserved

Second printing, and first paperback printing, 2016

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-17027-5

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows:

Mayor, Adrienne, 1946–

The Amazons : lives and legends of warrior women across the ancient world / Adrienne Mayor.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14720-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Amazons. 2. Amazons in literature. 3. Mythology, Greek. 4. Women soldiers—History. 5. Women, Prehistoric. 6. Women, Prehistoric—Social conditions. I. Title.

BL820.A6M39 2014

398'.352—dc23

2014004926

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon Next LT Pro

Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

Printed in the United States of America

5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

FOR SAGE ADRIENNE

AND IN MEMORY OF SUNNY LYNN BOCK 1952–1995

AMAZON SPIRIT

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOR PLATES (following p. 128)

1. Amazon queen Melanippe

2. Amazon rider

3. Warrior woman’s skeleton with iron dagger

4. Modern mounted female archer

5. Modern Parthian shot on horseback

6. Amazon on white horse, Etruscan tomb painting

7. Hippolyte offers her belt to Heracles

8. Amazon hunting deer with horse, dog, and eagle

9. Modern female eagle hunter on horseback

10. Amazon slinger

11. Amazonomachy

12. Amazon wielding a battle-axe

13. A pair of Amazons

14. Treasure from Teuta’s pirate empire

FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

COMPILING THIS ENCYCLOPEDIA AMAZONICA HAS entailed a long journey from classical Greece across vast, unexplored territories. The task was at once daunting and delightful, and, like any compendium of ancient myths and realities, the book is also unfinished and subject to revision. The excitement of discovering the lives and legends of Amazons and Amazon-like women in so many unexpected places is tempered by the realization that one has only skimmed the surface. Many branching trails beckon future investigators to forge deeper into the ancient histories of warrior women.

A host of people made this book possible. I began this project at the Getty Villa Scholars Program, where I was welcomed as a resident guest researcher in August–September 2010, thanks to Peter Bonfitto, Mary Louise Hart, Kenneth Lapatin, Claire Lyons, David Saunders, and Karol Wight. I’m indebted to my peerless and visionary editor, Rob Tempio, the anonymous readers for the Press, illustration manager Dimitri Karetnikov, and my favorite copyeditor, Lauren Lepow. My sincere appreciation goes to Sandy Dijkstra, Andrea Cavallaro, and everyone at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. To my dear friends who read and commented on early drafts—Kris Ellingsen, Deborah Gordon, Marcia Ober, and Barry Strauss—your help was crucial. I’m grateful for Betchen Barber’s thoughtful suggestions for revision. I treasure the honest and insightful critiques of Michelle Maskiell and Josh Ober who read the entire manuscript twice. Special thanks go to Richard Martin and John Oakley, who over the decades have cheerfully endured a barrage of queries about classical myth and art. Henryk Jaronowski, Carla Nappi, Sarah Pines, and Fred Porta provided translations. I thank Paul Alexander for fact checking and David Luljak for indexing. I am fortunate to benefit from Michele Angel’s creative maps and illustration skills, and from Barbara Mayor’s keen proofreading.

Many scholars and experts in many disciplines generously shared their specialized knowledge and helped with illustations: Farid Alakbarli, Mustafa Bashir, Roberta Beene, John Boardman, Larissa Bonfante, Kathleen Braden, John Colarusso, Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Dan Diffendale, Ertekin M. Doksanalti, Piotr Dyczek, Lowell Edmunds, Jack Farrell, Debbie Felton, Michael Anthony Fowler, Matthew Funk, Laura Gill, N. S. Gill, Hans Goette, Mazen Haddad, Irene Hahn, William Hansen, Jenny Lando Herdman, Rebecca Hickman, Nino Kalandadze, Robin Lane Fox, Martin Lemke, Terrence Lockyer, Rossella Lorenzi, John Ma, Ruel Macaraeg, Kent Madin, Victor Mair, Justin Mansfield, Jody Maxmin, David Mazierski, David Meadows, Mete Mimiroglu, Maya Muratov, Michael Padgett, Svetlana Pankova, Michel Prieur, Richard Rawles, Ian Rutherford, David Salo, Uli Schamiloglu, Arthur Shippee, Stuart Tyson Smith, Ed Snible, Matthew Sommer, Helen South, Katie Stearns, Tatjana Stepanowa, Bob Sutton, Linda Svendsen, Jean Turfa, Peter van Alfen, James Vedder, Claudia Wagner, Christine Walter, Kirsten Wellman, and Dianna Wuagneux. Heartfelt thanks go to myriad erudite allies and friends of Mithradates Eupator on Facebook for crowd-sourced research on a multitude of Amazon-related topics.

This book is dedicated to my goddaughter Sage, maker of beautiful knives, and to the memory of Sunny, another blonde, tattooed Amazon spirit. Josiah Ober, steadfast companion, this description of an ideal nomadic pair from antiquity expresses what’s in my heart: Wherever they roamed, they were always at home when they were together.

THE AMAZONS

PROLOGUE

ATALANTA, THE GREEK AMAZON

KING IASOS WANTED ONLY SONS. HE LEFT HIS INFANT daughter to die on a mountainside in Arcadia, the rugged highlands of southern Greece. A mother bear nursed the abandoned baby. Hunters found the feral girl and named her Atalanta. Like a female Tarzan, Atalanta was a natural athlete and hunter. Self-reliant, with a fiery, masculine gaze, she wrestled like a bear and could outrun any animal or man. Atalanta loved wrestling and she was strong enough to defeat the hero Peleus in a grappling contest. This bold tomboy of Greek myth was happiest roaming alone in the forest with her bow and spear. Life in the wilderness held dangers. But when a pair of malicious Centaurs tried to rape Atalanta, she killed them with her arrows.

Because of her bravery and prowess, Atalanta was the only woman invited to join the mythic expedition to destroy the terrible Calydonian Boar. In the myth, a monstrous boar had been sent by the goddess Artemis to ravage southern Greece. To slay the rampaging beast, Meleager gathered more than a dozen prominent Greek heroes, including Jason and Telemon of the Argonauts, Athens’s founding king Theseus, Atalanta’s wrestling partner Peleus, and Atalanta herself. Whoever killed the giant boar would win its head and hide. As the sole female, Atalanta, by her very presence, ignited strong emotions among the male heroes. Some of the men refused to participate if Atalanta came along. But Meleager, who was in love with Atalanta, compelled them all to set out together.

The hunters ran into trouble from the start. The ferocious boar gored and killed several of the men and hounds. In the mayhem, some hunters were accidentally slain by their fellows. Atalanta proved to be more courageous and skilled than any of the men; only Meleager was her equal. Atalanta was the first to wound the boar. Then Meleager rushed up and dispatched it with his spear. He presented the boar’s hide and head to Atalanta, since she had drawn the first blood.

The hunting party was still in turmoil after the kill. Meleager’s uncles shouted that it was a disgrace for a woman to have the prize. They seized the boar’s hide from Atalanta. A fight erupted. In the uproar Meleager killed his own kinsmen and again presented the boar trophies to Atalanta. She dedicated the boar’s huge tusks, head, and hide in the temple at Tegea, her birthplace. Meanwhile, her lover Meleager died as a result of the family feud that raged on after the expedition. Atalanta gave Jason a special far-flying spear and volunteered to sail with the Argonauts across the Black Sea on the quest for the Golden Fleece. But Jason denied her request for fear of discord among the male crew.¹

After proving her heroism in the great boar hunt, Atalanta was reunited with her biological parents. Her father, the king, was now very proud of her but could not tolerate his daughter’s unwed state. He insisted that she marry. Aghast at the idea of giving up her freedom, Atalanta demanded a high-stakes contest. She would wed only the man who could defeat her in a footrace. She would give each suitor a head start. But she would kill with her spear every man who lost the race. The headstrong huntress designed the race as a hunt for human prey, but it is significant that the contest also held out the enticing possibility of finding a man who was worthy of her. True to her name, ancient Greek for balance, equal, Atalanta desired an egalitarian relationship—and so did her hopeful suitors.

The athletic, radiant Atalanta was so desirable that even though the penalty was instant death, many young men eagerly lined up to race her. Many lost their lives. Finally a youth named Hippomenes, realizing he could never outrun Atalanta in a fair race, asked Aphrodite to help him win by trickery. The goddess of love gave him three golden apples, magically irresistible. During their race, Hippomenes dropped the apples one by one to distract Atalanta. She stopped to pick up the first two apples but was able to recover her pace. The third apple and a great burst of speed gave the youth his victory. Atalanta was a man-killer but she was not a man-hater. She consented to be Hippomenes’s mate.²

Theirs was not a typical Greek marriage, however. Atalanta and Hippomenes spent their days as hunting companions and impetuous lovers. One day while out chasing game, they impulsively had sex in a sacred precinct. In the midst of their passionate lovemaking, they were transformed into a pair of lions. From that moment and for all time, Atalanta and Hippomenes would live as lioness and lion.

Atalanta’s fabled racetrack became a well-known landmark in Arcadia; it was still proudly pointed out to tourists in the time of the Roman Empire. At Tegea, Atalanta’s birthplace, the gigantic tusks of the Calydonian Boar were displayed in the temple (until the emperor Augustus took them to Rome). The Greek traveler Pausanias visited the temple in about AD 180 and marveled at its monumental frieze depicting the Calydonian Boar Hunt (by the great sculptor Skopas, 350 BC). In the 1880s, French archaeologists discovered those temple ruins. They unearthed fragments of the grand pediment sculptures admired by Pausanias: hunting hounds, heroes, the head of the Calydonian Boar, and Atalanta. The altar was strewn with boars’ tusks dedicated by generations of hunters in memory of Atalanta. The archaeologists also found marble reliefs of a lion and a lioness representing the transformation of Atalanta and Hippomenes.³

Greek myths were illustrated in thousands of paintings on vases, sculptures, and other artworks in antiquity, and Atalanta’s story was no exception. The great boar hunt was extremely popular, appearing in frescoes, statues, and vase paintings from the sixth century BC through the Roman period. In Greek art, Atalanta was often depicted as a huntress with her bow, spear, and dog—and the boar’s head. Several vases capture the moment when Meleager presents this trophy. Presenting the spoils of a hunt to one’s beloved was an erotic gesture in ancient Greek poetry and art, so the incident tells us that Meleager and Atalanta were lovers.⁴

But the artistic evidence only deepens some mysteries in Atalanta’s complicated, paradoxical story. In some boar-hunting scenes, for example, Atalanta wears a belted tunic with zigzag patterns, a soft pointed cap, and high cuffed boots. These are typical elements of the attire worn by foreign male and female archers from the lands the Greeks called Scythia. This clothing began to appear in art after the Greeks’ first contacts with peoples of the Black Sea and Eurasian steppes in the seventh century BC. Classical art experts struggle to explain why Atalanta, a Greek heroine, was shown wearing Scythian-style outfits like those worn by Amazons.⁵

MAP P.1. Ancient Greek world. Map © Michele Angel.

More riddles arise in the earliest image of the Calydonian Boar Hunt, on the magnificent François Vase discovered in 1844. The spectacular two-foot-high wine krater signed by the painter Kleitias (ca. 570 BC) depicts more than two hundred people, many with identifying inscriptions. (Unfortunately, in 1902, the precious vase was smashed into 638 shards when a guard in the Florence museum hurled a stool at it; it was fully restored in 1973.) The giant boar is being attacked by Meleager, Peleus, Atalanta, and other Greek heroes. But three archers in the scene present an enigma. One draws a Scythian bow; their quivers are at their waists in Scythian style; and they wear the distinctive pointed caps of Scythians. One bears the name Kimerios, which associates him with the Cimmerians, a tribe of Scythia; another archer’s name, Toxamis, combines Greek arrow with the Iranian suffix -mis. Why would Atalanta be accompanied by bowmen dressed like Scythians in this quintessential Greek myth?⁶

FIG. P.1. Atalanta in athletic outfit (her name is inscribed above). Red-figure kylix (drinking cup), Euaion Painter, fifth century BC, Inv. CA2259, Musée de Louvre, Paris. © Musée de Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Les frères Chuzeville/Art Resource, NY.

Atalanta was the only wrestling heroine in Greek myth and art, and her grappling contest with Peleus was also very popular in artworks. In these athletic scenes, Atalanta is shown in a belted loincloth (perizoma, typically worn by barbarian male athletes). She goes topless or wears a kind of sports bra (strophion, often worn by female acrobats) and an exercise cap. Sexy details in the wrestling images hint that there might have been more to her match with Peleus than just sport. In one vase painting, a small lion figure is embroidered on the seat of Atalanta’s wrestling trunks, an allusion to her character and to her mythic fate.⁷

FIG. P.2. Atalanta wrestling Peleus. Attic black-figure amphora from Nola, Diosphos Painter, sixth–fifth centuries BC, INV: F1837, bpk, Berlin/Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen/photo by Johannes Laurentius/Art Resource, NY.

Atalanta’s transformation into a lioness also mystifies. Later Latin and medieval commentators tried to explain the conversion as a divine punishment—by making the perverse claim that lions could never mate with their own species.⁸ This peculiar notion is accepted by modern scholars who portray Atalanta as sentenced to hunt forever as a solitary lioness, never permitted to have sex again. But both she and her lover were changed into lions. And there is no evidence for the odd belief about the love life of lions in classical Greek literature. The Roman naturalist Pliny (first century AD) is commonly cited for this erroneous idea about lions, but in fact what Pliny says is that lions are extremely passionate, jealous mates with each other and they sometimes interbreed with other large cats. The lovers’ transformation into a lion and a lioness at a moment of sexual bliss seems uniquely gratifying, less a punishment and more like a sympathetic divine intervention for a couple who refused to conform to traditional Greek marriage roles.⁹ In the form of lions, the most noble of wild animals—creatures known to stalk and kill prey together—the hunting companions/lovers Atalanta and Hippomenes could continue to hunt and mate in mythic eternity.

That Atalanta was changed into a lioness does drive home a powerful message, though. There was no place in ordinary Greek society for a woman like Atalanta who loved to chase game, fight men, and wander at will. She would be an outsider, bereft of community, for rejecting the life of Greek wives who were confined to a domestic sphere of children and kinfolk. The myth expresses the powerful mixed emotions that Atalanta’s independence and physical vigor aroused among Greek males. Some men, like Meleager’s uncles, reacted with anger and violence. But other men, like Meleager and Hippomenes, thought Atalanta deserved to live as she wished, and a great many men found her sexually desirable and might risk their lives to be her lifelong partner. As the ancient writer Aelian declared, no timid man would ever be attracted to Atalanta—and only the most courageous could even meet her challenging gaze.¹⁰

But Greek men who yearned for a self-reliant mate like Atalanta would not find her in Greece. Such women dwelled among barbarians around the Black Sea. Several myths told of Greek heroes who were paired with formidable women of those regions. One was the Argonauts’ leader, Jason, who fell for the fiercely independent Medea on the far shore of the Black Sea and brought her back to Greece (where she was labeled a lioness). Odysseus became the enchantress Circe’s prisoner of love; her name appears to be Circassian, a language of the Caucasus.¹¹ The Greek hero Theseus kidnapped a warrior princess—the Amazon Antiope—from the southern Black Sea coast and brought her back to Athens (chapter 16).

Perhaps some Greek girls longed to be like Atalanta, the intrepid huntress who went her own way. But their hopes were dashed at puberty when they were expected to marry and obey their husbands. Young Athenian girls participated in an initiation ritual called the Arkteia (She-Bear), in which they pretended to be wild bear cubs in sanctuaries of Artemis. In her myth, Atalanta had been a cub raised by a she-bear. The cult is mysterious, but we know the girls’ activities included footraces, which also evokes Atalanta. Archaeological artifacts from the Arkteia sanctuary at Brauron include images of bears and young girls running, and numerous toys and dolls that were dedicated to Artemis at the conclusion of the girls’ ritual entry into womanhood.¹²

Scholars believe that the She-Bear rites stressed the suppression of the young girls’ untamed Atalantean nature as a preparation for marriage. Greek male writers often characterized pubescent girls as wild animals who desired to lead the unrestrained life of an Atalanta. Instead of lionesses, Greek maidens were supposed to be transformed into docile matrons. As one classicist expresses this concept, the Amazon in them had to die.¹³

Another intriguing question concerns the ownership of the erotically charged artworks featuring the huntress heroine who defied Greek sexual norms. It turns out that many of the vases decorated with images of Atalanta, like the François Vase, were special shapes specifically designed as wedding gifts. Atalanta also appears on women’s perfume flasks. Why would illustrations of Atalanta be considered appropriate gifts for newlyweds and women? Atalanta—an icon of social and sexual perversity who escaped the yoke of marriage—seems to be a particularly troubling image to give to a bride, remarks one classical scholar. Were pictures of Atalanta really negative examples to warn the bride and groom of the dangers of both excessive lust and chastity, as some argue? Did such gifts really symbolize the taming of the wild by the civilized Greek male?¹⁴

As everyone knew, Atalanta was never tamed. The popularity of her image in public and private art—and especially on wedding vases and women’s personal objects—raises some tantalizing questions about Greek private life.¹⁵ Perhaps the stories and illustrations of Atalanta encouraged a Greek woman, inside her own home and in the secluded bedchamber with her husband, to imagine herself as an Atalanta or even a lioness.

Atalanta was also pictured on Greek vases used at male-only symposiums. So both men and women chose to surround themselves with vibrant images of this strong, independent woman; contemplating these images provided pleasure and food for thought for both sexes. The popularity of the myth of Atalanta shows that Greek men and women could delight in the tale of a vigorous young woman free of social constraints and traditional marriage. Despite the dissonance and ambivalence ignited by the idea of women as men’s equals, Greeks enjoyed the stories of heroes and heroines as partners in a dangerous hunt and other adventures filled with peril and glory.

Puzzles about Atalanta multiply the closer one looks. There is even something curious about Atalanta’s name. The sounds of the ancient Greek for balance, equal, Atalanta, closely resemble a phrase in an ancient Caucasian language spoken in Abkhazia (northeastern coast of the Black Sea), meaning He gave or set something down before her. Could this phrase allude to the presentation of the trophy boar and/or throwing down the golden apples? The Greeks were notoriously fond of making up Greek etymologies for borrowed foreign words (chapters 1 and 5). The two names, Abkhazian and Greek, are semantically complementary; each fits features of Atalanta’s myth. Some scholars speculate that the Calydonian Boar Hunt could contain traces of Scythian folklore, a fascinating possibility.

Remarkably, another Abkhazian-sounding phrase appears in the non-Greek inscription on the vase painting of Atalanta wrestling Peleus, describing her as curly-haired (fig. P.2). A recently translated ancient Abkhazian saga tells of a strong young woman, Gunda the Beautiful (also called Lady Hero), who vowed she would marry only the man who could defeat her in wrestling. Ninety-nine eager young suitors failed—she cut off their ears and branded the losers. Finally she grappled with a burly young man from a faraway land who managed to win the match, which lasted all day and shook the earth. They lived happily ever after.¹⁶ Atalanta’s wedding challenge was shocking in a Greek context, but vigorous young women setting athletic contests for potential suitors is a ubiquitous theme in Caucasian, Persian, and steppe nomad traditions (chapters 22 and 24).

No wonder Atalanta’s story creates befuddlement among classicists pondering the meanings of her myth. In an attempt to capture her elusive significance, scholars argue that Atalanta embodied a chain of contradictions. She is said to represent both nonsexual virginity and wild, animal sex; she rejects motherhood but she bears a son who becomes a hero; she stands for nubile girls and young boys; she is both hunter and hunted; a threat to male order but a desired love object; a man-killer but a man-lover. Atalanta is a study in ambiguity, a mélange of discordant behaviors. Most scholars conclude that Atalanta’s myth must have been part of a ritual initiation for Greek boys, while serving as a negative role model for girls. The great French classicist Jean-Pierre Vernant admitted, Everything with Atalanta gets so confused.¹⁷

Atalanta is unique in Greek myth, and her story is extraordinary and complex, a magnetic focus for the push-pull of anxiety and desire disturbing the Greeks who repressed their own daughters and wives. She is a most untypical Greek female. Her life is idyllic; she rambles around the countryside engaged in hunting and sports, pastimes ordinarily enjoyed by men. Atalanta is bold, armed and dangerous; she defends herself with bow and spear; she challenges and kills men and wins heroic honors in a male-dominated expedition. She rejects traditional marriage and enjoys sex with lovers of her own choosing.¹⁸

Atalanta was an outlier, a lone, isolated figure. A Greek girl like Atalanta remained a mythic dream. But the Greeks had heard about a place where Atalanta would have fit in perfectly, a land where someone like Atalanta could find sisterhood, social acceptance, and male companionship. That place was among the Amazons.

Who were the Amazons?

In Greek myth, Amazons were fierce warrior women of exotic Eastern lands, as courageous and skilled in battle as the mightiest Greek heroes. Amazons were major characters not only in the legendary Trojan War but also in the chronicles of the greatest Greek city-state, Athens. Every great champion of myth—Heracles, Theseus, Achilles—proved his valor by overcoming powerful warrior queens and their armies of women. Those glorious struggles against foreign man-killers were recounted in oral tales and written epics and illustrated in countless artworks throughout the Greco-Roman world. Famous historical figures, among them King Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey, also tangled with Amazons. Greek and Latin authors never doubted that Amazons had existed in the remote past, and many reported that women living the life of Amazons still dwelled in lands around the Black Sea and beyond.¹⁹ Modern scholars, on the other hand, usually consign Amazons to the realm of the Greek imagination.

But were Amazons real? Though they were long believed to be purely imaginary, overwhelming evidence now shows that the Amazon traditions of the Greeks and other ancient societies derived in large part from historical facts.²⁰ Among the nomad horse-riding peoples of the steppes known to the Greeks as Scythians, women lived the same rugged outdoor life as the men. These warlike tribes have no cities, no fixed abodes, wrote one ancient historian; they live free and unconquered, so savage that even the women take part in war.²¹ Archaeology reveals that about one out of three or four nomad women of the steppes was an active warrior buried with her weapons. Their lifestyle—so different from the domestic seclusion of Greek women—captured the imagination of the Greeks. The only real-life parallels in Greece were rare instances of wives forced to defend their families and towns against invaders in the absence of their husbands.

The myth of Atalanta seems to suggest that a girl raised in a natural state would grow up to be something like an Amazon. In reality, going Amazon was an option for girls who had been raised since childhood to ride horses and shoot arrows on the steppes. The equalizing combination of horseback riding and archery meant that women could be as fast and as deadly as men. Whether by choice or compelled by circumstances, ordinary women of Scythia could be hunters and warriors without giving up femininity, male companionship, sex, and motherhood.

The universal quest to find balance and harmony between men and women, beings who are at once so alike and so different, lies at the heart of all Amazon tales. That timeless tension helps to explain why there were as many love stories about warrior women as there were war stories.

In a nutshell: Amazons, the women warriors who fought Heracles and other heroes in Greek myth, were long assumed to be an imaginative Greek invention. But Amazon-like women were real—although of course the myths were made up. Archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with weapons prove that warlike women really did exist among nomads of the Scythian steppes of Eurasia. So Amazons were Scythian women—and the Greeks understood this long before modern archaeology. And the Greeks were not the only ones to spin tales about Amazons. Thrilling adventures of warrior heroines of the steppes were told in many ancient cultures besides Greece.

Our mission is to sort myth from fact. As the first full compendium of the lives and legends of Amazons across the ancient world, this study explores the realities behind the stories, digging deep and ranging far afield to unearth hidden knowledge and surprising recent discoveries about the women warriors mythologized as Amazons. How do we know for certain that Amazon-like women actually existed in antiquity? Did Amazons really cut off one breast? Were Amazons tattooed? What about their sex life? Why would Amazons prefer trousers instead of skirts? Which intoxicants did they favor? How did they train their horses? What were the Amazons’ most deadly weapons and what kind of injuries did they inflict? The answers to all these questions and more, drawing on ancient sources and the latest advances in archaeology, history, ethnology, linguistics, and scientific knowledge, are found in these pages.

Once we know what genuine warrior women’s lives were like, the famous Amazons of classical myth and legend spring to life with remarkable new clarity. Why did Heracles kill Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, instead of becoming her lover? What was the fate of Antiope, the only Amazon to marry a Greek hero? Why did the Amazons invade Athens—and who won that war? Could Achilles and the Amazon Penthesilea have been friends in an alternative world? How did a band of Amazons happen to sail to Rome? Who was the beautiful Amazon queen who stalked Alexander the Great across Asia?

The final section presents Amazons as they have never been seen before, from a non-Greek perspective. Instead of peering out with Greek eyes toward the barbarian East, we travel beyond the Mediterranean world, around the Black and Caspian seas, and across the steppes, forests, mountains, and deserts to discover stories told by the ancient Scythians themselves and their neighbors, in Persia and Egypt, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India. At last we find ourselves in China looking west toward the Great Wilderness of the Xiongnu, a Chinese name for nomads whose women were as fierce as the men.

A comprehensive Encyclopedia Amazonica ranging from the Mediterranean to the Great Wall of China necessarily contains a great many unfamiliar proper names of people and places, testament to the far-flung, sweeping popularity of warrior women tales in antiquity. Anticipating that some readers might skip ahead and turn directly to chapters of greatest personal curiosity or interest, I have included plentiful cross-references to relevant discussions.

PART 1

WHO WERE THE AMAZONS?

1

ANCIENT PUZZLES AND MODERN MYTHS

In olden times, the earth thundered with the pounding of horses’ hooves. In that long ago age, women would saddle their horses, grab their lances, and ride forth with their men folk to meet the enemy in battle on the steppes. The women of that time could cut out an enemy’s heart with their swift, sharp swords. Yet they also comforted their men and harbored great love in their hearts…. After the frenzied battle, Queen Amezan leaned down from her saddle and realized in despair that the warrior she had killed was her beloved. A choking cry filled her throat: My sun has set forever!

—Caucasus tradition, Nart Saga 26

Achilles removed the brilliant helmet from the lifeless Amazon queen. Penthesilea had fought like a raging leopard in their duel at Troy. Her valor and beauty were undimmed by dust and blood. Achilles’ heart lurched with remorse and desire…. All the Greeks on the battlefield crowded around and marveled, wishing with all their hearts that their wives at home could be just like her.

—Quintus of Smyrna, The Fall of Troy

IF QUEEN AMEZAN AND QUEEN PENTHESILEA COULD somehow meet in real life, they would recognize each other as sister Amazons. Two tales, two storytellers, two sites far apart in time and place, and yet one common tradition of women who made love and war. The first tale arose outside the classical Greek world, in the northern Black Sea–Caucasus region among the descendants of the steppe nomads of Scythia. The other tale originated within the ancient Greek world, in epic poems about the legendary Trojan War. In the two traditions the male and female roles are reversed, yet the stories resonate in striking ways—sharing similar characters, dramatic battle situations, emotions, tragic themes—and even the word Amazon.

Recently translated from the Circassian language, the first story tells of the mythic leader of a band of women warriors, Amezan. It is one of many Nart sagas, oral traditions about heroes and heroines of the heart of ancient Scythian—and Amazon—territory (now southern Russia). The Caucasus tales preserve ancient Indo-European myths combined with the folk legends of Eurasian nomads, first encountered by Greeks who sailed the Black Sea in the seventh century BC. The sagas not only describe strong horsewomen who match the descriptions of Amazons in Greek myth, but they also suggest a possible Caucasian etymology for the ancient Greek loanword amazon.¹

The second vignette, about Achilles and Penthesilea, is an episode from the archaic Trojan War epic cycles, one of which was the Iliad. Many oral traditions about Amazons were already circulating before Homer’s day, the eighth/seventh century BC, around the time when the first recognizable images of Amazons appeared in Greek art. The Iliad covered only two months of the great ten-year war with Troy. At least six other epic poems preceded or continued the events in the Iliad, but they survive only as fragments. Many other lost oral traditions about the Trojan War are alluded to the Iliad and other works, and they are illustrated in ancient art depicting Greeks fighting Amazons. The lost poem Arimaspea by the Greek traveler Aristeas (ca. 670 BC) contained Amazon stories. Another wandering poet, Magnes from Smyrna (said to be Homer’s birthplace), recited tales in Lydian about an Amazon invasion of Lydia in western Anatolia in the early seventh century BC. Some scholars suggest that there was once a freestanding epic poem about Amazons, along the lines of the Iliad, a tantalizing possibility.²

One of the lost Trojan War epics, the Aethiopis (attributed to Arctinos of Miletos, eighth/seventh century BC), was a sequel to the Iliad, taking up the action where Homer left off. The Aethiopis described the arrival of Queen Penthesilea and her band of Amazon mercenaries who came to help the Trojans fight the Greeks. Scenes from this poem were very popular in Greek vase paintings. In the third century AD, the Greek poet Quintus of Smyrna drew on the Aethiopis to retell the story of Penthesilea’s duel with the Greek champion Achilles, in his Fall of Troy, quoted in this chapter’s second epigraph.

Both of the tales quoted above—one from Scythia and the other from the Greek homeland—feature women whose fighting skills matched those of men. Their heroic exploits were imaginary, but their characters and actions arose from a common historical source: warrior cultures of the steppes where nomad horsemen and -women could experience parity at a level almost unimaginable for ancient Hellenes.

Myth and reality commingled in the Greek imagination, and as more and more details came to light about Scythian culture, the women of Scythia were explicitly identified as Amazons. Today’s archaeological and linguistic discoveries point to the core of reality that lay behind Greek Amazon myths. But in fact, the newfound archaeological evidence allows us to finally catch up with the ancient Greeks themselves. The Amazons of myth and the independent women of Scythia were already deeply intertwined in Greek thinking more than twenty-five hundred years before modern archaeologists and classicists began to realize that women warriors really did exist and influenced Greek traditions.

Amazons of classical literature and art arose from hazy facts elaborated by Greek mythographers and then came into sharper focus as knowledge increased. Rumors of warlike nomad societies—where a woman might win fame and glory through manly prowess with weapons—fascinated the Greeks. The idea of bold, resourceful women warriors, the equals of men, dwelling at the edges of the known world, inspired an outpouring of mythic stories, pitting the greatest Greek heroes against Amazon heroines from the East. Every Greek man, woman, boy, and girl knew these adventure stories by heart, stories illustrated in public and private artworks. The details of the Amazon lifestyle aroused speculation and debate. Many classical Greco-Roman historians, philosophers, geographers, and other writers described Amazonian-Scythian history and customs.

The early Greeks received their information about northeastern peoples from many different sources, including travelers, traders, and explorers, and from the indigenous, migrating tribes around the Black Sea, Caucasus Mountains, Caspian Sea, and Central Asia. The tribes’ accounts of themselves and culturally similar groups were transmitted (and garbled) by layers of translations over thousands of miles. Another probable source was the high population of household slaves in Greece who hailed from Thrace and the Black Sea region.³ Selection bias was a factor. Accounts of barbarian customs that piqued Greek curiosity or matched Greek expectations might have been chosen over others. Yet a surprising number of accurate details, confirmed by archaeology, managed to sneak through all these obstacles.

The Scythians themselves left no written records. Much of our knowledge about them comes from the art and literature of Greece and Rome. But the Scythians did leave spectacular physical evidence of their way of life for archaeologists to uncover. Dramatic excavations of tombs, bodies, and artifacts illuminate the links between the women called Amazons and the warlike horsewomen archers of the Scythian steppes. According to one leading archaeologist, All of the legends about Amazons find their visible archaeological reflection within the grave goods of the ancient Scythians.⁴ That is an overstatement, yet recent and ongoing discoveries do offer astonishing evidence of the existence of authentic women warriors whose lives matched the descriptions of Amazons in Greek myths, art, and classical histories, geographies, ethnographies, and other writings. Scythian graves do contain battle-scarred skeletons of women buried with their weapons, horses, and other possessions. Scientific bone analysis proves that women rode, hunted, and engaged in combat in the very regions where Greco-Roman mythographers and historians once located Amazons.

Archaeology shows that Amazons were not simply symbolic figments of the Greek imagination, as many scholars claim. Nor are Amazons unique to Greek culture, another common claim. In fact, Greeks were not the only people to spin tales about Amazon-like figures and warrior women ranging over the vast regions east of the Mediterranean. Other literate cultures, such as Persia, Egypt, India, and China, encountered warlike nomads in antiquity, and their narratives drew on their own knowledge of steppe nomads through alliances, exploration, trade, and warfare. Their heroes also fought and fell in love with Amazon-like heroines. Moreover, vestiges of the tales told in antiquity by Scythian peoples about themselves are preserved in traditional oral legends, epic poems, and stories of Central Asia, some only recently committed to writing.

Who were the Amazons? Their complex identity is enmeshed in history and imagination. To see them clearly, we first need to cast away murky symbolic interpretations and spurious popular beliefs.

POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS

The single most notorious fact often used to describe Amazons is wrong. The idea that each Amazon removed one breast so that she could shoot arrows with ease is based on zero evidence. It was refuted in antiquity. Yet this bizarre belief, unique to the ancient Greeks, has persisted for more than twenty-five hundred years since it was first proposed in the fifth century BC by a Greek historian dabbling in etymology. The origins of the single-breasted Amazon and the controversies that still surround this false notion are so complex and fascinating that Amazon bosoms have their own chapter.

Some fallacies about Amazons can be traced to inconsistencies, gaps—and wild speculations—in the ancient Greek and Latin sources. Other modern misconceptions originate in attempts to explain Amazons solely in terms of their symbolic meaning for the Greeks, especially male Athenians.⁵ Conflicting claims in antiquity are still debated today, like the single-breast story. Were the Amazons a true gynocracy, a society of self-governing women living apart from men? Some pictured a tribe of man-hating virgins or domineering women who enslaved weak men and mutilated baby boys, a vision that led to speculations on how Amazon society reproduced.

AMAZONS, A TRIBE KNOWN FOR STRONG WOMEN

The notion that Amazons were hostile toward men was controversial even in antiquity. The confusion begins with their name. Linguistic evidence suggests that the earliest Greek form of the non-Greek name Amazon designated an ethnic group distinguished by a high level of equality between men and women. Rumors of such parity would have startled the Greeks, who lived according to strictly divided male and female roles. Long before the word Scythian or specific tribal names appeared in Greek literature, Amazons may have been a name for a people notorious for strong, free women.⁶

The earliest reference to the Amazons in Greek literature appears in Homer’s Iliad in the formulaic phrase Amazones antianeirai. Modern scholars are unanimous that the plural noun Amazones was not originally a Greek word. But it is unclear which language it was borrowed from and what its original meaning was. What is known for certain is that Amazon does not have anything to do with breasts (chapter 5 for probable origins of the name).

There is something remarkable about Homer’s earliest use of Amazones in the Iliad. The form of the name falls into the linguistic category of ethnic designations in epic poetry (another Homeric example is Myrmidones, the warriors led by Achilles at Troy). This important clue tells us that Amazones was originally a Hellenized name for a plurality, a people, as in Hellenes for Greeks and Trooes for the Trojans. The Greeks used distinctive feminine endings (typically -ai) for associations made up exclusively of women, such as Nymphai (Nymphs) or Trooiai for Trojan women. But Amazones does not have the feminine ending that one would expect if the group consisted only of women. Therefore, the name Amazones would originally have been understood as … a people consisting of men and women. As classicist Josine Blok points out in her discussion of this puzzle, without the addition of the feminine epithet antianeirai there is no way of telling that this was a people of female warriors.⁷ The inescapable conclusion is that Amazones was not a name for a women-only entity, as many have assumed. Instead Amazones once indicated an entire ethnic group.

So the earliest literary references to Amazons identified them as a nation or people, followed by antianeirai, a descriptive tag along the lines of the Saka, Pointed Hat Wearers, or the Budini, Eaters of Lice. Indeed, many ancient Greek writers do treat Amazons as a tribe of men and women. They credit the tribe with innovations such as ironworking and domestication of horses. Some early vase paintings show men fighting alongside Amazons.⁸

But what about the meaning of the epithet attached to Amazones? That word is slippery and complex. Antianeirai is often translated in modern times as opposites of men, against men, opposing men, antagonistic to men, or man-hating. In fact, however, in ancient Greek epic diction the prefix anti- did not ordinarily suggest opposition or antagonism as the English prefix anti- does today. Instead anti- meant equivalent or matching. Accordingly, antianeirai is best translated as equals of men.

Such ethnonyms, names of tribes, are typically masculine, with the understanding that the female members are included in the collective name (as in man for all humans or les Indiens d’Amérique for an entire ethnic group). But the curious formation aneirai is a unique feminine plural compound that included the Greek